“You have lost comprehension—he would have understood what I mean,” answered the girl, quickly.
“But—Bertha! This is unreasonable. How can you expect me to comprehend?”
“I have been too reasonable!” she cried, with sudden passion. “That is my discovery. Love is not reasonable, youth is not—and they belong together. Oh, don’t, don’t make me say any more!”
For an instant there was a heavy silence between them; then Rollinson found voice to say:
“It shall be as you please. Your aunt seems to be looking for you. Shall we go over to her?”
When his guests were gone at last, Rollinson came back to the picture. He took it down and placed it upon a chair where the light fell full upon it. Truly, he did not look like that to-day.
Although it was himself, he hated it, for it had cost him something dearer than the young strength which it portrayed. Of all the irrational humiliations of the long, wayward years of life this seemed to him the most hideous.
He took his knife from his pocket, opened it and put the point against the canvas. It would be easy to satisfy the brute anger in his soul by two sharp cross-cuts which should effectually destroy that remote, insolent beauty which had once been his own and now was his no longer.
He hesitated a moment, then dropped the knife and shook his head. He could not possibly do such a melodramatic, tawdry thing as that.
He knew that the day might yet come when he should not remember the bitterness of this hour; he might even grow to be glad again that he had once walked the earth in the likeness of this picture, but just now—just now he must forget it for awhile.