Barriers Burned Away

by Edward Payson Roe

"Christine!" a frown contracted her brow for a second, but she worked on.

He looked at her as if fearing she had lost her reason, but there was no madness in her swift, intelligent strokes. Then like a flash the thought came to him: "It is my face, not myself, that she wants! This, then, has been the secret of her new hope as an artist. She would not feel, as I told her she must, but she would call out and copy my emotion; and this scene, which means life or death to me, is to her but a lesson in art, and I am no more than the human subject under the surgeon's knife. But surely no anatomist is so cruel as to put in his lancet before the man is dead."

Every particle of color receded from his face, and he watched her manner for the confirmation of his thought.

Her face was indeed a study. A beautiful smile parted her lips, her eyes glowed with the exultation of assured and almost accomplished success, and she looked like an inspired priestess at a Greek oracle.

But a bitterness beyond words was filling his heart.

A few more skilful strokes, and she threw down her brush, crying in ecstatic tones, "Eureka! Eureka!" as she stood before the painting in rapt admiration. In an instant he stood by her side. With all the pride of triumph she pointed to the picture, and said: "Criticise that, if you can! Deny that there is soul, life, feeling there, if you dare! Is that painting but a 'beautiful corpse'?"

Dennis saw a figure and features suggesting his own, pleading with all the eloquence of true love before the averted face of the maiden in the picture. It was indeed a triumph, having all the power of the reality.

He passed his hand quickly across his forehead, as if to repel some terrible delusion, while yet he whispered its reality to himself, in silent, despairing confession: "Ah, my God! How cold she must be when she can see any one look like that, and yet copy the expression as from a painted face upon the wall!"

Then, his own pride and indignation rising, he determined at once to know the truth; whether he held any place in her heart, or whether the picture was all, and he nothing.

Drawing a step nearer, as if to examine more closely, he seized a brush of paint and drew it over the face that had cost both him and Christine so much, and then turned and looked at her.