HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH.
Two Gentlemen of Verona; iv.--2.
When Grant Herman attempted to speak with Mrs. Greyson at the Fenton's
reception, he had more in view than simply the desire of being near the
woman he loved. He was full of trouble and bewilderment, and
instinctively turned toward her for aid and sympathy.
The scene between himself and Helen, to which the latter had alluded in
her conversation with Dr. Ashton, was of far deeper import than her
words might have seemed to imply. In the first shock of discovering
that her work was broken she had been so overcome, that although she
struggled bravely to conceal her feelings, she had excited the
sculptor's keenest pity; and it not unnaturally followed that in
attempting to express his sympathy he found himself telling his love
before he was aware. He had determined to be silent upon this subject.
Uncertain what were Helen's feelings towards him and restrained by a
sense of loyalty to the bond which united him to Ninitta, he had
resolved to bury his love in his own breast, at least until time gave
him opportunity of honorably declaring it. Now circumstances betrayed
him into an avowal of his passion; and he was not without the indignant
feeling that Ninitta's act had freed him from all obligations to her.
It might have required an ingenious casuist to arrive logically at the
conclusion that an injury which the Italian had done to another
released him from his plighted word, but the person injured was the
woman he loved, and he blindly felt that Ninitta had struck at himself
through his most sensitive feelings. He renounced all the fealty to
which he had been held by a sense of honor, and he now poured out to
Helen the full tide of his passionate love.
The sculptor was not a man to be lightly moved, but it is these calm,
grave natures that once aroused are most irresistible. His passionate
outburst took Helen unaware; she scarcely knew what she did, and she
became suddenly aware of a truth so overwhelming that every thing else
faded into insignificance beside it.
"I love you!" he cried out; and at the word she first knew, with a
poignant pang of mingled bliss and anguish, that she too loved him.
It seemed to her that some power above her own volition ruled her, as
in moments of high excitement the body sometimes appears to declare its
independence of the will, and to act wholly by its own decisions. She
was aware that she raised her eyes to his, although she would have
given much to avoid his glance; and she knew that it was from what he
read there that he took courage to fold her in his embrace.
Yet with his arms about her and his piercing kisses upon her face,
Helen felt as if sinking helplessly into a mighty ocean; as if all
struggles must be unavailing, and she could only yield to the
resistless love which engulfed her.
From this first feeling of powerlessness, however, her strong nature
sprang with a sharp recoil. She was too noble to surrender without a
struggle. She would not even think whether she loved this man; that
might be considered upon some safe vantage ground; now all energy must
be concentrated upon escaping from the deadly peril in which she found
herself.
Helen had freed herself as far as she was able from the marriage bond
which had so galled her, and she was glad to forget that such a tie had
ever existed, but she yet remembered that she was still a wife, and the
kiss of a man not her husband overwhelmed her with shuddering
humiliation and fear. She struggled from her lover's embrace with such
an expression of terror upon her face, that he started back amazed and
grieved.
He began to stammer confused words of contrition, of sorrow, of love,
and of supplication.
"How could you!" she gasped. "Oh, leave me!"
There came into her excited mind a way of escape, upon which, even
though it brought with it a sense of baseness, she seized in despair.
"Ninitta," she said. "Ninitta!"
He gave her a look of pain which went to her very heart. He did not
move or answer, but his whole soul seemed to look through his dark eyes
in pitiful appeal.
"Go," she continued, but in a hurried voice which betrayed her
agitation. "Leave me now. Oh, I cannot bear it!"
And crushed with pain and shame, she buried her face in her hands and
burst into tears.
Herman made a step towards her, but instantly she recovered herself,
looking up with swimming eyes and lips that quivered despite her utmost
effort.
"No," she said, "do not touch me. You must go. I cannot bear another
word. Forgive me," she went on rapidly, as he hesitated, still with
those appealing eyes fixed upon her. "Oh, forgive me, but go."
He turned slowly and moved towards the door. The broken bas-relief,
with its beautiful mutilated figure caught his eye, and seemed again to
remind him that he had at last a right to speak to Helen, unhampered by
the thought of Ninitta. He looked back as if he would even now disobey
her and plead his love anew. But her eyes refused his prayer before it
could be uttered. He lingered still an instant.
"I cannot go," he broke out suddenly. "I love you! I must stay! I must
at least have an answer. Do you think a man could kiss you once and
then leave you like this?"
She shivered as if she felt anew his passionate embrace and shrank from
it. She threw her glance about as to discover some means of escape. The
gesture, the look, overwhelmed him with sudden remorse. He trusted
himself not for a single backward look now, but rushed out of the
studio, leaving her sitting there like the princess of the fairy tale
who overcame the genii only by recourse to immortal fire which consumed
her also.
Alone in his studio the sculptor strode up and down, struggling with
the emotion which mastered him. He debated with himself whether Helen
loved him or not; yet the more carefully he recalled his interview with
her, the more impossible he found it to determine. But hope plucked
courage out of this very uncertainty, and clung to the belief that had
not Helen in her heart some affection for him, she could not have been
so touched.
But what of Ninitta? He threw back his head and walked down the studio,
his steps sounding sharply upon the hard cement floor. What of Ninitta?
He had absurdly dallied with his supposed obligations to her long
enough. Now, at least, after this outrage, he repeated to himself, he
was free. He was at liberty now--if indeed he had not always been--to
consider what he owed to himself; what to the woman he loved.
He recalled the hot words he had spoken to the model earlier in the
afternoon when the anger of discovery was fresh upon him, and he felt a
pang of self-reproach. He could not but know how poignant to Ninitta
must be the grief of giving him up, although he assured himself that in
the long years of separation she must have become accustomed to live
without him, and that her grief would be rather fancied than real. Yet
he was too tender-hearted to be wholly at ease after all his reasoning.
He at last started out to find Ninitta, perhaps to comfort her, perhaps
to cast her off forever. At least to come to some definite conclusion
of their doubtful relations.
But Ninitta was not to be found. She was not in her attic; nor did she
return that night, nor the next day, nor yet the following; and it was
to tell of the model's disappearance, and to ask aid in tracing her,
that Herman had wished to speak to Helen at the Fenton's reception.