And then—even as he raised a first glance to the statue—a pang of keen surprise shot through his heart. The face was changed. Something new had come into it. It was not his Rachel! With hand pressed upon his chilling heart he studied it with new understanding. He had known that it somewhat resembled Ruth, for Ruth indeed resembled Rachel—but that it was verily in every line and shadow a portrait of the living and not of the dead he now realized for the first time.
"The sculptor has deceived me!" he cried. "He loves Ruth and with the craft of a lover has wrought out his design deliberately and with cunning. He has carved the cold stone to the form of his own desire. How blind I have been."
In complete comprehension he addressed the statue: "Thee is but a symbol of this artist's love for another after all. Nicholas Asche was right. This sculptor under cover of my love—in pretending to work out my ideal—has betrayed me and bewitched Ruth."
Ruth, his constant sunny companion, the keeper, the almost second mother of his child, had been snared by the fowler! He no longer doubted it. He recalled the gladness with which she always accompanied him to the sculptor's studio and her silence and preoccupation on the homeward drive. She loved the artist. She was about to be taken away.
Something fierce and wild clutched at his throat and with a groan he fell upon the ground beneath the figure: "Oh, Ruth, Ruth! Am I to lose thee too?"
At this moment he forgot all else but the sweet girl who had become so necessary to his life. Truly, to lose all hope of her was to be doubly bereaved. "I am now most surely solitary," he mourned. "What will become of me hereafter? Who will care for my little son?"
While still he lay there, dark with despair and lax with weakness, Ruth and the sculptor came up the walk to the gate and saw his prostrate form. Ruth checked the sculptor's advance. "Let me go up to him alone," she said, and approached where Roger lay. She did not know the true cause of his grief, but she pitied him: "Do not grieve, Roger; they will not dare to touch the figure."
He looked up at her with a glance which was at once old and strange, but uttered no word of reply, only steadfastly regarded her; then his head dropped upon his arm and his body shook only with sobbing.
She spoke again: "Thee must not despair. There are quite as many for thee as there are against thee. All the young people are on thy side. No one will dare to harm the statue."
As they stood thus Conrad approached and said: "What does it matter? Come out from among these narrow folk. Ruth is to come out and be my wife. Why do you stay to be worried by the elders who——"