The three men inclined their heads stiffly, and the Kentuckian, dejected by his sudden reverse from apparent success to failure, turned on his heel, and left the place. It had not, of course, occurred to him to connect the appearance of his snarler of Saxon’s affairs with the name on the Paris hotel-list, and he was left more baffled than if he had known only the truth, in that he had been thrown upon a false trail.
The Kentuckian joined Mrs. Horton and her niece in Genoa on their arrival. As he met the hunger in the girl’s questioning eyes, his heart sickened at the meagerness of his news. He could only say that Paris had divulged nothing, and that a trip to London had been equally fruitless of result. He did not mention the fact that Saxon had registered at the hotel. That detail he wished to spare her.
She listened to his report, and at its end said only, “Thank you,” but he knew that something must be done. A woman who could let herself be storm-tossed by grief might ride safely out of such an affair when the tempest had beaten itself out, but she, who merely smiled more sadly, would not have even the relief that comes of surrender to tears.
At Milan, there was a wait of several hours. Steele insisted on the girl’s going with him for a drive. At a picture-exhibition, they stopped.
“Somehow,” said Steele, “I feel that where there are paintings there may be clews. Shall we go in?”
The girl listlessly assented, and they entered a gallery, which they found already well filled. Steele was the artist, and, once in the presence of great pictures, he must gnaw his way along a gallery wall as a rat gnaws its way through cheese, devouring as he went, seeing only that which was directly before him. The girl’s eyes ranged more restlessly.
Suddenly, Steele felt her clutch his arm.
“George!” she breathed in a tense whisper. “George!”
He followed her impulsively pointed finger, and further along, as the crowd of spectators opened, he saw, smiling from a frame on the wall, the eyes and lips of the girl herself. Under the well-arranged lights, the figure stood out as though it would leave its fixed place on the canvas and mingle with the human beings below, hardly more lifelike than itself.
“The portrait!” exclaimed Steele, breathlessly. “Come, Duska; that may develop something.”