Even as he spoke he felt his blood warm within him, and flush his cheek. His hand trembled as he put it forth to touch and move the frame-work before him. He felt as if it were a living creature. His eye kindled, and he bent forward.
"There's something to be done with it yet," he said. "It's not a blunder, I'll swear!"
He was hot with eagerness and excitement. The thing had haunted him day and night for weeks. He had struggled to shake off its influence, but in vain. He had told himself that the temptation to go back to it and ponder over it was the working of a morbid taint in his blood. He had remembered the curse it had been, and had tried to think of that only; but it had come back to him again and again, and—here it was.
He spent an hour over it, and in the end his passionate eagerness had grown rather than diminished. He put his hand up to his forehead and brushed away drops of moisture, his throat was dry, and his eyes strained.
"There's something to be brought out of it yet," he said, as he had said before. "It can be done, I swear!"
The words had scarcely left his lips before he heard behind him a low, but sharp cry—a miserable ejaculation, half uttered.
He had not heard the door open, nor the entering footsteps; but he knew what the cry meant the moment he heard it. He turned about and saw his mother standing on the threshold. If he had been detected in the commission of a crime, he could not have felt a sharper pang than he did. He almost staggered against the wall and did not utter a word. For a moment they looked at each other in a dead silence. Each wore in the eyes of the other a new aspect. She pointed to the model.
"It has come back," she said. "I knew it would."
The young fellow turned and looked at it a little stupidly.
"I—didn't mean to hurt you with the sight of it," he said. "I took it out because—because——"