The Temperate Zone by Edith Wharton

All that first evening in Paris the vision of his book grew and grew in / French's mind. Much as he loved the great city, nothing it could give / him was comparable, at that particular hour, to the rapture of his / complete withdrawal from it into the sanctuary of his own thoughts. The / very next day he was to see Horace Fingall's widow, and perhaps to put / his finger on the clue to the labyrinth: that mysterious tormenting / question of the relation between the creative artist's personal / experience and its ideal expression. He was to try to guess how much of / Mrs. Fingall, beside her features, had passed into her husband's / painting; and merely to ponder on that opportunity was to plunge himself / into the heart of his subject. Fingall's art had at last received / recognition, genuine from the few, but mainly, no doubt, inspired by the / motives to which Jolyesse had sneeringly alluded; and, intolerable as it / was to French to think that snobbishness and cupidity were the chief / elements in the general acclamation of his idol, he could not forget / that he owed to these baser ingredients the chance to utter his own / panegyric. It was because the vulgar herd at last wanted to know what to / say when it heard Fingall mentioned that Willis French was to be allowed / to tell them; such was the base rubble the Temple of Fame was built of! / Yes, but future generations would enrich its face with lasting marbles; / and it was to be French's privilege to put the first slab in place.

The young man, thus brooding, lost himself in the alluring and / perplexing alternatives of his plan. The particular way of dealing with / a man's art depended, of course, so much on its relation to his private / life, and on the chance of a real insight into that. Fingall's life had / been obdurately closed and aloof; would it be his widow's wish that it / should remain so? Or would she understand that any serious attempt to / analyse so complex and individual an art must be preceded by a reverent / scrutiny of the artist's personality? Would she, above all, understand / how reverent French's scrutiny would be, and consent, for the sake of / her husband's glory, to guide and enlighten it? Her attitude, of course, / as he was nervously aware, would greatly depend on his: on his finding / the right words and the convincing tone. He could almost have prayed for / guidance, for some supernatural light on what to say to her! It was late / that night when, turning from his open window above the throbbing city, / he murmured to himself: "I wonder what on earth we shall begin by saying / to each other?"