The Peacock Feathers

This story is about peacock feathers bringing back luck when kept in the house, a superstition that holds true today, especially for actors and musicians.

A woman singer is given peacock feathers as a gift after a performance. Her husband of many years wrote her a farewell note shortly thereafter. She continued singing, met a composer, and one day at a concert he killed himself while she was singing. The episode ruined the applause she would normally have received.

She kept the peacock feathers and wrote her memoirs. They were received poorly and seen as calculated; she blamed the peacock feathers because she had written the memoirs with a pen made out of one of them.

The woman smoked a long pipe she was offered in a Hindu home. When she stopped smoking, she lost energy, looked old, lost her beautiful singing voice, but she continued smoking because it lulled her.

Her life was destroyed, and she was able to blame the peacock feathers.

The Idealist

They meet in an art class where Edward insists the class is drawing the wrong model; he feels they should be drawing Chantal instead. She agrees that the model has "an awful lot to dispose of" and has drawn a more refined version of her.

Edward criticized Chantal's drawing tools and helped her select more appropriate ones at a shop. They go for coffee at the Viking afterwards where she realizes he views her as someone from another time and place rather than the woman she actually is. He is idealizing, dreaming.

They have discussions about books and art and feel "mental communion."

One day the class realizes the model is cold and hungry. Edward becomes obsessed by the model; he needs her and cannot be satisfied. Chantal is no longer his ideal.