“No!” he cried aloud, “she would not go to the man who treats her with silence and—”
“Did you call me, mon ami?” said a voice at the door.
“No, old fellow; I’m coming,” cried Dale; and then to himself, as one who has mastered self. “That is all past and gone—in ashes to the winds. Now for work.”
Chapter Eight.
In the Scales.
“Nothing like hard work. I’ve conquered,” said Dale to himself one morning, as he sat toiling away at his big picture, whose minor portions were standing out definitely round the principal figure, which had been painted in again and again, but always to be cleaned off in disgust, and was now merely sketched in charcoal.
He was waiting patiently for the model who was to attend to stand for that figure—the figure only—for Pacey’s idea had taken hold, and, though he could not dwell upon it without a nervous feeling of dread, and asking himself whether it was not dangerous ground to take, he had determined, as he thought, to prove his strength, to endeavour to idealise the Contessa’s features for his Juno. It was the very countenance he wished to produce, and if he could have caught her expression and fixed it upon canvas that day when the Conte entered, so evidently by preconcerted arrangement with Lady Grayson, the picture would have been perfect.
“It need not be like her,” he argued; “it is the expression I want.”