For a moment Faradeane stood silent and dreamy, then he roused himself and almost sternly said:
“No, no! by no means! And now, Cherub, you had better go. This is long enough for a first visit to a man you have never met before,” he smiled. “Some one has certainly seen you come in and will see you go out, and will be—confound them!—curious. If you are asked—you see I am obliged to coach you in falsehood,” he put in bitterly, “you can say that you called to remonstrate with me for allowing that savage dog of mine to be loose; and that, finding me rather a decent kind of a man, you stopped to make my acquaintance.”
“Very well,” assented Bertie, sadly.
“And now, good-by,” said Faradeane, gently pushing him to the door.
Bertie held his hand for a moment or two in a firm grasp, and then went down the path. At the gate he looked back. The tall, graceful figure was leaning against the door-post, and there was something in the attitude, something in the expression of the handsome Van Dyck face, a suggestion of such terrible loneliness and hopelessness and despair, combined with a noble kind of resignation and calmness, that the Cherub’s tender heart throbbed with a sympathetic pain.
Harold Faradeane remained there lost in thought for a moment; then, followed closely by the huge dog, he went back to the room, and, as if with an effort to discard something from his mind, sat down to the table and began to write.
He wrote for a few moments with that rapidity which indicates a stern determination; then gradually the pen slowed off, and presently he was absently sketching something on the blotting-pad.
Suddenly he started, and he gazed at what he had drawn, and a strange expression—of fear, almost—leaped into his eyes. He had drawn an outline, striking in its truth, of Olivia’s face.
With a kind of groan he sprang to his feet, tore the sketch into fragments, and, striding to the door, scattered them to the winds.
“Great Heaven!” he murmured, with a bitter smile. “Bertie must be right. I must be going mad! Stark, staring, raving mad!” and he thrust his hands into his pockets, and leaned against the door with his head drooping despondently upon his breast.