The first of this large series of pictures was the one which Marsena liked least. It is true that Julia looked well in it, standing erect, with a proud, fine backward tilt to her dark face and a delicately formed white hand resting gracefully on the back of a chair. But it happened that in that chair was seated Lieut. Dwight Ransom, all spick and span in his new uniform, with his big gauntlets and sword hilt brought prominently forward, and with a kind of fatuous smile on his ruddy face, as if he felt the presence of those fair fingers on the chair-back, so teasingly close to his shoulder-strap.
Marsena, in truth, had a strong impulse to run a destroying thumbnail over the seated figure on this plate, when the action of the developer began to reveal its outlines under the faint yellow light in the dark-room. Of all the myriad pictures he had washed and drained and nursed in their wet growth over this tank, no other had ever stirred up in his breast such a swift and sharp hostility. He lavished the deadly cyanide upon that portion of the plate, too, with grim unction, and noted the results with a scornful curl on his lip. Like his partner downstairs, he was wondering what on earth possessed Miss Parmalee to take up with a Dwight Ransom. The frown was still on his brow when he opened the dark-room door. Then he started back, flushed red, and labored at an embarrassed smile. Miss Parmalee had left her place, and stood right in front of him, so near that he almost ran against her. She beamed confidently and reassuringly upon him.
"Oh, I want to come in and see you do all that," she exclaimed, with vivacity. "It didn't occur to me till after you'd shut the door, or I'd have asked to come in with you. I have the greatest curiosity about all these matters. Oh, it is all done? That's too bad! But you can make another one—and that I can see from the beginning. You know, I'm something of an artist myself; I've taken lessons for years—and this all interests me so much! No, Lieutenant!"—she called out from where she was standing just inside the open door, at sound of her companion's rising—"you stay where you are! There's going to be another, and it's such trouble to get you posed properly. Try and keep exactly as you were!"
Thus it happened that she stood very close to Marsena, as he took out another plate, flooded it with the sweet-smelling, pungent collodion, and, with furtive precautions against the light, lowered it down into the silver bath. Then he had to shut the door, and she was still there just beside him. He heard himself pretending to explain the processes of the films to her, but his mind was concentrated instead upon a suggestion of perfume which she had brought into the reeking little cupboard of a room, and which mingled languorously with the scents of ether and creosote in the air. He had known her by sight for but a couple of months; he had been introduced to her only a week or so ago, and that in the most casual way; yet, strange enough, he could feel his hand trembling as it perfunctorily moved the plate dipper up and down in the bath.
A gentle voice fell upon the darkness. "Do you know, Mr. Pulford," it murmured, "I felt sure that you were an artist, the very first time I saw you."
Marsena heaved a long sigh—a sigh with a tremulous catch in it, as where sorrow and sweet solace should meet. "I did start out to be one," he answered, "but I—I never amounted to anything at it. I tried for years, but I wasn't any good. I had to give it up—at last—and take to this instead."
He lifted the plate with caution, bent to look obliquely across its surface, and lowered it again. Then all at once he turned abruptly and faced her. They were so close to each other that even in the obscure gloom she caught the sudden flash of resolution in his eyes.
"I'll tell you what I never told any other living soul," he said, beginning with husky eagerness, but lapsing now into grave deliberation of emphasis: "I hate—this—like pizen!"
In the silence which followed, Marsena mechanically took the plate from the bath, fastened it in the holder, and stepped to the door. Then he halted, to prolong for one little instant this tender spell of magic which had stolen over him. Here, in the close darkness beside him, was a sorceress, a siren, who had at a glance read his sore heart's deepest secret—at a word drawn the confession of his maimed and embittered pride. It was like being shut up with an angel, who was also a beautiful woman. Oh, the wonder of it! Broad sunlit landscapes with Italian skies seemed to be forming themselves before his mind's eye; his soul sang songs within him. He very nearly dropped the plate-holder.
The soft, hovering, half touch of a hand upon his arm, the cool, restful tones of the voice in the darkness, came to complete the witchery.