“Then I shall expect you. Thank you for your patient attention. Another time, pray rest when you are fatigued.”
She bowed in a stately manner, and pointed to the door which he had locked, and as soon as it was unfastened, passed out without turning her head.
Dale stood working at his sketch for another hour, and then turned it to the wall, to light his pipe and begin thinking about his model now that he had ceased work.
It was quite mysterious her insisting upon keeping her face covered. Why was it? Had she some terrible disfigurement, or was it from modesty? Possibly. Her manner was perfect. She was evidently miserably poor, and seemed eager to gain money to support her father—he had quite grasped that—and the poor creature being compelled to stoop to this way of earning a livelihood, she naturally desired to remain incognito. Well, it was creditable, he thought; but the first idea came back. She was evidently a woman gifted by nature with an exquisite form, and at the same time, by accident or disease, her countenance was so marked that she was afraid of her clients being repelled, and declining to engage her.
“Ah, well, signora, the mysterious Italienne, I will respect your desire to remain incog. It is nothing to me,” said Dale, half aloud, as he sent a cloud of blue vapour upward. “I may congratulate myself, though, on my good fortune in finding such a model.”
He sat back in his chair, dwelling upon the figure, and then went twice over to his canvas, to compare his work with the figure in his imagination, and returned to his seat more than satisfied.
Then he put work aside, and began thinking of home, and the sweet sad face he could always picture, with its eyes gazing reproachfully at him.
“Yes,” he said, with a sigh; “poor darling! It was fate. I was not worthy of her. When the misery and disappointment have died away—Heaven bless her!—she will love and be the wife of a better man, unless—unless some day she forgives me—some day when I have told her all.”
The next morning he was all in readiness and expectant. The light was good for painting, and his mind was more at rest, for there was no letter from the Contessa. But for a few moments he was angry with himself on finding that he felt a kind of pique at the readiness with which she had given up writing her reproaches. But that passed off, and as the time was near for the coming of the model, he drew the easel forward to see whether, after the night’s rest, he felt as satisfied with his work as he did the previous day. But he hardly glanced at the figure, for the eyes were gazing at him in a terribly life-like way, full of scorn and reproach; and as he met them, literally fascinated by the work to which his imagination lent so much reality, he shuddered and asked himself whether he had after all been able to free himself from the glamour—dragged himself loose from the spell of the Circe who had so suddenly altered the even course of his life.
He was still contemplating the face, and wondering whether others would look upon it with the fascination it exercised upon him, when Keren-Happuch came up to announce the arrival of his model, who entered directly after, to look at him sharply through her thick veil.