She gave a sudden start and a little cry as sharp and involuntary as the cry of physical pain, for the meaning of the first rough sketch which had puzzled her was now worked out, and she saw before her the face of a guilty man. She shrank and shuddered as she had shrunk when her husband ran to meet her across the studio the night before, and as she had shrunk from him when she saw his face, for the face that looked out from that canvas was the same as her husband's face which had so startled and repelled her. It was the face of a man who has wilfully stifled certain nobler impulses for the sake of something wicked, and who was stifling them still. It was the face of a man who has fallen, and when she turned to look at Frank she saw that he had in the portrait seized on something that stared from every line of his features.
"Ah, Frank," she cried, "but what has happened? It is horrible, and you—you are horrible, too!"
Frank did not seem to hear, for he went on painting; but she heard him murmur below his breath:
"Yes, horrible, horrible!"
For the moment Margery lost her nerve completely. She was incontrollably frightened.
"Frank, Frank!" she cried, hysterically.
Then she cursed her own folly. That was not the way to teach him. She laid one hand on his arm, and with her voice again in control, "Leave off painting," she said—"leave off painting at once and look at me!"
This time he heard. His right hand, holding a brush filled with paint, dropped nervelessly to his side, and the brush slid from his fingers on to the floor.
In that moment his face changed. The vicious, guilty lines softened and faded, and his expression became that of a frightened child.
"Ah, Margery," he cried, "what has happened? Why were you not here? What have I been doing?"