A great burst of sobbing shook her. “Oh, life is so difficult!” He bent down beside her, ineffably pitiful.
“We are going to make it easier for one another,” he said, gently. His hair touched hers. She turned her tear-flecked face, and their lips met. “We are going to begin over again,” he murmured. She stifled her sobs like a soothed child, and sprang up with a smile struggling through rain-clouds.
“Yes, with you I can begin over again, Master,” and she looked into his face with her naïve, beseeching trustfulness.
“This is a new life already,” he said, touching her blouse. She gave a laugh of childish joy.
“Yes! yes! This is a new life—the past is dead—this is my neophyte’s robe. Ah, it changes one, this Paris, does it not? I am an artist, and you are my Master. It is you who have awakened me to Art! Oh, I knew this would happen. That wonderful old woman! She’s a fortune-teller in Bethnal Green—the Duchess of Portsdown gave me her address—and after you were so cold to me when I came to your studio in London, I went to see her. Such a queer, wrinkled hag, and such a dingy, wretched room, up such a dirty flight of stairs—oh, I was afraid! But she was marvellous! She knew I was a widow—that I had been married unhappily—that I was a fashionable lady—though I went in my oldest clothes, and hid my rings in my purse for fear of their being stolen. Oh! by-the-way, where have I put them?” He found them and she slipped them on. “And she said I should love again and be loved. You should have seen her wicked old eyes as she spoke of love—they were like live coals. And then she predicted that I should marry again and lead a long and happy life with a dark man, distinguished and rich, who should inspire me to a new faith. Isn’t it marvellous?” She took his hand and smoothed the wrist caressingly.
“It is you who have inspired me to a new faith,” he answered, tremulously. “It is you who have awakened me to Art. Do you know what happened to me this morning when I went to seek you out? I, too, was reborn.”
He told her the auspicious incident—how he had been photographed as part of the fresh young art-life.
She clapped her jewelled hands.
“It is providential—foreordained. We are to be happy.”
“Happy!” He shivered with sudden foreboding. “Another prophetess declared I was never to be happy,” he said, sadly. “To thirst, and to thirst, and never to quench my thirst!”