“Getting better, I hear. Fact is, I met the surgeon who is attending her at the society. But never mind them. I shall have done all I want here in less than a fortnight. That is when the Spartania sails, so be ready, and let’s get back.”
“Yes, dear,” said Cornel quietly, “I shall have finished my task, too.”
Two years later Armstrong Dale went back home, but only for a visit, for his fame was increasing rapidly, and he had more commissions than he could undertake. He wanted help and counsel, and he brought them back with him, for he did not return to London alone.
Four more years had elapsed, and that season there was a great deal of talk about Armstrong Dale’s big picture at the Academy. The press had praised it unanimously; society had endorsed the critics’ words; and it was sold for a heavy sum. But though he was importuned to take portraits, Armstrong sternly refused.
The picture that year was a fanciful subject of a beautiful woman reclining upon a tiger skin, with a huge cluster of orange maculated lilies thrust, as if by careless hands, into a magnificent repoussé copper vase. And as he painted it, he had turned to his wife one day, and said, “I can’t help it, Little Heart; it will come so like her. I shall paint it out and give up.”
Then he seized a cloth to pass across the fresh paint, but Cornel caught his wrist.
“Absurd!” she cried. “That magnificent piece of work—and because of a fancied resemblance?”
“Then you do not mind?” he said sadly.
Palette, brushes, and mahlstick were slowly and softly taken from his hands, which were drawn round Cornel’s neck, and she nestled closely in his breast.
“Mind? No,” she said gently; “let the dead past bury its dead.”