“I had given you up, Miss Montesquieu. I want you for this figure, but if you cannot keep faith with me—yes,” he said, as his visitor stepped toward him, drawing off her veil—“for this.”
He turned sharply then, as if influenced in some unaccountable way, and started back in horror and despair.
“Valentina!”
“Armstrong!” came in a low, passionate moan, as she flung herself upon his breast—“at last, at last!”
The palette and brushes dropped from his hands—he was but man—and she uttered a low sigh of content as his arms closed round her soft yielding form, and his lips joined hers in a long, passionate, clinging kiss.
Then reason mastered once more, and he thrust her from him.
“No, no,” he gasped; “for God’s sake, go! Why have you come?”
“A cold welcome,” she said, smiling. “I come to beg that you will grant his prayer.”
“I do not understand you.”
“My husband wrote begging you to reconsider your determination, and come to finish my portrait.”