If he had never asked himself that question before, he knew now that it must some day be answered. Friendship had been a good and seemingly a sufficient definition. Now, he was not so sure that it could remain so.
Then, his thoughts went back to a cabin in the hills and a girl in calico. He heard a voice like the voice of a song-bird saying through tears:
"I couldn't live without ye, Samson…. I jest couldn't do hit!"
For a moment, he was sick of his life. It seemed that there stood before him, in that place of historic wraiths and memories, a girl, her eyes sad, but loyal and without reproof. For an instant, he could see a scene of centuries ago. A barbarian and captive girl stood in the arena, looking up with ignorant, but unflinching, eyes; and a man sat in the marble tiers looking down. The benches were draped with embroidered rugs and gold and scarlet hangings; the air was heavy with incense—and blood. About him sat men and women of Rome's culture, freshly perfumed from the baths. The slender figure in the dust of the circus alone was a creature without artifice. And, as she looked up, she recognized the man in the box, the man who had once been a barbarian, too, and she turned her eyes to the iron gates of the cages whence came the roar of the beasts, and waited the ordeal. And the face was the face of Sally.
"You look," said Adrienne, studying his countenance in the pallor of the moonlight, "as though you were seeing ghosts."
"I am," said Samson. "Let's go."
Adrienne had not yet seen her portrait. Samson had needed a few hours of finishing when he left New York, though it was work which could be done away from the model. So, it was natural that, when the party reached Paris, Adrienne should soon insist on crossing the Pont d' Alexandre III. to his studio near the "Boule Mich'" for an inspection of her commissioned canvas. For a while, she wandered about the business-like place, littered with the gear of the painter's craft. It was, in a way, a form of mind-reading, for Samson's brush was the tongue of his soul.
The girl's eyes grew thoughtful, as she saw that he still drew the leering, saturnine face of Jim Asberry. He had not outgrown hate, then? But she said nothing, until he brought out and set on an easel her own portrait. For a moment, she gasped with sheer delight for the colorful mastery of the technique, and she would have been hard to please had she not been delighted with the conception of herself mirrored in the canvas. It was a face through which the soul showed, and the soul was strong and flawless. The girl's personality radiated from the canvas —and yet—A disappointed little look crossed and clouded her eyes. She was conscious of an indefinable catch of pain at her heart.
Samson stepped forward, and his waiting eyes, too, were disappointed.
"You don't like it, Drennie?" he anxiously questioned. But she smiled in answer, and declared: