She went in ahead of him and turned the frame so that the face in the picture smiled down upon them in all of its luring loveliness. There was something pathetic in the girl's attitude now. She stood under the picture, facing Philip, and there was a tense eagerness in her eyes, a light that was almost supplication, a crying out of her soul to him in a breathless moment that seemed hovering between pain and joy. It was Jeanne, an older Jeanne, that looked from out of the picture, smiling, inviting admiration, bewildering hi her beauty; it was Jeanne, the child, waiting for him in flesh and blood to speak, her eyes big and dark, her breath coming quickly, her hands buried in the deep lace on her bosom. A low word came to Philip's lips, and then he laughed softly. It was a laugh, almost under his breath, which sweeps up now and then from a soul in a joy—an emotion—which is unutterable in words. But to Jeanne it was different. Her dark eyes grew hurt and wounded, two great tears ran down her paling cheeks, and suddenly she buried her face in her hands and with a sobbing cry turned from him, with her head bowed under the smiling face above.
"And you—you hate it, too!" she sobbed. "They all hate it—Pierre—father—all—all hate it. It must—it must be bad. They hate her—every one—but me. And—I love her so!"
Her slender form shook with sobs. For a moment Philip stood like one struck dumb. Then he sprang to her and caught her close in his arms.
"Jeanne—Jeanne—listen," he cried. "To-night I looked at that picture before I went to see your father, and I loved it because it is like you. Jeanne, my darling, I love you—I love you—"
She was panting against his breast. He covered her face with kisses. Her sweet lips were not turned from him, and there filled her eyes a sudden light that made him almost sob in his happiness.
"I love you, I love you," he repeated, again and again, and he could find no other words than those.
For an instant her arms clung about his shoulders, and then, suddenly, they strained against him, and she tore herself free, and, with a cry so pathetic that it seemed as though her heart had broken in that moment, she fled from him, and out of the room.
XVIII
Philip stood where Jeanne had left him, his arms half reaching out to the vacant door through which she had fled, his lips parted as if to call her name, and yet motionless, dumb. A moment before he was intoxicated by a joy that was almost madness. He had held Jeanne in his arms; he had looked into her eyes, filled with surrender under his caresses and his avowal of love. For a moment he had possessed her, and now he was alone. The cry that had wrung itself from her lips, breaking in upon his happiness like a blow, still rang in his ears, and there was something in the exquisite pain of it that left him in torment. Heart and soul, every drop of blood in him, had leaped in the joy of that glorious moment, when Jeanne's eyes and sweet lips had accepted his love, and her arms had clung about his shoulders. Now these things had been struck dead within him. He felt again the fierce pressure of Jeanne's arms as she had thrust him away, he saw the fright and torture that had leaped into her eyes as she sprang from him, as though his touch had suddenly become a sacrilege. He lowered his arms slowly, and went to the hall. It was empty. He heard no sound, and closed the door.