Nick’s studio seemed larger than reality because of its inadequate illumination. On a small paint-stained table in the centre was an oil-lamp beneath a round shade that had been decorated by some artist’s hand with a series of reclining women in many colours. This lamp made a moon in the midnight of the studio, but it was a moon almost without rays; the shade seemed to imprison the light, save that which escaped from its superior orifice. Against the table stood a tall thin woman in black. Her face was lit by the rays escaping upward; a pale, firm, bland face, with rather prominent cheeks, loose grey hair above, surmounted by a toque. The dress was dark, and the only noticeable feature of it was that the sleeves were finished in white linen; from these the hands emerged calm and veined under the lampshade; in one of them a pair of gloves were clasped. On the table lay a thin mantle.
At the back of the studio there sat another woman, so engloomed that no detail of her could be distinguished.
“As I was saying,” the tall upright woman resumed as soon as Miss Ingate and Audrey had been introduced. “Betty Burke is in prison. She got six weeks this morning. She may never come out again. Almost her last words from the dock were that you, Miss Nickall, should be asked to go to London to look after Mrs. Burke, and perhaps to take Betty’s place in other ways. She said that her mother preferred you to anybody else, and that she was sure you would come. Shall you?”
The accents were very clear, the face was delicately smiling, the little gestures had a quite tranquil quality. Rosamund did not seem to care whether Miss Nickall obeyed the summons or not. She did not seem to care about anything whatever except her own manner of existing. She was the centre of Paris, and Paris was naught but a circumference for her. All phenomena beyond the individuality of the woman were reduced to the irrelevant and the negligible. It would have been absurd to mention to her costume balls. The frost of her indifference would have wilted them into nothingness.
“Yes, of course, I shall go,” Nick answered.
“When?” was the implacable question.
“Oh! By the first train,” said Nick eagerly. As she approached the lamp, the gleam of the devotee could be seen in her gaze. In one moment she had sacrificed Paris and art and Tommy and herself, and had risen to the sacred ardour of a vocation. Rosamund was well accustomed to watching the process, and she gave not the least sign of satisfaction or approval.
“I ought to tell you,” she went on, “that I came over from London suddenly by the afternoon service in order to escape arrest. I am now a political refugee. Things have come to this pass. You will do well to leave by the first train. That is why I decided to call here before going to bed.”
“Where’s Tommy?” asked Nick, appealing wildly to Miss Ingate and Audrey. Upon being answered she said, still more wildly: “I must see her. Can you—No, I’ll run down myself.” In the doorway she turned round: “Mrs. Moncreiff, would you and Miss Ingate like to have my studio while I’m away? I should just love you to. There’s a very nice bed over there behind the screen, and a fair sort of couch over here. Do say you will! Do!”
“Oh! We will!” Miss Ingate replied at once, reassuringly, as though in haste to grant the supreme request of some condemned victim. And indeed Miss Nickall appeared ready to burst into tears if she should be thwarted.