Elsa looked after her as she went out. Then she looked around the room and was seized with panic.
"Mimi! Mimi!" she called out.
The model did not return. Elsa seized her hat and fled, just as Millar entered from the adjoining room. His chuckle of Satanic amusement reached her as she hurried from the house.
CHAPTER XII
Millar's sardonic face was wreathed in smiles as he looked after the two young girls, each of whom carried from his hateful presence a bruised heart.
With Mimi it was the fate of a child of the underworld—something to which she was pathetically resigned. With her there was no struggle. She knew that when she ceased to charm she must go her way and find another man; a master rather than a sweetheart.
Elsa could not have told herself what fear made her fly from the studio after Mimi, but she feared that she was also doomed to give up the hope of her heart. It was her first cruel disappointment, but Mimi had made her see that she was beaten, and, in spite of her earlier resolution to fight, she saw that fighting would bring only unhappiness. She hurried to her waiting carriage and was driven home, where she locked herself in her room to weep alone.
And Millar, the sinister being, ever at hand with his insidiously evil suggestions, chuckled as he watched them go. He threw himself into a chair and rang the bell for Heinrich. The old servant entered rebelliously, but, trained to habits of obedience, he could not give expression to his feeling of hatred and distrust of his master's strange visitor. As for Millar, he even seemed to find something amusing in the old man's obvious aversion.