She walked across the room and stood before the portrait John Markham had painted of her. The face gazed out from its shadows, its eyes met hers for a moment, then looked through her and beyond, eyes which looked, yet saw not, eyes deep and inscrutable, seers of visions, bathed in memories which would not sink into oblivion. Her eyes he had painted carefully. For him it seemed the rest of the face had been a blank. The nose, the chin, were hers, and the mouth—the lips, a scarlet smudge of illusiveness. They were hers, too. He had had difficulty with her lips, painting and repainting them. They had puzzled him. "The eyes we are born with," he had said—how well she remembered it now! "The lips are what we make ourselves." At last he had painted them in quickly—almost brutally and let them be. They seemed to mock at her now—to contradict the meaning of the eyes—which would not, could not, smile.
Hermia had scoffed at this portrait because it was not "pretty." There was something bigger than mere prettiness here. He had painted the soul of her, reading with his art what had been hidden from the man, as he had strayed through the labyrinth of her thoughts viewing the blighted blossom of her girlhood and wifehood and the neglected garden of her maturity. As she viewed the portrait now in the light of time and event, she saw, more clearly than ever, her soul and body as Markham had seen it. He had painted her as he would have painted character—an old man or an old woman, searching for shadows rather than lights, seeking the anatomy of sorrow rather than that of joy—had made her the subject of a cool and not too flattering psychological investigation. Was this how he had always seen her? This far-looking, inscrutable, satiated woman of the world, who peered forth into the future, from the dull embers of the past—a being whose physical beauty was rather suggested than expressed—whose loveliness lay in what she might have been rather than in what she was? He had always thought of her thus?
She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Not, not always. She remembered now—he couldn't have painted her as he had painted others—as he had painted a while ago the portrait of Phyllis Van Vorst—carelessly, contemptuously. He had probed deeply—painted form his own deeps. They had been very close together in those hours, mentally, spiritually, and only the barrier she herself had raised prevented their physical nearness. That, too, she could have had?
A mist fell across the canvas and Hermia's vision interposed, rosy and careless, her braggart youth triumphant.
She turned, threw herself upon the couch and buried her head, her fingers clenched, in the pillows. She made no sound and lay so immovable that one might have thought she was sleeping. But her blood was coursing madly and her pulses throbbed a wrist and neck. She had been true to her better self—with Markham—and her idealism had brought her only this void of barren regret. Whichever way she looked into the past or into the future, the vista was empty; behind her only the echoes of voices and a grim shape or two; before her—vacancy. She had bared her soul to Markham, there in the Square, torn away the veil of her pride and let him know the truth. Why, God knew. She had been mad. She had believed the worst of Hermia and of him, and had offered herself to him that he might judge between them—her heart and Hermia's, her mind, her body and Hermia's. Was her own face no longer fair that he should have looked at her so curiously and turned away with Hermia's name on his lips, Hermia's image in his heart? A doubt had crept into her mind and lingered insidiously. Hermia innocent! She was beginning to believe it now. In spite of the damning facts she had discovered, the evidence of Madam Bordier and Monsieur Duchanel, of the peasant women at Tillières and of Pierre de Folligny, the testimony of Hermia's pale face at the shooting lodge at Alençon and of her confession which she had not thought of doubting, the belief had slowly gained force in her mind that Markham had not lied to her. She found confirmation of it in Hermia Challoner's disappearance in France, in her attitude toward Markham and in the announcement of her engagement to another man. Markham could not guess, as she did now, that this was only a ruse de femme, born of the access of timidity at the discovery of her indiscretion and the consciousness that she had gone too far with Markham, who must be punished for his share in her downfall. It seemed pitifully clear now.
Olga's bitterness choked and whelmed her. It seemed even worse that Hermia should be innocent. She dared not think of the picture she had made in Markham's mind when she had thrown herself into the scales that he might weigh their frailties and compare them. Hermia innocent! How Olga hated her for it, and for her youth and beauty. They mocked and derided the tender flame that she had nourished, which now glowed ineffectually as in another, a greater light. She hated Hermia for all the things that she herself was not.
Lucidity came to her slowly. After a long while she raised a disordered face and leaned her chin upon her hands, staring at the dying log. She had promised him not to speak. She could not. She had even promised to persuade De Folligny to silence. Had he mentioned the incident already? She did not know. He was not by nature a gossip, but Hermia had not been too tactful and it was a good story—the sanctity of which, upon the mind of a man of De Folligny's temperament, might not be impressive. She would keep her promise to Markham and persuade Pierre to silence. No one should know by word of mouth—
Olga started up, her eyes wide open, staring at the opposite wall, where there hung a colored print of a woodland scene by Morland, and a smile slowly grew at one end of her lips, a crooked smile, that might have been merely quizzical, had not the impression been unpleasantly modified by the narrowing eyes and the tiny wrinkle that suddenly grew between her brows.
"I will do it," she muttered. "It may be amusing."