A SPIN OF THE COIN
Unfortunately the young man was not by any means the genius he looked, with his pale, keen face and hungry eyes: or fortunately, as some may say: since there is now no occasion to grieve for him on national grounds. For the rest, he had none so near to him as to provoke your sympathy with the living, being either unable or else unwilling to claim any sort of kinship with others of his name. In fine he was without a friend in the world, save one only, who swore to wait for him, if need be, till she became an old, old woman.
We will call him Saumerez, and his friend Sapphira.
They had met in a crowded studio where women of all ages, and a few young men, may either work or play at drawing the figure, under the tutelage of one of the clever failures of his profession. The girl had come to play, having tired suddenly of life in the country, and felt the aching need of a new sensation; the man to work his hardest, in the intervals of other work which by itself was quite hard enough for any one man not accurst with a soul above black-and-white work for a minor illustrated paper. But though the aims of these two were as the poles asunder, the time of their coming coincided; and the very first day, their eyes joined through the rustling, tittering forest of easels; his being black as night, and hers so soft, that it was not till he came to paint them that he gave a thought to their colour.
Sapphira had also brought with her from the country such a complexion as one might look for, but would seldom see; and it bloomed in the London studio like a fresh rose in a faded wreath. Nor was it only her good looks that fascinated the most truly artistic eye of all those around her; she was at least as remarkable, in that place, for the self-possession and good-breeding which enabled her to take her own time in making the acquaintance of her fellow-students, without seeming either lonely or self-conscious, nor yet particularly proud, meanwhile. As she afterwards confessed, however, Saumerez could not have been more interested in her—nor earlier—than she in Saumerez, who had always his own air of distinction, which, if it misled, was at any rate wholly unintentional in a young fellow wearing his dark hair as short as another's, and his pale face as scrupulously shaven. And, for that matter, Saumerez was easily the best workman in the studio, having talent and a professional touch, with hitherto a clean heart for his work, and a pure yearning to do more than it was in him ever to do, soon to be exchanged for the godless ambition to make money and a name.
The change, however, was quite gradual. In a mixed school of art the more austere conventions are out of place; even Sapphira learned to lay them aside with her gloves and umbrella during working hours; but she took care to make neither herself nor her friend conspicuous, as seemed to be studio fashion. Nor is it absolutely necessary to confine to the academic precincts any friendship struck up within them. Yet though it was at the first blush of the New Year that Sapphira had come up to town with an old governess (now her timid slave), springtime was well advanced before Saumerez was admitted to her little flat in Kensington. And it was only in April that his own ill-favoured studio in a grimy street off Fitzroy Square, became the scene of some sittings which produced the one good thing he ever did; and in the fatal month following that he and Sapphira spent a long delirious day in Richmond Park, and from the deer and bracken and the greening trees, came back to town engaged.
At her wish, laughingly assented to by one who for his part had nobody to tell, the engagement was kept secret for the time being. Special care was taken that it should not be guessed at the school, where engagements were painfully common, and of a brazen character invariably. On the other hand, Sapphira's duenna (and she alone) was told outright, being tame enough to trust, and for reasons of obvious expediency besides. Her sleep it spoilt for many a summer's night; and a frightened, sorrowful look which would shadow her plain old face under the young man's eyes, now aglow with a fearful fervour, worried him also in the end; until, little as it mattered to him personally, the clandestine element began to interfere with his happiness by galling his self-respect.
So one day as they sat together in Kensington Gardens, which were conveniently close to the flat, and talked over her approaching holiday (Sapphira was going home for August at least), Saumerez said impulsively, though with the exceeding tenderness which he could not separate from his lightest word to his mistress: