“No, monsieur; go on. I am your slave for the time.”
He started at her words, and as much at her tone, which was as full of hauteur as if she were some princess. But now, instead of this driving him in very shame to continue his work, it only impressed him the more. There was a mystery about her and her ways. The almost insolent contempt with which she treated him made him angry, and his anger increased to rage as he fully realised how weak and mortal he was as man. He tried not to own it to himself, but he knew that a strange passion had developed itself within him, and with mingled pleasure and pain he felt that this beautiful woman could read him through and through, and that hour by hour her feelings toward him became more and more those of contempt.
He did not stop to reason, for he was rapidly becoming blind to everything but his unconquerable desire to see her face. There were moments when he felt ready to rage against himself for his weakness and, as he called it, folly; but all this was swept away, and at last, as the sitting went on and the model haughtily refused to leave the dais for a time to rest, he found himself asking whether there was not after all truth in the old legends, and whether, enraged by his shrinking from Lady Dellatoria’s passionate avowals, the author of all evil had not sent some beautiful demon to tempt him and show him how weak he was after all. It was maddening, and at last he threw down palette and brushes to begin striding up and down the room, carefully averting his eyes from his model, who stood there as motionless as if she were some lovely statue.
At last he returned to his canvas.
“You must be tired now,” he said hurriedly. “Rest for a while.”
“I’m not tired now,” she replied coldly, “if monsieur will continue.”
“I cannot paint to-day,” he said hoarsely. “You trouble me. What I have done is valueless.”
“I trouble monsieur?” she said coldly. “Am I not patient?—can I be more still?”
He made a mighty effort over self, and for the moment conquered. Seizing his brushes and palette, he began to paint once more, but in a reckless way, as if merely to keep himself occupied, but as he turned his eyes from his canvas from time to time to study the beautiful model, standing there in that imperious attitude, strange, mysterious, and weird, with the black enmasking above the graceful voluptuous figure, he lost more and more the self-command he had maintained.
For a few minutes he told himself that he was mistaken, that her eyes must be closed; but it was, he knew too well, a mere mental subterfuge: they were gleaming through that black network, and piercing him to the very soul.