"For you alone," says Horace, telling his lie calmly. "When it was finished I had the negative destroyed. I thought only of you. Was not that natural? There was one happy moment in which I assured myself that it would please you to have my image always near you. Was I wrong?—presumptuous?"
Into his tone he has managed to infuse a certain amount of uncertainty and anxious longing that cannot fail to flatter and do some damage to a woman's heart. Clarissa raises her trustful eyes to his.
"Please me!" she repeats, softly, tears growing beneath her lids: "it pleases me so much that it seems to me impossible to express my pleasure. You have given me the thing that, of all others, I have most wished for."
She blushes, vividly, as she makes this admission. Horace, lifting her hand, kisses it warmly.
"I am fortunate," he says, in a low tone. "Will you love the original, Clarissa, as you love this senseless picture? After long years, how will it be?" There is a touch of concern and doubt—and something more, that may be regret—in his tone.
"I shall always love you," says the girl, very earnestly, laying her hand on his arm, and looking at him with eyes that should have roused all tenderness and devotion in his breast:
"For at each glance of those sweet eyes a soul
Looked forth as from the azure gates of heaven."
He is spared a reply. Dorian, coming again into the hall, summons them gayly to breakfast.
In the little casemented window of the tiny chamber that calls her mistress, sits Ruth Annersley, alone.