“I can't paint to-day,” he said, getting up from his easel.
“And why can't you paint?” The question seemed to him at first a stupid one, and then she showed a perception that surprised him. “Are you afraid the young lady you're engaged to might come and catch me sitting to you?”
The fear that this might happen had been floating in the back of his mind for the last half hour; he had kept Lizzie too long in the studio, and it was not improbable that the girls might knock at his door at any moment, and if they did it would be impossible for him not to answer. Triss would bark.
“Well,” she said, “I won't keep you any longer.”
“No, I assure you,” he said aloud, and within himself, “I'd give a sovereign if I could get her to the station without being seen.”
And he thought he had done so as he returned half an hour afterwards across the green. Maggie was waiting for him. “Come to ask me to dine at the Manor House,” he thought; but she told him that she knew all about his visitor, and, despite all Frank's efforts to pacify her she grew more violent, more excited until at last she told him she didn't want to see him any more, that he was to go away, that she gave him his liberty.
“What an excitable girl she is! I'll go there this evening and try to coax her out of her anger. I must try to explain to her that a painter must have models. If we were married we shouldn't have more than a thousand a year to live on at the outside—that is to say, if Mount Rorke and Brookes come to terms, which is not very likely, they might make up a thousand a year between them, that would not be enough for two, and I should have to work; and I couldn't work without a model. The thing is absurd! She'll have to learn that a model is absolutely necessary; we were bound to have a row over that model question, so it might as well come off now as later on, and we shall understand each other better when this has blown over. There is nothing, and never has been anything, between me and Lizzie—my conscience is clear on that score. How pretty she looked to-day—that pale brown hair, so soft and so full of colour. To-day was an unlucky day; I began by being unfortunate with my painting; I never made a worse drawing in my life, and the worst of it was that I did not see that my drawing was wrong until I had begun to paint.”
A remembrance of Maggie's gracefulness came dazzling and straining his imagination, and in sharp revulsion of desire he assailed Lizzie with angry and contemptuous memory. She was always in low company—was never happy out of it; it was part of her. How this man liked six dashes of bitters in his sherry, and the other would not drink whisky except in a thin glass.
As he was leaving the studio he received a letter from Maggie, and when he thought of the circumstances in which it was written, he grew genuinely alarmed, for there was no forgetting the seriousness of the letter, and she stated her reasons for the step she was taking without undue emphasis. In its severity and quiet determination the letter did not seem like her, and he suspected forgery, sisterly advice, paternal influence—a family conspiracy. There was but one thing to do. He looked through the various furniture for his hat; and with his head full of citations from the lives of artists illustrative of their conduct, he went to her. But Maggie would not see him.
“Miss Brookes,” the servant said, “is in her room and cannot see you, sir.”