He took her hand and pulled her to him.
“No! No! No!” she cried. “No! Good-bye! Good-bye!”
She turned away and was gone.
Unable to contain his agony, he flung himself on his bed and sobbed out his grief.
“She is mine!” he moaned. “She is mine, and she cannot take herself from me.”
And when his tears were shed he began to think of the other women who had come to him without love, so easily, so gratefully, some of them, and this little girl who loved him could tear herself away—at a fearful cost. He knew that. But if she could tear herself away, if she could say good-bye, what could she know of love?
[X
PARIS]
MENDEL was able to finish his portrait of Jacob and Golda, but only at the cost of painful and bitter labour. He was torn two ways: longing to finish it, yet dreading the end of it, for he could not see beyond it. Every picture he had painted had brought with it the certain knowledge that it would lead to a better, that he was advancing further on the road to art. But there was a finality about this picture. It was an end in itself. It was not like most of his work, one of a possible dozen or more. A certain stream of his feeling ended in it and then disappeared, leaving him without guide or direction.