Milly's plan was carried out: they all went up to town together, Milly

to her friend's house, Dick to his bachelor's chambers. And it was

Christina who asked Dick to come and dine with them the night before he

left for Africa. She maintained every appearance. The very air that

night was electric with the restraints ready to burst into

reverberations which would surprise no one but Dick. Christina herself

was aware of a strange little dart of impatience with him. His stupidity

helped her as nothing else could have helped; yet, while she blessed it,

she could feel for Milly, and actually, while she blessed, resent it.

It was true that she read in his eyes a slight shyness as they rested

upon his wife. He was bewildered, and it was evident he was not happy.

And Milly had dropped her shield of flippancy. She sat silent, absent,

absorbed, looking up at her husband now and then, with curious eyes,

eyes cold and deep and suffering. Christina saw it all. Should she leave

them now, it was inevitable that the revelation would come, and it would

come from Milly. Mutely, in their respective unconsciousness and

consciousness, they were begging her to go; and she sat on. Her

inflexible determination upheld her over the terrible falsity of her

position. Milly, now, must know that she knew; yet she sat on, smiling,

talking, until the hour was late.

Then, as Dick rose, it was Milly who went towards the barrier that she

herself had raised and showed Dick that it had an unlocked gate. From

her deep knowledge of Milly's nature, Christina could gauge, with a

dreadful accuracy, what the strength of the feeling must be that could

nerve her, rising and sauntering to the door beside him, to say in a

strange, in a nonchalant voice: "How about a walk in the park to-morrow,

Dick? You don't go till the evening, do you?"

Dick stared for a moment. He was pitiably, mercifully stupid. His stare

might really have been interpreted as one of mere astonishment. Then:

"Really?" he asked. "Aren't you and Mrs. Drent too busy?"

"No, indeed. Our arrangements are all made."

"Shall I come for you here?"

"Do. At eleven."

They shook hands, and Dick took Christina's hand. She felt, always, that

Dick looked upon her as a friend. His eyes, now, revealed to her his

boyish wonder and gladness. She and Milly were left alone. Milly, still

with the sauntering step, went to the mantelpiece and touched her hair,

looking in the glass. "Dear me, how late!" she said, her eyes turning to

the clock. "How dreadful of us to have kept poor Dick up so late. Shall

we go to bed, dearest? I'm dreadfully sleepy."

"You didn't mean me to come for the walk, too, did you?" Christina

asked, in a voice as easy, putting up her hand to hide a yawn. "It's our

usual hour;--that's why I ask. But you meant him to understand that you

wanted it to be a _tete-a-tete_, didn't you? It's all right. I can go to

Mrs. Pomfret's for my fitting at eleven."

"But, dearest, of course you are coming," said Milly instantly.

Their eyes were on each other now, and their faces armed and masked.

Christina measured the depth of estrangement in all that the flexible,

disingenuous acquiescence hid of disappointment, bitterness, even

hatred.

"Oh no, no, indeed; I think you ought to have your good-bye walk alone,"

she insisted. "He will expect it now. I'm sure he thought that you

particularly wanted it to be alone."

"He couldn't have thought anything so unlikely," said Milly. "It is our

good-bye walk with you."

So Christina went with them. She felt herself still trembling in every

nerve from the appalling risk she had run, and ran; for which was the

greater risk, that Milly should realize her guile and hate her, or that

Milly and Dick should come to an understanding? She could not tell; nor

where she stood; yet triumph trembled in her fear. She had succeeded.

They had not spoken together. In the park she and Milly bade Dick

good-bye. Dick's train was to go in the early evening. Milly, when they

reached home--and she had talked lightly if not gaily in the

hansom--said that she had rather a headache. She would have her luncheon

in her room and sleep through the afternoon and be fit and fresh for the

play that night. Christina knew in an instant that a last desperate hope

cowered beneath the affected languor and lightness; and it watched her,

feverishly, like the eyes of a tracked animal creeping in an underbrush

past enemies' guns. When she replied, kissing her friend tenderly, that

a good rest was the best of cures for a headache and that she herself

would do some shopping and go to the tea for which they were engaged,

these large, sick eyes of Milly's hope and fear widened and shone with a

recovered security. She wanted to be left alone that afternoon. She

would not go to Dick; Christina knew her too accurately to believe that

possible, and Dick had been too stupid to make it conceivable; but what

Milly hoped for was a sudden illumination of Dick's stupidity; some tug

of unendurable pain or surmise that would bring him back on the chance

of seeing her again. Milly's logic was instinctive, but Christina

believed that it was sound. Dick, she, too, felt sure of it, would come.

She lunched and then she sat at her writing-table and wrote some notes,

looking out at the street, and then, when an hour approached in which a

caller might appear, she went out.

It was one of the suddenly hot days in May that London sometimes offers.

It was so hot that Christina's head, as she walked slowly up Sloane

Street, swam and turned, and the lines of cabs and omnibuses and

carriages in the roadway, upon which she fixed her eyes, seemed to pulse

and float as they went by. Three o'clock had struck. Dick, if he came,

must come before five, and she must walk up and down Sloane Street for

perhaps nearly two hours. If she lay in wait in the house, Milly, who no

doubt was already up and dressed and waiting, would discover her. Milly,

too, might be watching from the drawing-room windows. Her peril was

desperate, and her safest course was to walk on the side of the street

near the house where Milly could not see her. This she did, turning

regularly in her little beat, indifferent to the odd spectacle she must

present, and scanning the passers-by. She had not long to wait.

Half-an-hour had not elapsed, when, in an approaching hansom, she saw

the broad shoulders and perplexed yet resolute features of Dick Quentyn.

He, too, had come to final decisions on this fateful day.

Christina walked towards the hansom smiling. With her opened parasol and

delicate dress of white and black she had the most unalarming and casual

air. She seemed to have just stepped from her own doorway. She had held

up her hand in signal, and Dick, arresting his cabman, sprang out.

Christina greeted him gaily.

"Well, this is very nice. Can you really stop and speak to me? You're

not running a risk of losing your train?"

Dick hardly smiled in answer. His face showed his uncertainty, his

anxiety, his trouble.

"My train? Oh no;--I've over an hour yet. Heaps of time.--In fact--I was

on my way to your house. I thought I'd have a last glimpse of you and

Milly. Are you just going out?"

"Just going out. And as to Milly,--it's too bad," said Christina, "but

she is getting a little sleep this afternoon and particularly asked that

she shouldn't be disturbed. We are going to the play to-night. You'll

walk with me for a little way, though, won't you?"

There was nothing ambiguous in her words or manner. They were certainly

in keeping with the situation, and poor Dick Quentyn, although he looked

almost haggard, turned obediently and walked beside her. He walked

silently for a little way, while Christina talked, then, as they came

out into Knightsbridge, he said, suddenly;--"Mrs. Drent,--may I ask you

about something?--Do you mind? Shall we go into the park for a little

while?"

"Of course; of course," said Christina, kindly and mildly.

They went into the park and sat down on two chairs that faced the stream

of carriages and had rhododendrons behind them. When they sat down,

Christina's head swam so giddily that she feared she might be going to

faint. She closed her eyes for a moment, mastering her weakness with a

desperate effort. Dick did not notice her pallor. "You see," he said,

leaning forward and boring small holes in the gravel with the point of

his stick--"You see,--I think I must tell you--ask you for your

advice--because you know Milly so much better than any one else in the

world. You can tell me if I'm mistaken--or advise me what to do, you

know. It's just this: I thought, when I first came home, that Milly had

begun to care for me again--or, at all events, that she'd got over

disliking me."

"Care for you? Dislike you?" Christina murmured vaguely. "Oh--I don't

think it was ever that--of late years--since you'd so tactfully and

charmingly understood and made everything so easy for her."

"No. Yes; it seemed she'd particularly got over it," Dick, rather

puzzled, assented. "And I mean, by caring, that she seemed so happy when

I was there--at first, happier than I'd ever known her."

"She can dare to be happy with you now, you see; just because you have

made her so secure."

"So secure?"

"Yes," Christina met his eyes. "So sure that you'll never ask anything

of her, make anything difficult for her again."

Dick Quentyn grew red. "I never did do that, as far as I remember, after

I understood."

"That is what Milly so deeply appreciates," Christina returned.

There was a little silence after this and Christina, in it, controlled

her breaths from trembling. Then Dick, groping painfully among his

impressions, put forward another. "She did mind, very much, my being in

danger last winter; you told me that. She was worried, really worried

about me?"

Like a hurried, jangling bell somewhere in the background of her mind

Christina, as she, too, gathered together her impressions and memories,

seemed to hear a reiterated "No lies; above all, no lies." But he had

put the weapon into her hand, and though she felt as if she held it

lifted above some innocent life, it fell relentlessly.

"Did I say that Milly was worried about you? It was hardly that, I

think; though, of course, she was glad to see you out of danger. Of

course she was glad; how could anyone so gentle-hearted as Milly not be?

But if you ask me what she did feel, I must tell you the truth. You want

the truth, don't you? It is much better--for you and for Milly, isn't

it, that there should be no misunderstandings?"--Dick nodded--his eyes

fixed on her. "What Milly said, in the winter, when we had news of your

danger,--was that it was rather dreadful to realize that if you were

killed it would hardly affect her more than the death of any of the men

who had come to tea with us the day before."

The knife had fallen and her victim, after a moment, turned dazed eyes

away from her. "Milly said that? About me?"

"I was shocked," Christina murmured. She heard, as if from a far

distance, the strange, hushed quality of her voice. Her own blood seemed

to have been arrested.

"She wouldn't have minded more than that?"

"She said, when I reproached her, that I could only expect her to be

solemn, not sorry, over the death of a man for whom she had no

affection, a man she had almost hated. Mr. Quentyn, I am so grieved for

you. Of course, she doesn't hate you now; but I am afraid you have

allowed yourself false hopes about Milly."

Dick, now, had risen to his feet and, facing her as she sat, he gazed

over her head at the rhododendrons. "I wonder why she wanted me to come

for a walk this morning. Yes, I did have false hopes. I thought that

meant something. I've thought that all sorts of little things might mean

something."

"Milly is so sweet and kind when she feels no pressure, no alarm. I

thought, for a moment last night, that she meant you to have the walk

alone. But as soon as you were gone she insisted on my coming with you.

I've tried to help you, Mr. Quentyn. I've given you every chance. But

there isn't any chance." It was well to do it thoroughly.

There was bewilderment and humiliation--at last humiliation--on Dick's

face; but of incredulity not a trace. "I know how kind you've been," he

said. "I've felt it."

Christina, now, had also risen. A dart of keenest pity, even admiration,

went through her, horridly painful. "I am so dreadfully sorry," she

murmured. "I had to tell you--since you asked me;--I didn't want you to

hurt Milly--and yourself--uselessly."

"I know. I perfectly understand," said Dick.

They walked in silence to Albert Gate, and there, as they paused in

farewell, Christina suddenly, seizing his arm and speaking in a hurried

whisper, said: "You have been splendid. I can't tell you how I feel it.

If I can ever--at any time--do anything----" It was the truth, yet the

falseness of such speech, from her to him, appalled her while she spoke.

Her voice trailed off. "Forgive me. Good-bye--" she said.

They grasped each other's hands and Dick, as she broke away, saw that

the tears were running down her face.

CHAPTER III

CHRISTINA

He was gone. She had triumphed. And only pain and horror, as if for the

innocent life she had taken, were about her. No joy, no triumph, in

having snatched Milly from degradation.

At the thought of Milly the fear that drove upon her was so intense that

it induced a curious lightness of head. She was uplifted and upheld

above her own fear. The unnatural buoyancy became almost a lightness of

heart. All was over. If she were a criminal she must profit by her crime

and shelter herself from suspicion. They would be happy--of course they

would be happy again--she and Milly. "Love begets love. Love begets

love." She heard herself muttering the words almost gaily, like an

incantation, as she walked down Sloane Street.

When she crossed the street and looked up at the house she saw that

Milly was standing at the drawing-room window looking down at her.

Something in Milly's attitude there, in her beautiful dress and in her

unsmiling gaze, suggested to Christina the thought of a captive princess

watching the approach of some evil enchantress. Milly--her prisoner--her

victim! Her darling Milly!--She beat away the black vision.

She went slowly upstairs and came slowly into the drawing-room. Milly

had turned from the window and, with the same hard, unsmiling gaze,

stood and watched her enter. Christina sank into a chair.

"Well," said Milly after a moment, and in a voice that Christina had

never heard from her, "he did not come, you see. I am up and

dressed--yes--you know that I intended to get up and dress as soon as

you were gone, I am sure--and I have been waiting here for an hour--and

he has not come. He has not cared enough to come. So there are no

roundabout questions for you to ask or evasive answers for you to hear.

You have the truth before you."

Christina was not at all surprised, though there was something so

horrible in this unshrinking frankness from one so reticent, so delicate

as Milly. She knew, as she heard her speak, that it was what she had

expected. The subterfuges of the past weeks lay in ruin about them. She

sat, her eyes fallen, drawing off her gloves, and she said gently, "I am

sorry, Milly, if you hoped that he would come."

"No," said Milly, not moving from her place. "You are not sorry,

Christina. You are glad. You are sorry that I care and you are glad that

he does not care, because you think that it will keep us together. But

that is your mistake. It is all impossible now, and you have made it so.

I am going away. I am going back to the country. I want to be alone."

Again Christina was not surprised; this was the fear which she had

glanced down at from her haze of uncanny lightness.

"Have I made it so impossible? What have I done, Milly?" she asked,

after a moment.

Milly sat down in the nearest chair. She had passed beyond fear. There

was no mist or illusion in her calmness. "You didn't give us a chance,"

she said. "Not a chance. You saw how I cared. You saw how I had come to

need him. You saw how stupid he was and unless he were helped he would

see nothing. I was afraid to hurt you. Of course I was. Of course I was

sorry for you, horribly sorry. And you traded on that. You saw that

unless you stood aside I could do nothing."

"I thought that I did stand aside, Milly," said Christina after another

moment.

"Never really," said Milly.

"I don't quite see what you mean by really, Milly," said Christina. "I

left you with him whenever you gave me the opportunity for doing so.

Perhaps you mean that I ought to have committed suicide."

"No; I don't mean that," Milly returned sullenly, with an unaltered

hostility. "There are different ways of standing aside. You could have

made it possible for me to tell you, openly, what I felt; you could have

made me feel that you would be glad to have me happy with him. You need

not have made me feel in everything you did and said--and didn't do or

say--that if I went back to Dick I should be going to him over your dead

body."

"I think you mean, Milly," Christina answered in her dull and gentle

voice, "that I ought not to have loved you. That is my crime, is it

not?"

"Yes; perhaps that is your crime, if you want to put it so," said Milly.

"I don't blame you, you know. You could not help it. But your love has

always been a prison. As long as I was contented in the prison you made

it a very charming place to live in. But when I wanted to be free, to

have other, deeper, realler loves, I knew that I had a gaoler to get

past, a gaoler who would not kill me, but whom I would have to kill. So

that I sat in my cell and did not dare turn the key in the lock for fear

of what would happen to you. And it isn't true to say that you left the

door open. You pretended to, of course. But when I did make my one

effort, when I did try to creep out under your eyes, you turned the key

on me quickly enough. The walk this morning. You knew that I hoped for

it alone. You knew that it was our last chance."

While Milly spoke these words to her, Christina sat with her head bent

down and her hands pressed tightly together in her lap, and it seemed to

her that she was weeping inwardly, tears of blood. It was shame,

unutterable shame, that she felt, mixed with the anguish, and weighing

her down to the earth. Shame for what she had done in sacrifice to the

love she heard thus abused; shame for the truth, the cruel half-truth,

in Milly's words; and shame for Milly that she could find it in her to

speak such words to her. Deeper? Realler? Could any love, though tricked

out in romantic conventions, be deeper or realler than the love she had

for Milly? In the innermost chambers of her heart she knew that, in

spite of the cruel half-truth, what Milly said was not the whole. She

would--oh yes, she would have given her up--with gladness--as a mother

gives up her child--to a love that she could have recognized as

ennobling. It had not been her own selfish clinging, only, that had

nerved her. It had been the thought of Milly's truest good. And if she

were to say this to Milly, she knew now what withering laughter she

would hear.

The thought of this laughter from Milly's lips, of Milly's cruelty to

her, hunted her down the first turning of concealment open to her. "I

didn't want to come with you," she said. "You made me come. But I was

glad--for your sake--because it shielded you. You had made it so obvious

to him that you wanted it to be alone. I thought that you had made it

too obvious."

Milly drew a long breath and a vivid red mounted to her cheeks. For some

moments she sat still, saying nothing. Then, not meeting her friend's

eyes, for they were now fixed on her, she rose.

"Yes. I have been unfair," said Milly. "I have been ungrateful and

unkind, and unfair. I know that you have thought only of me; and you

saw what I've only realised in this last hour. It has hurt so terribly

to realise it--to realise that I've had my chance of happiness and

thrown it away and that now it's too late to get it back again--it's

hurt so terribly that it has made me cruel. You have been right all

along and I have been a fool. But there it is. I love him and I'm

broken-hearted, and now all that I can do is to go away and hide

myself."

She was going, actually going. Their life together was over, shattered.

The intolerable realisation crashed down upon Christina's abasement. She

stood up, staring at her friend. "You are going to leave me, Milly?" she

asked.

Milly averted her eyes. "Yes, Christina. I want to be alone."

"But you will come back?"

"I don't know," said Milly. Still she averted her eyes; but, in the

rigid silence that followed, compunction evidently wrought upon her. She

glanced round at her suffering friend and Christina's eyes met hers.

They hurt her. They were glazed, like the eyes of a deer, waiting for

the hunter's final blow.

"Christina," she said, and her voice showed her pity; "won't you try to

learn to live without me? Really--really--it can't come back again, as

it was. You must see that. Not after all that we have said, all that has

happened. Learn to live without me. Get some nice woman and go to Greece

and try to forget me. I can only mean suffering for you now, and I'm not

nearly good enough for you."

At this Christina broke into dreadful sobs. She did not move towards her

friend, but she stretched her clasped hands out towards her and said,

while her voice, half-strangled, came in gasps: "Milly--Milly--Have you

forgotten everything?--All the years when we were so happy

together?--When he was nothing to you?--For all these years,

Milly--nothing--nothing.--How can you care--suddenly--like this--when

you have almost hated him for so long?--You know what you said, in the

winter, Milly--that you would not care if he were to die."

Milly's eyes had hardened. She moved towards the door.

"Milly!" Christina's cry arrested her. She had to stop and listen,

though her hand was on the door. "Wait! Forgive me!--I don't know what I

am saying!--And it was true! It was! You did not care!--Oh don't be

cruel to me. I shall die if you leave me. What have I done that you

should change so?"

"You have done nothing, Christina," said Milly in a voice of schooled

forbearance. "It is I who have changed, and been cruel, first to Dick

and then to you. I am a shallow, feeble creature, but the shallowness

was in thinking that I couldn't love my husband--not in loving him now.

I don't want the things you and I had together. I only want the stupid,

simple things that he could have given me. I want someone to be in love

with me. That is it, I think. I am the most usual, common sort of woman,

who must have someone in love with her and be in love. And I am in love

with Dick. And I am too unhappy to think of anyone but myself."

Christina stood with her face covered. Convulsive sobs shook her.

"Good-bye," said Milly.

She did not reply. She moved her head a little, in negation?

acquiescence? appeal?--Milly did not know. And since Christina still

said nothing, she turned the handle softly and left her.

* * * * *

Milly went down to Chawlton. In the country, alone, she could sit and

look at her life and at the wreckage she had made in it without feeling

that another's eyes were watching her. It pained her, when she could

turn her mind from the humiliation of her own misery, to see how

completely all love for poor Christina had died from her, to see how the

perhaps crude and elemental love had killed the delicate, derivative

affection. It was even sadder to realise that under the superficial pain

lay a deep indifference. She was very sorry for Christina. She had

accepted Christina's life and used it, and now, through the strange

compulsion of fate, she must cut herself away from it, even if that were

to leave it broken and bleeding. For if she were to remain sorry for

Christina, to look back at her with pity and compunction, she must not

see her. Words, glances, silences of Christina's rankled in her, and

when she thought of them she could not forgive her. Christina had seen

too much, understood too much. She was a blight upon her love, a menace

to her tragic memory of it. Under everything, deeper than anything else

in her feeling about Christina, was a dim repulsion and dislike.

That Christina had submitted showed in her letters, for Milly, before

many days had passed, wrote kindly and mildly, in the tone which, for

the future, she intended to use towards Christina. Milly surprised

herself with her own calm ruthlessness. She found that the gentle and

the cowardly can, when roused, be more cruel than the harsh and

fearless. Her letters to Christina were serene and impersonal. They

recognised a bond, but they defined its limits. They might have been

letters written to a former governess, with whom her relation had been

kindly but not fond. They never mentioned her husband's name, nor

alluded, even indirectly, to her mistimed love; and to ask Christina's

forgiveness again for her unjust arraignment of her would have been to

allude indirectly to it.

And Christina's letters made no appeal. They were infrequent, hardly

affectionate; amazingly tactful letters. Milly shrank in recognising how

tactful. It showed Christina's power that she should be so tactful,

should so master herself to a responsive calm. Milly had come to dread

Christina's tact, her patience and her reticence, more than all the

vehemence and passionate upbraidings of former years. Beneath the

careful words she knew that a profound, undying hope lay hidden; pain,

too, profound and undying. The thought of such hope, such pain, made

Milly feel at once the pity and the repulsion.

In none of Christina's letters was there any mention of her health.

Milly knew how fragile was her hold on life and how much had happened of

late to tax it; but it was with a shock of something unrealisable,

unbelievable, that she read one autumn morning, in a blurred and shaking

hand: "I am very ill--dying, they say. Come to me at once. I must tell

you something."

Christina dying. She had said that it would kill her. And what had she

not said to Christina that might not well have killed her? Milly was

stricken with dreadful remorse and horror.

She hastened to London.

The maid at the door of the little house in Sloane Street told her that

Mrs. Drent was rapidly sinking. Milly read reproach in her simple eyes.

"I did not know! Why was I not told?--Why was I not told?"--she repeated

to the nurse who came to meet her. Mrs. Drent, the nurse said, would not

have her sent for, but during these last few days she had become

slightly delirious and had spoken of something she wished to tell, had,

at last, insisted on writing herself. She could hardly live a day

longer. Heart-failure had made her illness fatal.

In the sick room, Milly paused at the door. Was that Christina? That

strange face with such phantom eyes? Christina's eyes did not look at

her with reproach or with sorrow, but, it seemed, with terror, a wild,

infectious terror; Milly felt it seize her as she stood, spellbound, by

the door. Then a rush of immense pity and comprehension shook her

through and through. Christina was dying, delirious, and what must she

be feeling in her haunted abandonment and desolation? She ran to the bed

weeping. She knelt beside it. Her tears rained upon Christina's hands,

as she took her in her arms and kissed her. "Christina!--dearest

Christina!--Forgive me! Forgive me!--I did not know!--Why did you not

let me come and nurse you?--I have always nursed you! Why did you not

tell me?--Oh, Christina!"

Holding her, kissing her, she could not see clearly the illumination

that, at her words, illuminated the dying woman's face. Life seemed

suddenly to leap to her eyes and lips. The terror vanished like a ghost

in the uprising of morning sunlight. With a rapture of hope and yearning

which resumed all her ebbing power, physical and spiritual, she

stretched out her arms and clasped them about Milly's neck. "Do you

love me again?" she asked. Her voice was like a child's in its ecstasy.

"My darling Christina!--Love you?--Who is there in all the world but

you!" Milly cried. No affirmation could be too strong, she felt, no

atonement too great.

"Better than you love him?"

Milly did not even hesitate. Lies were like obstacles hardly seen as, in

the onrush of her remorse and pity, she leaped them.--"Yes,--Yes. You

are everything," she reiterated. "I love you best. It has passed--that

feeling."

"It has passed! I knew that it would pass!" Christina seemed to gasp and

smile at once. "You know, now, that it was not right;--that it was not

you;--that it was an illness;--something that would pass?--You see it

too, Milly?--And you will be happy with me again?"

"Yes, yes, dearest Christina."

Still smiling, Christina closed her eyes and Milly laid her back upon

her pillows. Her fingers closed tightly on Milly's hand. "It has

passed," she said. "It could not have been right. You were everything to

me. And he could not have seen the pictures, the jewels, Milly; or heard

the music."

"No, dear, no." Milly covered her own eyes. Ah!--those cravings to

which Christina had responded;--now so dead.

"I shall get better," said Christina. "I feel it now; I know it. I shall

get better and be always with you. My darling. My Milly. My little

Milly." Her voice had sunken to a shrouded whisper.

Held by those cold, clutching fingers, Milly sat sobbing. Christina

would not get better; and, with horror at herself, she knew that only at

the gates of death could she love Christina and be with her. And,

glancing round at the head on the pillow--ah!--poor head!--Christina's

wonderful head!--more wonderful than ever now, so eager, so doomed, so

white, with all its flood of black, black hair--glancing at its ebony

and marble, she saw that she need have no fear of life. Christina would

not get better.

She spoke again, brokenly. "If you had loved him, you would have hated

me. Now you will never hate me."

"I love you."

"You will not send for him? You will not see him alone? You will stay

with me?"

"I will stay with you."

"And be glad with me again."

"With you again, dear Christina."

"I shall get better," Christina repeated, turning her head on Milly's

arm. But the disarray of her mind still whispered on in vague

fragments.--"It was not useless.--I was right.--I did not need to tell;

you were mine; I had not lost you."

A few hours afterwards, her head still turned on Milly's arm, Christina

died.

* * * * *

Sitting alone on a winter day in the library of Chawlton, Milly heard

the sound of a motor outside. Since Christina's death she had shut

herself away, refusing to see anyone, and she listened now with

apathetic interest, expecting to hear the retreating wheels. But the

motor did not move away. Instead, after some delay at the door, steps

crossed the hall, familiar, wonderful, dear and terrible. Dick had

returned.

All the irony and humiliation of her married life rose before her as she

felt herself trembling, flushing, with the joy and terror. He had come

back; and so he had not guessed. Or was it that he had guessed and yet

was too kind not to come? She had only time to snatch at conjecture, for

Dick was before her.

Dick's demeanour was as unemphatic as she remembered it always to have

been. It was almost as casual as if he had returned from a day's hunting

merely. Yet there was difference, too, though what it was her hurrying

thoughts could not seize. She felt it as a radiance of pity, warm and

almost vehement.

"My dear Milly," he said coming to her and taking her hand; "I only

heard yesterday.--I only got back yesterday.--And I felt that I must see

you. I'm not going to bother you in any way. I've only come down for the

afternoon. But I wanted to ask you if I could do anything--help you in

any way, be of any use." In spite of his schooled voice his longing to

see her, his delight in seeing her, showed in his clouded, candid eyes.

Milly felt it as the difference, the vague warmth and radiance.

"How kind of you, dear Dick," she said, and her poor voice groped vainly

for firmness. "I am so glad to see you. It was good of you to come. Yes;

it has been dreadful. You know;--Christina--our friendship"--But how to

confess to Dick her remorse or explain to Dick why she had left

Christina? Her pride broke. With this human kindness near her, she could

not maintain the decorum of their tangled relations as man and woman;

the simple human relation alone became the most real one; the

loneliness and the grief of a child overwhelmed her. She sank, sobbing

helplessly, into her chair.

"Oh--Milly!"--said poor Dick Quentyn. And the longing to comfort and

console effacing his diffidence and the memory of her long unkindness

towards himself, he knelt down beside her and took her into his arms.

Milly then said and did what she could never have believed herself

capable of saying and doing. No pride could hold her from it, no

dignity, not even common shame. She could not keep herself from dropping

her face on his shoulder and sobbing;--"Oh--Dick--try--try to love me

again. I am cold and selfish. I have behaved cruelly to everyone who

loved me;--but I can't bear it any longer."

It was a startling moment for Dick Quentyn, the most startling of his

life. "Try to love you?" he stammered. He pushed her back to look at

her. "What do you mean, Milly?"

"What I say," Milly gasped.

"But what does it mean?" Dick repeated. "It isn't for you to ask me to

love you. You know I love you. You know there's never been another woman

in the world for me but you. It's you who have never loved me, Milly."

Her appeal had been like a diving under deep waters--she had not known

when or where or how she would come up again. Now she opened her eyes

and stared at her husband. She seemed, after that whirlpool moment of

abysmal shame, to have come up from the further reaches of darkness, and

it was under new, bewildering skies. Strange stars made her dizzy.

"Then why didn't you come and say good-bye to me--that day--in London

this spring?" was all she found to say.

Dick was not stupid now. The lover's code was at last open between them,

and he as well as she could read the significance of seemingly trivial

words.

"Did you expect me?" he asked.

"Of course I expected you. I thought you saw how much," said Milly.

"I didn't think you expected me at all; why should I have thought it?

But I did come. Didn't you know it?" said Dick.

"You did come?" In its extremity her astonishment was mild.

"That is to say--I never got there. Mrs. Drent met me. She told me how

you'd gone to sleep, you know. She thought you'd gone to sleep, Milly.

She didn't know you expected me either, you see. It was in the park we

talked, just there by the rhododendrons."

"She told you I had gone to sleep?--But why did that keep you from

coming?" Milly had suddenly risen to her feet. She had grown pale.

"Why--it was obvious--you wouldn't want to be disturbed. She said that.

And--everything else. She told me--for I confided in her then--she'd

always been so kind to me; and I thought she might help me--but she told

me how little you cared for me."

Milly had grasped his shoulder as she stood above him. "What did

Christina tell you? What did she say about me? Let me understand."

"Why, Milly--what is it?--She told me--I didn't blame you, though it

hurt, most unconscionably--because I'd always believed that, in spite of

everything, you had some sort of kindly feeling for me--as though I'd

been a well-intentioned dog who didn't mean to get in your way--she told

me that I mustn't have any hopes. And she told me that that very winter

you had said to her that you'd feel my death less than that of any of

the men who came to tea with you. Yes, she told me so, Milly--and wasn't

it true?"

Milly now looked away from him and round at the room, stupor on her

face. "Yes, it was true I said it," she said in the voice of a

sleep-walker. "Yes; I said it, Dick. But it was so long ago. How did she

remember?--And I knew when I said it that it wasn't true."

"But she thought it was true." Dick now had risen, and he, too, very

pale, looked at his wife.

"Yes; then, she may have thought it. I wanted her to think it because I

did not want her to guess how much I was getting to care. But,

afterwards--after you had come back--she did not think it then. She

knew, then, everything. She knew before I did. It was she who showed it

to me.--Oh, Dick!--She knew that I loved you--and she kept you from

coming to me!" She was gazing at him now, stupefied, horrified, yet

enraptured. It was of him she thought, her lover, her husband, rather

than of the unhappy woman who had parted them. But Dick still did not

see.

"What do you mean, Milly?" he said. "Kept me from coming? But she loved

you, Milly? She'd given her life to you. You can't mean what you are

saying."

"Yes," Milly kept her grasp of his shoulder. "It is true. She loved me,

but it was a madness of jealousy. Her love was a prison. I told her so.

We spoke of it all on that day, when she came back from seeing you and

did not tell me that she had seen you. I told her that her love was a

prison and that she had kept you from me, and that I was going to leave

her. And even then she did not tell me. We parted and I did not see her

again until the day she died. She sent for me to come to her. Yes--" her

eyes, deep with joy and horror, were on him.--"That is what she was

going to confess to me; and died without confessing. She kept us apart

because she knew that we loved each other and she could not bear to give

me up."

They stood in the firelight and he took her hands and they looked at

each other as though, after long wanderings, they had found each other

at last. There would yet be much to tell and to explain, but Dick saw

now what had happened. Only after many moments of grave mutual survey,

did he say, gently, with a sudden acute wonder and pity--"Poor thing."

"Horrible, oh horrible!" said Milly, leaning her head on his shoulder.

"You might have died away from me--never knowing.--I might never have

seen you again.--Horrible woman!--Horrible love."

"Poor thing," Dick repeated gently. He kissed his wife's forehead and,

his arm around her;--"I haven't died.--She is dead. I do see you

again.--She doesn't see you. I have got you.--She has lost you."

Milly still shuddered; she still looked down the black precipice, only

just escaped. "Yes, she has lost me for ever. I wish I did not feel that

I hate her; but I do. It may be cruel, it is cruel. But all that I can

feel for her now is hatred."

"Ah--but she loved you tremendously. And she's dead," said Dick. "All

that I can feel is that."

But Milly only said: "I love you all the more for feeling it."

MISS JONES AND THE MASTERPIECE

CHAPTER I

"Manon Lescaut," Carrington repeated. He did not show any particular

enthusiasm.

"Yes, Manon Lescaut. I see the thing. It would be really superb."

"You don't mean to say, my dear boy, that you are falling into anecdote?

You are not going to degrade your canvas with painted literature?"

Carrington's voice betrayed some concern, for he took a friendly

interest in my career.

"The title--a mere label--suggests it. But nothing of the sort. I am

going to paint a portrait of Manon--and of her ilk."

"A portrait?"

"Yes; the portrait of a type."

Carrington smoked on, stretched comfortably in a chair. His feet were on

another chair, and the broad soles of his slippers so displayed implied

ease and intimacy.

"It will look like the portrait of an actress in character; a costume

picture," he said, presently; "the label isn't suggestive to me."

"There will, I promise you, be no trace of commonplace realism in it. It

will be Velasquez dashed with Watteau. Can you realize the modest flight

of my imagination? Seriously, Carrington, I intend to paint a

masterpiece. I intend to paint a woman who would sell her soul for

pleasure--a conscienceless, fascinating egotist--a corrupt

charmer--saved by a certain _naivete_. The eighteenth century, in fact,

_en grisette_."

"Manon rather redeemed herself at the end, if I remember rightly,"

Carrington observed.

"Or circumstances redeemed her, if you will. She had a heart, perhaps;

it never made her uncomfortable. Her love was of the doubtful quality

that flies out of the window as want comes in at the door. Oh! she was a

sweet little _scelerate_. I shall paint the type--the little

_scelerate_."

"Well, of course, everything would depend on the treatment."

"Everything. I am going to astonish you there, Carrington."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Carrington said, good-humouredly.

"I see already the golden gray of her dim white boudoir; the satins, the

laces, the high-heeled shoes, the rigid little waist, and face of pretty

depravity. The face is the thing--the key. Where find the face? I think

of a trip to Paris on purpose. One sees the glancing creature--such as I

have in my mind--there, now and then. I want a fresh pallor, and gay,

lazy eyes--light-brown, not too large."

"I fancy I know of someone," Carrington said, meditatively. "Not that

she's _dans le caractere_," he added: "not at all; anything but

depraved. But--her face; you could select." Carrington mused. "The line

of her cheek is, I remember, mockingly at variance with her staid

innocence of look."

"Who is she? Manon could _look_ innocent, you know--was so, after a

fashion. I should like a touch of childish _insouciance_. Who is she,

and how can I get her?"

"Well," said Carrington, taking his pipe from his lips and contemplating

the fine colouring of the bowl, "she's a lady, for one thing."

"Oh, the devil!" I ejaculated; "that won't do!"

"Well, it might."

"Shouldn't fancy it. Ill at ease on her account, you know. How could one

tell a lady that she was out of pose--must sit still? How could one pay

her?"

"Very simple, if she's the real article."

"I never tried it," I demurred.

"Well"--Carrington had a soothing way of beginning a sentence--"you

might see her, at least. Her father is a socialist; a very harmless and

unnecessary one, but that accounts for her posing."

"Do the paternal unconventionalities countenance posing for the

_academie_? That savors of a really disconcerting latitude."

"The _academie_? Dear me, no! Oh, no; Miss Jones is a model of the

proprieties. One indeed can hardly connect her with even such mild

nonconformity as her father's socialism. He was a parson; had religious

scruples, and took to rather aimless humanitarianism and to very

excellent bookbinding in Hampstead. He binds a lot of my books for me;

and jolly good designing and tooling, too. You remember that Petrarch of

mine. That's really how I came to know him. It was the artist in him

that wrestled with and overthrew the parson. He seems a happy old chap;

poor as Job's turkey and absorbed in his work. He has rather longish

hair--wavy, and wears a leather belt and no collar." Carrington added:

"That's the first socialistic declaration of independence--they fling

their collars in the face of conventionality. But the belt and the lack

of collar are the only noticeable traces socialism seems to have left on

Mr. Jones, except that he lets his daughter make money by posing. He

must know about the people, of course. She usually sits for women. But I

can give you a recommendation."

I felt, to a certain extent, the same lack of enthusiasm that Carrington

himself had shown at the announcement of my "label," but I thanked him,

and said that I should be glad to see Miss Jones.

"And her mother was French, too," he added, as a cogent afterthought.

"That accounts for the rippled cheek-line." Miss Jones's cheek had

evidently made an emphatic impression. Indeed, Carrington's enthusiasm

seemed to wax on reflection, and, as interpreted by Miss Jones, my Manon

became tangible.

"How's her colouring?" I asked.

"Pale; her mouth is red, very red; charming figure, nice hands; I

remember them taking up the books--she was dusting the books. I've only

seen her once or twice; but I noticed her, and she struck me as a

type--of something."

The pale skin and red mouth rather pleased me, and it was arranged that

Carrington should see Mr. Jones, and, if possible, make an appointment

for Miss Jones to call on Monday afternoon at my studio.

Carrington had rooms next door, in the little court of artists' quarters

in Chelsea.

Carrington wrote reviews and collected all sorts of expensive things,

chiefly old books and Chinese porcelain. He and I had art-for-art

sympathies, and, being lucky young men from a monetary point of view, we

could indulge our propensities with a happy indifference to success.

I had painted now for a good many years, both in Paris and in London,

and had a pleasant little reputation among people it was worth while to

please, and a hearty and encouraging philistine opposition. I had even

shocked Mrs. Grundy in an Academy picture which wasn't at all shocking

and was very well painted, and I had aroused controversy in the pages of

the _Saturday Review_.

I felt Manon Lescaut.

This epitome of the soullessness of the eighteenth century whirled in

its satin frivolity through all my waking thoughts.

On Monday I awaited Miss Jones, fervently hoping that her face would do.

Punctual to the minute came the young lady's rap at my door. I ushered

her in. She was rather small; and self-possessed, very. In the cut of

her serge frock and the line of her little hat over her eyebrows I

fancied I saw a touch of the mother's nationality. With a most

business-like air she removed this hat, carefully replacing the pins in

the holes they had already traversed, took off her coat (it was

February), and turned to the light. She would do. Evident and delightful

fact! I at once informed her of it. She asked if she should sit that

morning. I said that, as I had sketches to make before deciding on pose

and effect of light, the sooner she would enter upon her professional

duties the better.

The gown I had already discovered--a _trouvaille_ and genuinely of the

epoch; an enticing pink silk with glowing shadows.

Miss Jones made no comment on the exquisite thing which I laid lovingly

on her arm. She retired with a brisk, calm step behind the tall screen

in the corner.

When she reappeared in the dress, the old whites of the muslins at

elbows and breast falling and folding on a skin like milk, I felt my

heart rise in a devout ejaculation of utter contentment. The Manon of my

dreams stood before me. The expression certainly was wanting; I should

have to compass it by analogy. My imagination had grasped it, and I

should realize the type by the aid of Miss Jones's pale face, narrowing

to a chin the French would call _mutin_, her curled lips and curiously

set eyes, wide apart, and the brows that swept ever so slightly upward.

The very way in which her fair hair grew in a little peak on the

forehead, and curved silky and unrippled to a small knot placed high,

fulfilled my aspirations, though the hair must be powdered and in it the

vibrating black of a bow.

Miss Jones stood very well, conscientiously and with intelligence. Pose

and effect were soon decided upon, and in a day or two I was regularly

at work, delighting in it, and with a sensation of power and certainty I

had rarely experienced.

Carrington came in quite frequently, and, looking from my canvas to Miss

Jones, would pronounce the drawing wonderfully felt.

"Degas wouldn't be ashamed of the line of the neck," he said. "The turn

and lift of her head as she looks sideways in the mirror is really

_emouvant_, life; good idea; in character; centred on herself; not bent

on conquest and staring it at you. Manon had not that trait."

Miss Jones on the stand gazed obediently into the mirror, the dim white

of an eighteenth century boudoir about her. She was altogether a most

_posee_, well-behaved young person.

One could not call her manner discreet; it was far too self-confident

for that. Her silence was natural, not assumed. During the rests she

would return to a book.

I asked her one day what she was reading. She replied, looking up with

polite calm:

"'Donovan.'"

"Oh!" was all I could find in comment. It did rather surprise me in a

girl whose eyes were set in that most appreciative way and whose father,

as a socialistic bookbinder, might have inculcated more advanced

literary tastes. Still, she was very young; this fact seemed emphasized

by the innocent white the back of her neck presented to me as she

returned to her reading.

When I came to painting, I found that my good luck accompanied me, and

that inspiring sense of mastery. Effort, yes; but achievement followed

it with a sort of inevitableness. I tasted the joys of the arduous

facility which is the fruition of years of toil.

The limpid grays seemed to me to equal Whistler's; the pinks--flaming in

shadow, silvered in the light--suggested Velasquez to my happy young

vanity; the warm whites, Chardin would have acknowledged; yet they were

all my own, seen through my own eyes, not through the eyes of Chardin,

Whistler, or Velasquez. The blacks sung emphatic or softened notes from

the impertinent knot in the powdered hair to the bows on skirt and

bodice. The rich _empatement_ was a triumph of supple brush-work. I can

praise it impudently for it was my masterpiece, and--well, I will keep

to the consecutive recital.

Miss Jones showed no particular fellow-feeling for my work, and as,

after a fashion, she, too, was responsible for it and had a right to be

proud of it, this lack of interest rather irritated me.

Now and then, poised delicately on high heels and in her rustling robes,

she would step up to my canvas, give it a pleasant but impassive look,

and then turn away, resuming her chair and the perusal of her romance.

It really irked me after a time. However little value I might set upon

her artistic acumen, this silence in my rose of pride pricked like a

thorn.

Miss Jones's taste in painting might be as philistine as in literature,

but her reserve aroused conjecture, and I became really anxious for an

expression of opinion.

At last, one day, my curiosity burst forth:

"How do you like it?" I asked, while she stood contemplating my

_chef-d'oeuvre_ with a brightly indifferent gaze. Miss Jones turned

upon me her agate eyes--the eyelashes curled up at the corners, and it

was difficult not to believe the eyes, too, roguish.

"I should think you had a great deal of talent," she said. "Have you

studied long?"

Studied? It required some effort to adjust my thoughts to the standard

implied; but perceiving a perhaps lofty conception of artistic

attainment beneath the query, I replied:

"Well, an artist is never done learning, is he? And in the sense of

having much to learn, I am still a student, no doubt."

"Ah, yes," Miss Jones replied.

She looked from my picture up at the sky-light, then round at the

various studies, engravings, and photographs on the walls. This

discursive glance was already familiar to me, and its flitting lightness

whetted my curiosity as to possible non-committal depths beneath.

"Inspiration, now," Miss Jones pursued, surprising me a good deal, for

she seldom carried on a subject unprompted, "that of course, is not

dependent on study."

I felt in this remark something very derogatory to my Manon--an

inspiration, and in the best sense, if ever anything was. Did Miss Jones

not recognize the intellectual triumphs embodied in that presentment of

frail woman-hood? I was certainly piqued, though I replied very

good-humouredly:

"I had rather flattered myself that my picture could boast of that

quality."

Miss Jones's glance now rested on me rather seriously.

"An inspired work of art should elevate the mind."

I could not for the life of me tell whether she was really rather clever

or merely very banal and commonplace.

"I had hoped," I rejoined, politely, "that my picture--as a beautiful

work of art--would also possess that faculty."

Miss Jones now looked at the clock, and remarked that it was time to

pose. She mounted the low stand and I resumed my palette and brushes,

feeling decidedly snubbed. Carrington sauntered in shortly after, his

forefinger in a book and a pipe between his teeth. He apologized to Miss

Jones for the latter, and wished to know if she objected. Miss Jones's

smile retained all its unabashed clearness as she replied:

"It _is_ a rather nasty smell, I think."

Poor Carrington, decidedly disconcerted, knocked out his pipe and laid

it down, and Miss Jones, observing him affably while she retained her

pose to perfection, added: "I have been brought up to disapprove of

smoking, you see; papa doesn't believe in tobacco."

Miss Jones's aplomb was certainly enough to make any man feel awkward,

and Carrington looked so as he came up beside me and examined my work.

"By Jove! Fletcher," he said, "the resemblance is astonishing--_and_ the

lack of resemblance. That's the triumph--the material likeness, the

spiritual unlikeness."

Indeed, Miss Jones could lay no claim to the "inspiration" of my work;

in intrinsic character the face of my pretty _scelerate_ was in no way

Miss Jones's.

"Charming, charming," and Carrington's eye, passing from my canvas,

rested on Miss Jones.

"Which?" I asked, smiling, and, of course, in an undertone.

"It depends, my dear boy, on whether you ask me if I prefer Phryne or

Priscilla--pagan or puritan; both are interesting types, and the

contrast can be very effectually studied here in your picture and your

model."

"Yet Priscilla lends herself wonderfully to be interpreted as Phryne."

"Or, rather, it is wonderful that you should have imagined Manon into

that face."

In the next rest, when Carrington had gone, Miss Jones said:

"Mr. Carrington walked home with me yesterday. Papa thinks rather highly

of him. It is a pity his life should be so pointless."

It began to be borne in upon me that Miss Jones had painfully serious

ethical convictions.

"I suppose you mean from the socialistic standpoint," I said.

"Oh, no--not at all; I am not a socialist. Papa and I agree to differ

upon that as upon many other questions. Socialism, I think, tends to

revolt and license."

I did not pursue the subject of Carrington's pointlessness nor proffer

a plea for socialism. I was beginning to wince rather before Miss

Jones's frankness.

On the following day she again came and stood before my picture.

"I posed for Mr. Watkins, R.A., last year," she said. "The picture was

in the Academy. Did you see it? It was beautiful."

The mere name of Mr. Watkins ("R.A.") made every drop of aesthetic blood

in my body curdle. A conscienceless old prater of the soap and salve

school, with not as much idea of drawing or value as a two-year

Julianite.

"I don't quite remember," I said, rather faintly; "what was--the picture

called?"

"'Faith Conquers Fear,'" said Miss Jones. "I posed as a Christian

maiden, you know, tied to a stake in the Roman amphitheatre and waiting

martyrdom. The maiden was in a white robe, her hair hanging over her

shoulders (perhaps you would not recognize me in this costume), looking

up, her hands crossed on her breast. Before her stood a jibing Roman.

One could see it all; the contrast between the base product of a vicious

civilization and the noble maiden. One could read it all in their faces;

hers supreme aspiration, his brutal hatred. It was superb. It made one

want to cry."

Miss Jones, while speaking, looked so exceedingly beautiful that I

almost forgot my dismay at her atrocious taste; for Watkins's "Faith

Conquers Fear" had been one of the jokes of the year--a lamentably

crude, pretentious presentation of a theatrical subject reproduced

extensively in ladies' papers and fatally popular.

At the same moment, and as I looked from Miss Jones's gravely enrapt

expression to Manon's seductive graces, I experienced a sensation of

extreme discomfort.

"I think a picture should have high and noble aims," Miss Jones pursued,

seeing that I remained silent, and evidently considering the time come

when duty required her to speak and to speak freely. "A picture should

leave one better for having seen it."

I could not ignore the kind but firmly severe criticism implied; I could

not but revolt from this Hebraistic onslaught.

"I don't admit a conscious moral aim in art," I said. "Art need only

concern itself with being beautiful and interesting; the rest will

follow. But a badly-painted picture certainly makes me feel wicked, and

when I go to the National Gallery to have a look at the Velasquezes and

Veroneses I feel the better for it."

"Velasquez?" Miss Jones repeated. "Ah, well, I prefer the old masters--I

mean those who painted religious subjects as no one since has painted

them. Why did not Velasquez, at least, as he could not rise to the

ideal, paint beautiful people? I never have been able to care for mere

ugliness, however cleverly copied."

I felt buffeted by her complacent crudity.

"Velasquez had no soul," she added.

"No soul! Why he paints life, character, soul, everything! Copied! What

of his splendid decorativeness, his colour, his atmosphere?" My

ejaculations left her calm unruffled.

"Ah, but all that doesn't make the world any better," she returned,

really with an air of humouring a silly materialism; and as she went

back to her pose she added, very kindly, for my face probably revealed

my injured feelings:

"You see I have rather serious views of life."

"Miss Jones--really!" I laid down my palette. "I must beg of you to

believe that I have, too--very serious."

Gently Miss Jones shook her head, looking, not at me, but down into the

mirror. This effect of duty fulfilled, even in opposition, was most

characteristic.

"I cannot believe it," she said, "else why, when you have facility,

talent, and might employ them on a higher subject, do you paint a mere

study of a vain young lady?"

This interpretation of Manon startled me, so lacking was it in

comprehension.

"Manon Lescaut was more than a vain young lady, Miss Jones."

"Well," Miss Jones lifted her eyes for a moment to smile quietly,

soothingly at me. "I am not imputing any wrong to Miss Manon Lescaut; I

merely say that she is vain. A harmless vanity no doubt, but I have

posed for other characters, you see!" Her smile was so charming in its

very fatuity that the vision of her lovely face, vulgarized and

unrecognizable in "Faith Conquers Fear," filled me with redoubled

exasperation. Her misinterpretation of Manon stirred a certain deepening

of that touch of discomfort--a sickly unpleasantness. I found myself

flushing.

Miss Jones's white hand--the hand that held the mirror with such beauty

in taper finger-tips and turn of wrist--fell to her side, and she fixed

her eyes on me with quite a troubled look.

"I am afraid I have hurt your feelings," she said; "I am very sorry. I

always speak my mind out; I never think that it may hurt. It is very

dull in me."

At these words I felt that unpleasant stir spring suddenly to a guilty

misery. I felt, somehow, that I was a shameful hypocrite, and Miss Jones

a priggish but most charming and most injured angel.

"Miss Jones," I said, much confused, "sincerity cannot really hurt me,

and I always respect it. I am sorry, very sorry, that you see no more in

my picture. I care for your good opinion" (this was certainly, in a

sense, a lie, and yet, for the moment, that guilty consciousness upon

me, I believed it), "and I hope that though my picture has not gained

it, I, personally, may never forfeit it."

Still looking at me gravely, Miss Jones said:

"I don't think you ever will. That is a very manly, a very noble way of

looking at it."

But the thought of Manon Lescaut now tormented me. I had finished the

head; my preoccupation could not harm that; but this lovely face looking

into the mirror, with soulless, happy eyes, seemed to slide a smile at

me, a smile of malicious comprehension, a smile of _nous nous

entendons_, a smile that made a butt of Miss Jones's innocence and

laughed with me at the joke.

I soon found myself rebelling against Manon's intrusion. I wished to

assure her that we had nothing in common and that, in Miss Jones's

innocence, I found no amusing element.

That evening Carrington came in. He wore a rather absorbed look, and

only glanced at my picture. After absent replies to my desultory

remarks, he suddenly said, from his chair:

"I walked home with Miss Jones this afternoon." Carrington, with his

ultra-aesthetic sensibilities, must find Miss Jones even more jarring

than I did, and his act implied a very kindly interest.

"That was nice of you," I observed, though at the mention of Miss Jones

that piercing stab of shame again went through me, and my eyes

unwillingly, guiltily sought the eyes of my smiling Manon.

"She was rather troubled about something she had said," Carrington

pursued, ignoring my approbation, "about the picture. Of course she

doesn't know anything about pictures."

"No," I murmured, "she doesn't."

"By Jove!" added Carrington, "that's the trouble. She doesn't understand

anything!"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I mean that she could never see certain things from our

standpoint; she is as ignorant and as innocent as a baby. She's never

read 'Manon Lescaut'--that came out _en passant_--and, by Jove, you

know, it _does_ seem a beastly shame! A girl like that! A snow-drop!"

Carrington cast a look of unmistakable resentment at my poor Manon.

"Well," I said, lamely--indeed I felt maimed--"how was I to know? And

what am I to do?"

"Why, my dear fellow," and Carrington spoke with some fierceness,

"you've nothing to do with it! _I'm_ to blame! I told you about her.

Said she had the type! Dull, blundering fool that I was not to have seen

the shrieking incongruity! The rigidly upright soul of her! That girl

couldn't tell a lie nor look one; and _Manon_!"

Carrington got up abruptly; evidently his disgust could not be borne in

a quiescent attitude.

"You said at the first that her face was innocent," I suggested, in a

feeble effort to mitigate this self-scorn; "we neither of us misjudged

the girl for a moment, though we overlooked her ignorance."

"Yes, and her ignorance makes all the difference. Another girl--as good,

to all intents and purposes--might know and not object; but this one! I

really believe it would half kill her!"

Carrington gave another savage glance at my unlucky picture, and his

gaze lingered on it as he added:

"If it's kept from her, all's well--as well as a lie can be."

And then, if only for a moment, the Greek gained its triumph over this

startling exhibition of Hebraism.

"It is a masterpiece!" said Carrington, slowly, adding abruptly as he

went, "Good-night!"

But my night was very bad. Whatever Miss Jones might say or think, I

_did_ take life seriously.

CHAPTER II

A few days followed in which Miss Jones showed herself to me in a sweet

and softened mood, the mood that wishes to make amends for salutary

harshness. My meekness under reproof had evidently won her approbation.

In the rests she talked to me. She gave me her opinions upon many

subjects, and very admirable they were and very commonplace. One thing

about Miss Jones, however, was not commonplace. She would certainly

act up to her opinions. Her sense of duty was enormous; but she bore

it pleasantly, albeit seriously. She had a keen _flair_ for

responsibilities. I began to suspect that she had assumed my moral

well-being as one of them.

Her priggishness was so unconscious--so sincere, if one may say so--that

it staggered me. Her calmly complacent truisms confounded any subtleties

by marching over them--utterly ignoring them. One could not argue with

her, for she was so sublimely sure of herself that she made one doubt

the divine right of good taste, and wonder if flat-footed stupidity were

not right after all.

And, above all, however questionable her mental attributes might be, her

moral worth was certainly awe-inspiring. The clear, metallic

flawlessness of her conscience seemed to glare in one's eyes, and poor

everyday manhood shrunk into itself, painfully aware of spots and

fissures.

"Yes," Miss Jones said, leaning back in her incongruous robes; "yes, the

longer I live the more I feel that, as Longfellow says:

"Life is real, life is _earnest_."

She emphasized the quotation with solemnity: "We can't trifle with our

lives; we can't play through them. We must _live_ them. We must make

something of them."

"Each man after his own nature," I suggested, feebly, for I felt sure

that "we can't _paint_ through them" was implied, and wished to turn

from that issue, with which I felt myself incapable of grappling.

But Miss Jones was not to be balked of her moral.

"We build our own characters," she said, and her look held kind warning.

"We must not act after our own nature if that nature is base or

trivial."

"I know," I murmured.

"It is only by holding firmly to an ideal that we rise, step by step,

beyond our lower selves."

Beyond "Manon Lescaut" to "Faith Conquers Fear" this might mean.

"And ideals we must have," she pursued. Then rising, her little air of

guide and counsellor touched with a smile: "But I must not preach too

much, must I?"

It was comforting to dwell on the ludicrous aspects of this mentorship,

for, when my thoughts led me to a contemplation of Miss Jones's ideals,

I felt my position to be meanly hypocritical, if not "base." Manon was

almost finished. Ah! it was superb!--but even my joy in Manon rankled

and had lost its savour. Manon was there under false pretences, her

presence a subtle insult to Miss Jones. Miss Jones in her flaming gown

took on symbolical meanings. An unconscious martyr wearing, did she but

know it, the veritable robe of Nessus! A sense of protectorship, tender

in its self-reproach, grew upon me--a longing for atonement. I had

sacrificed Miss Jones to my masterpiece, and its beauty was baleful,

vampire-like.

It was indeed a small thing to take Miss Jones's homilies humbly.

Indeed, for this humility I could claim no element of expiation, for I

really liked to hear her; she looked so pretty when she talked. It was

all so touching and so amusing.

I am not sure that she had read Dante, but if she had she no doubt saw

herself something in the guise of a Beatrice stooping from heights of

wisdom to support my straying, faltering footsteps. She brought me one

day a feeble little volume of third-rate verse, with a page turned down

at a passage she requested me to read. The badly constructed lines,

their grandiloquent sentimentality, jarred on me; but in them I

perceived a complimentary application that might imply much

encouragement. Miss Jones evidently thought that I was rising step by

step, and put this cordial to my lips. I thanked her very

earnestly--feeling positively shrivelled--and then, turning from the

subject with a haste I hoped she might impute to modesty--and indeed

modesty of a certain humiliating kind did form part of it--I told her

that Manon would only require another sitting after that day.

"Ah! is it finished, then?"

She went to look at it.

"_Is_ my left eye as indistinct as that?" she asked, playfully. "Can't

you see my eyelashes? That is impressionism, I suppose." I felt my

forehead growing hot.

"The left eye is in shadow," I observed.

"I am afraid shadows are convenient sometimes, aren't they? I like just

a plain, straight-forward telling of the truth, with no green paint over

it! You accept a little well-meant teasing, don't you?"

I accepted it as I had to accept her various revelations of stupefying

obtuseness, and smiled over the sandy mouthful.

"Yes," she pursued, carefully looking up and down the canvas--certainly

a new sign of interest in me and my work--"you will need quite two days

to finish it; the hands especially, they are rather sketchy about the

finger-tips." She might have been a genial old professor giving me

advice mingled with the good-humored _raillerie_ of superiority. The

hands were finished; but I kept a cowardly silence.

"And the dress must be a good bit more distinctly outlined; I can't see

_where_ it goes on this side; and then the details of the background--I

can hardly tell what those dashes and splashes on the dressing-table are

supposed to represent."

"I think you are standing a little too near the canvas," I said, in a

voice which I strove to free from a tone of patient long-suffering. "If

you go farther away, you will get the effect of the _ensemble_."

"No, no!" she laughed; she evidently thought that her ethical

relationship justified an equally frank aesthetic helpfulness, and her

air of competence was bewildering. "No, we must not run away from the

truth! A smudge is a smudge from whatever standpoint one looks at it,

and a smear a smear."

The masterly treatment of porcelains, ivories, and silver on the

dressing-table, glimmering and gleaming from the soft shadows, to be

qualified in such terms!

"You are rather severe," I said. My discomfort was apparent, but she

naturally took it to be on my own behalf, not, as it was, on hers.

"Oh! you mustn't think _that_! I hope I am never unduly severe. You will

easily mend matters to-day and to-morrow and polish over that rather

careless look. And, as far as that goes, I am at your service as long as

you need me."

"As model _and_ critic," I observed, with a touch of bitterness.

"As model _and_ critic," she repeated, brightly. "Do you know," she

added, mounting the stand, "I found 'Manon Lescaut' on a bookshelf this

morning. I didn't know that it was a French book. I am going to read it

this evening."

I was struck dumb. This possibility had never presented itself to me.

"I shall find the scene you have painted," she continued, looking down

at her gown and patting a fold into place; "I shall see whether you have

illustrated it conscientiously."

"The book wouldn't interest you at all! Not at all!" I burst out,

conscious of a feverish intensity in the gaze I bent upon her. "It

is--it is decidedly _dull_!"

"Is it?" said Miss Jones, indifferently. "Now I can't quite believe

that. You evidently didn't think it too dull to illustrate. There must

be some nice bits in it, and I mean to find the bit where the heroine,

in a pink silk gown, looks at herself in a mirror."

"Well, you'll find no such bit. I haven't illustrated it!" I strove to

keep my voice fairly cool. "I merely took the heroine's name as

indicative of a class, and chose the epoch as characteristic. The book

is dull, old-fashioned."

"Ah, but I might not agree with you there. Is it an historical novel? I

like them, even if they are rather slow. One gets all sorts of ideas

about people of another age."

"It isn't historical." Despite my efforts my voice was growing sharply

anxious, and Miss Jones was beginning to notice my anxiety. "And the

characters in it are not people you would care to have ideas about. It

is merely one of the first attempts to write a psychological study, in

the form of romance, made in France."

"Oh, but that is exceedingly interesting."

"You would only find the rather crude analysis of a--a disagreeable

girl."

"You think _I_ am like a disagreeable girl, then!" said Miss Jones,

still laughing. "From the first I have had a bit of a grudge against you

for finding me so suitable. I am sure I am not vain."

"Manon was more than vain. She was heartless, a liar." I felt myself

stumbling from bad to worse. "Not in the least like you in anything,

except that she was beautiful." My explanation, with this bald piece of

tasteless flattery, had hardly helped matters. Indeed, Miss Jones became

rather coldly silent. I painted on, my mind in a disturbing whirl of

conjecture. I felt convinced that I had merely whetted her curiosity and

that she would go straight home to the perusal of "Manon"; and to

expect from her the faintest literary appreciation of the distinction

and the delicacy of the book was hopeless. She would fasten with horror

on the brazen immorality of a character she had been chosen to embody.

The blood surged up to my head as I painted.

As Miss Jones was preparing to go, I held out my hand.

"Good-bye," I said, feeling very badly.

"Good-bye? Am I not coming to-morrow?" She had paused in the act of

neatly folding her umbrella, which had been thoughtfully left open to

dry while she posed. It had now stopped raining.

"Yes--yes, of course," I stammered.

She secured the elastic band, and then looked at me.

"Miss Jones," I blurted out, abruptly, "don't read 'Manon Lescaut';

please don't."

Her glance became severely penetrating:

"I really don't understand you," she said, and then added: "I most

certainly shall read it."

"Well, if you do"--my urgent tone delayed her going--"try to judge it

from an artistic standpoint, you know. A study--a type. Don't

apply--ah--_modern_ standards."

"I shall apply _my_ standards. I know no other method of judging a

book."

"Well, then,"--my manner was becoming pitiful--"remember that the

physical resemblance between you was merely in my imagination."

"I have always believed the face indicative of the character, and I'm

sorry that mine should have suggested to you the character of a liar,"

said Miss Jones. It was evident that already she was hurt and,

disregarding my reiterated "It did not! It did not! upon my honour," she

opened the door to go. I still detained her.

"Miss Jones," I said, standing before her, "I know that you are going to

misjudge me, and that, because you see certain things from an ethical

and I from a purely aesthetic point of view."

"I can't admit the division. But no; I hope I shall never _misjudge_

you." She gave me a brief little smile and walked quickly away.

Carrington did not come in that evening, and I was glad that my mental

anguish had no observer.

The next afternoon at two I awaited Miss Jones. My picture, virtually

finished, stood regally dominant in the centre of the studio.

I hated and I adored it. I saw it with Miss Jones's eyes and I saw it

with my own; but her crude ethics had, on the whole, poisoned my

aesthetic triumph.

At two there came the familiar rap. Miss Jones entered. I was sitting

before the picture and rose to meet her. Her face was very white and

very cold, and from under the tipped brim of the little hat her eyes

looked sternly at me. I looked back at her silently.

"I have read 'Manon Lescaut,'" said Miss Jones. I found nothing to say.

"You will understand that I cannot sit to-day. You will understand that

I never should have sat for you at all had I _known_," Miss Jones

pursued.

I said that I understood.

"I have come to-day to bring you back the money that I have earned under

false pretences."

She laid the little packet down upon the table. I turned white. "And to

ask you"--here Miss Jones observed me steadily--"whether you do not feel

that you owe me apologies."

"Miss Jones," I said, "I have unwittingly, unintentionally, given you

great pain; that, with my present knowledge of your exceptional

character, I now see to have been inevitable. I humbly beg your pardon

for it, but I also beg you to believe that from the first I never

thought of you but with respect and admiration."

Miss Jones's face took on quite a terrible look.

"Respect! Admiration! While you were looking from me to _that_!" She

pointed to Manon. "While I was clothing your imagination, personifying

to you that vile creature!"

I tried to stop her with an exclamation of shocked denial, but she went

on, with fierce dignity:

"Exceptional! You call it exceptional to feel debased by that

association? Can I ever look at my face again without thinking: 'The

face of Manon Lescaut?' Can I ever forget that we were thought of as

one? No"--she held up her hand--"let me speak. Do you suppose I cannot

see now the cleverness, yes, the diabolical cleverness, of your picture

of me there? The likeness is horrible; and there I shall stand for the

world to gaze at as long as the canvas lasts and as long as people look

at any pictures. There _I_ shall be, gibbeted in that woman's smile! No,

I have not done! There will be no escape possible. Somewhere--I shall

always feel it like a hot iron searing me--somewhere that other I will

be all my life long, and when I am dead, and for centuries perhaps, she

will smile on, and my image will be looked at as a type of vice! I see

it now," and with a sort of grandeur of revelation she turned upon

Manon, "I see that it is a masterpiece!"

I placed myself between her and it.

"Miss Jones," I said, "this is rather a supreme moment for me, more

supreme than you will ever understand. I forgot you for my picture; I

will not forget my picture for you." The icy fire of her eyes followed

me while I went to the table and took up a sharp, long dagger which lay

beside the little packet of money. I returned to the picture and, giving

it one long look, I ripped the canvas from top to bottom. Miss Jones

made neither sound nor sign. With dogged despair I pierced the smiling

face, I hacked and rent the exquisite thing. The rose-coloured tatters

fell forward; in five minutes "Manon Lescaut" was dead, utterly

annihilated, and Miss Jones surveyed the place where she had been. I

turned to her, and I have no doubt that my face expressed my exultant

misery.

"And now!" I exclaimed.

"Now," said Miss Jones, looking solemnly at me, "you have done right,

you have done _nobly_, and you will be the happier for it."

"Shall I?" I said, approaching her. "Shall I?"

"Yes. I can confidently say it. That bad thing would have poisoned your

life as it would have poisoned mine." I ignored the misstatement.

"Miss Jones," I said, "for your sake I have destroyed the best thing in

my life; may I hope for a better? I love you."

Her pale and beautiful face looked very little less calm, but certainly

a little dismayed, certainly a little sorry.

"The best thing has been this act of sacrifice," she said; "don't spoil

that by any weak regret. You have gained my admiration and my respect;

but for better things, if better there are, I accepted Mr. Carrington

last night."

* * * * *

Perhaps I don't regret. Though she was a prig, I had loved her in the

half hour's exaltation. I am certainly not sorry that she married

Carrington. They seem to be very happy. But the chivalrous moment was

worth while--perhaps. However that may be, since then I have never

painted anything as good as Manon Lescaut.

THE END

Other Books by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

TANTE

A masterpiece of character creation and delineation, the

fascinating story of a woman of genius, whose genius is matched

only by her wayward temperament.

FRANKLIN WINSLOW KANE

The story, exquisitely told, of two men and two women, and of

the unraveling of their strangely tangled love-affairs.

AMABEL CHANNICE

"For poignancy of emotional effect few love romances equal this

drama, wherein the love of mother and son is raised to its

height of heroic possibility."

A FOUNTAIN SEALED

"To have known and loved Valerie Upton, even in a book, is to

have added a new store of sweetness to one's life. In the wide

range of modern fiction, one cannot recall a feminine figure of

such immense attractiveness."--_Manchester Guardian._

THE SHADOW OF LIFE

A study of love's psychology, with, in the beginning, a most

exquisite picturing of two children--later lovers--and their

life in the Scottish open.

PATHS OF JUDGEMENT

As unusual as all of Anne Douglas Sedgwick's novels, notable

for its penetrating and beautiful character portrayal.

THE RESCUE

The plot turns upon the question of heredity. "It is a long

time since a story of character so distinct, so searching, and

so convincing has appeared."

THE CONFOUNDING OF CAMELIA

A modern "Taming of the Shrew."

THE DULL MISS ARCHINARD

"Anne Douglas Sedgwick is a finished writer. Her work is as

characteristic of people, places, and things of to-day as is

Jane Austen's of her day."