Free Aurora Dawn by Herman Wouk

belligerently.
    “Because I’m making a lot of money,” quoth Honey. “Stephen, the asparagus.”
    “A sensible reply,” said English, handing her the dish with an approving grin.
    “What the devil do you know about life, English?” growled Wilde. “You are insulated with so many layers of money that the
     electricity of existence has never shocked you into awareness. Wealth is a nonconductor of truth. It is the only condition
     of life more narrowing than poverty. You look at Beaton with the piggish eyes of desire, and you only see Beaton.” (“Come,
     now, Mike,” murmured English, but the protest was lost.) “I look at Beaton and I see every well-favored girl that has ever
     come to New York to make a lot of money as a model. I see them leaving the farms, streaming out of the hills, swarming from
     the small towns and funneling into the city’s maw. I see the charm of young womanhood being skimmed like sweet white cream
     from the nation and poured down the drain of commerce. It is a vast, terrifying picture. It is a subject for a symbolic panorama.
     I shall probably compose a double-spread cartoon in the manner of William Blake and sell it to
Harper’s Bazaar
.–Beaton, go home, I beg of you!”
    “May I have the celery?” said Laura to him politely. “Stephen, do you look at me with piggish eyes?”
    “Not in the least, Laura,” answered English. “Of course I think you’re very beautiful–I’d be an ass if I didn’t–and that makes
     your presence delightful. It’s also the reason for this luncheon, despite the odd turn of the conversation. I think a painting
     of you in the character of Charity by Michael Wilde would be a perfect theme for the Community Chest drive. Knowing Mike as
     I do, I think we must give him his head for another fifteen minutes before he will come out with a rational answer.”
    “You talk of trifles while I am fighting for a girl’s happiness,” said Wilde, having paused just long enough to insert the
     greater part of a lamb chop in his mouth. “Beaton, listen to me, for I am a saint and can prophesy. I do not know to whom
     you are engaged, but the quality of your ring and the size of the stone tell me that he is some young man, simple in heart
     and not rich. If he is in New Mexico, go back to him. If he is here, marry him at once and drag him far from the city. You
     are in great danger. The virtue that breathes from you cannot last another year in this climate. You are selling your body
     in a way that the manners of the day pass as respectable–in photographs. You do not know it, but with each picture you are
     selling a little chunk of your soul. There is not the gulf that you imagine between hawking the shadow and vending the substance.
     The savages who refused to permit strangers to take pictures of them knew a deep truth that you poor, money-mad, fame-crazed
     models find out only too late. Go home, Beaton. Stop putting out your charms for hire to increase the sale of vanities. The
     money you are earning is the gold that drips from the hot walls of Hell. Go home!”
    Laura put down her knife and fork, leaned back in her chair, and turned her renowned blue eyes on him in a long, serious look.
     “You play rough,” she said.
    Wilde reached into his pocket, drew out a bag of peanuts and offered them to her. “This is a better dessert than any you can
     order,” he said. “English, I’ll do her as Charity. It will be an abominable painting which will cause the whole town to praise
     me in the streets. Also, it will force me to postpone work on Talmadge Marquis’s portrait, which will infuriate him. That
     is possibly the chief inducement. Peanuts, Beaton?” He rustled the paper sack.
    “I don’t want peanuts, thank you,” said Honey, “and I’m not sure I want you to paint me. You’re very strange.”
    “Her spirit is infected with urbanity already, English,” said Wilde, proceeding to shell the nuts noisily. “In New Mexico
     she