"Yes, I'll go. And I won't bother you again. These rooms are yours. When I'm here, mine are there. Some day when I'm ready I'll get you a divorce. Then you can marry as you please. As for me," he finished passionately, "I'm done with marriage—done with it—you understand?"
And the door crashed between them.
Camilla stood for a moment, tense and breathless, staring wide-eyed at the pitiless door. Then the room went whirling and she caught at the chair at her desk and sank into it helplessly, one hand pressed against her breast. For a moment she could not think, could not see even. The brutality of his insults had driven her out of her bearings. Why he had not struck her she could not imagine, for it was in the character of the part he was playing. He had not given her a chance. He must have seen that she was trying to repair past damages and begin anew. A throb of self-pity that was almost a sob came into her throat. Tears gathered in her eyes and pattered on the desk before her. She did not notice them until she heard them fall, and then she dried her eyes abruptly as though in shame for a weakness. He did not want to begin anew. She could see it all clearly now. He was tired of her and caught at the easiest way to be rid of her, by putting her in the wrong. Her strength came quickly as she found the explanation, and she sat up rigidly in her chair, her face hot with shame and resentment. She deserved something better from him than this. All that was worst in her clamored for utterance.
With a quick movement of decision she reached forward for a pen and paper and wrote rapidly a scrawl, then rang the bell for her maid.
"Have this note mailed at once."
It was addressed to Cortland Bent.
CHAPTER XII
TEA CUPS AND MUSIC
Dropping in on Jack Perot meant being shot skyward for twelve stories in a Louis Sixteenth elevator operated by a magnificent person in white gloves and the uniform of a Prussian lieutenant. Perot's panelled door was no different from others in the corridor upstairs, except for its quaint bronze knocker, but the appearance of a man-servant in livery and the glimpse of soft tapestries and rare and curious furniture which one had on entering the small reception room gave notice that a person of more than ordinary culture and taste dwelt within. The studio of the painter itself was lofty, the great north window extending the full height of two stories of the building, while the apartment beyond, a library and dining room with steps leading above to the bedrooms, contained all the luxuries that the most exacting bachelor might require.
To arrive at the distinction of being a fashionable portrait painter one must have many qualifications. In the schools one must know how to draw and to paint from the model. In the fashionable studio one must know how to draw and paint—then discover how not to do either. If the nose of one's sitter is too long, one must know how to chop it off at the end; if the mouth is too wide, one must approximate it to the Greek proportions; eyes that squint must be made squintless and colorful; protruding ears must be reduced. Indeed, there is nothing that the beauty doctor professes to accomplish that the fashionable portrait painter must not do with his magic brush. He must make the lean spinster stout and the stout dowager lean; the freckled, spotless; the vulgar, elegant; the anæmic, rosy; his whole metier is to select agreeable characteristics and to present them so forcibly that the unpleasant ones may be forgotten, to paint people as they ought to be rather than as they are, to put women in silk who were meant for shoddy, and men in tailored coats who have grown up in shirt-sleeves.