“What has he been doing since?”
“Studying. He has gone deeply into social and religious problems, has travelled largely, has seen and talked with many of the most famous leaders of modern thought, and I think he has now some large plans which are maturing slowly. Meanwhile he writes such things as you have read.”
The following week Anna was again in Everett’s studio. This sitting, he promised her as it drew to a close, should be the last, as he could finish the picture without her.
“Am I to see it now?” asked Anna, timidly.
“Not quite yet, if you can be patient still after such long forbearance,” was the answer, given with a bright but half-pleading smile. “I want you to like the thing if you can, Mrs. Burgess, and I know my chances are better if you see it when the final touches are on.”
“Very well. I am not in a hurry.”
When Anna left the studio the sun was low and the room fast growing shadowy. Seeing how hard and intensely Everett was working to use the last light of the day, she insisted that he should not come down the three long flights of stairs with her. The studio was at the top of the house. They parted, therefore, with a brief, cordial good-by, and earnest thanks from the young artist, whose admiration and reverence for his model had grown with every hour spent in her presence.
On the second flight of stairs Anna encountered the housemaid coming up, a tray with a card in her hand. Otherwise the house seemed strangely still and deserted that evening. As she descended slowly from the broad landing of the main staircase, where a window of stained glass threw a deep radiance from the western sky like a shaft of colour down into the dim hall below, Anna perceived that some one stood there, waiting.
As she looked, amazement and a strange, deep joy took hold on her. The man who stood with arms crossed upon his breast where the shaft of light fell full upon him in the gathering shadow was of heroic height and stature, with a large leonine head, grey hair thrown carelessly from his forehead, strong features, and eyes stern and grave in their fixed look straight before him as he stood.
It was not the first time that Anna Mallison had confronted this face. Twice in her girlhood she had seen it as she saw it now. It was the face of her dream, the dream which for years secretly dominated her inner life as a vision of human power and greatness touched with supernatural light. Even in later time, in this year of her Fulham life, she had at intervals recalled that presence and influence distinctly, and never without quickened pulses and mysterious longing. And now she saw bodily before her the very shape and substance of her dream.