Chapter Seventeen.
Another’s Love.
Four days had passed, and Armstrong had not left his place, but waited, hoping against hope, and at last sinking into a wild state of despair.
“I must have been mad,” he said again and again. “One false step leads to another, and I am going downward rapidly enough now.”
He smiled bitterly as he sat with his head resting upon his hand, feeling that he had driven his beautiful model away for ever, and vainly asking himself how it could be that so mad a passion had sprung up within him for a woman whose face he had never seen.
Then all at once he sprang to his feet, with his eyes flashing as he listened eagerly, and then a strange look of triumph began to glow in his countenance. “I must be more guarded,” he said to himself, “or she will take flight again:” and catching up palette and brush, he made a pretence of painting as he waited with his back to the door for the entrance of her whose step was heard ascending the stairs in company with Keren-Happuch. Then he heard the girl’s voice, and his heart sank like lead in doubt, for he felt that the model would have come up without being shown.
But the next moment he was full of hope as the door was opened, closed, and he heard the familiar rustle of the drapery, and the step across the floor.
He did not turn, but stood there with his heart beating violently, and a wild desire bidding him turn round quickly and snatch the veil from his models face. He was a coward, he told himself, not to have done so before. What did her anger matter? Had she not come back—penitent—friendly—