She turned toward him, and her eyes unconsciously said what she had been careful not to put into words.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, with sudden comprehension. "You knew I was in it and that is why you withdrew."
"Well," she said, trying to laugh lightly, "it would not have been modest for me to compete against my master."
She moved away as she spoke. She had a tingling sense of his nearness, a passionate yearning to turn toward him and to break down all barriers which made her afraid. She felt that she had been rash in coming to the studio, and had overestimated her own strength. She glanced around quickly, as if in search of something which would help to bring the conversation to conventional levels; but her eye fell upon a terra-cotta figure which sent the blood surging into her head so fiercely that a rushing sound seemed to fill her ears. It was the nude figure of a soldier lying dead upon a trampled mound, with broken poppies about him, while across the pedestal ran the inscription,—
"I strew these opiate flowers
Round thy restless pillow."
It was the figure beside the clay model of which, yet wet from his hand, the sculptor had told her, that day long ago, of her husband's death. In the years since, she had believed herself to have worn her love into friendship, to have beaten her passion into affection; but every woman, even the most clear-headed, deceives herself in matters of the heart, and now Helen knew what pitiful self-deception her belief had been.
Over and over and over again has it been noted how great a part in human life and action is played by trifles, and despite this constant reiteration the fact remains both true and unappreciated. And yet it is, after all, more exact to consider that the thing is simply our habit of noticing the obvious trifles rather than the underlying causes, as it is the straws on the surface of the current that catch our eye rather than the black flood which sweeps them along. It was the chance sight of the figure of the dead soldier which now broke down Helen's self-control, but the true explanation of her outburst lay in long pent up and well-nigh resistless emotions.
She turned toward her companion with a passionate gesture.
"It is no use," she broke forth, "I did wrong to come home. I should have kept the ocean between us. I must go back."
Herman grasped the edge of the modelling stand strongly.