“SHE PUT ON A LONG CLOAK.”
what her own heart had felt, and her own eyes had expressed, when she had painted that picture before her mirror, trusting in the complete disguise of the decided changes in features and coloring which she had made. She had painted the expression as faithfully as she could, knowing that no one who had never seen her completely off guard would recognize it. She felt now that if she should discover that there was a trace of possible identification in either features or expression, she could not endure it. Harold would think, and would have a right to think, that she had made capital out of her most sacred shame and sorrow; and he was the sort of man to whom that idea would be monstrous. She knew that she never could have painted it if she had had the least idea of exhibiting it; but when it was done, and she had shown it to Etienne to get his criticism on the technique, and he had been so plainly delighted with it, and urged her not to carry it any farther, but to exhibit it as it was, she had agreed to it for three reasons. One was to please her master, who was not very easily pleased; another was because she knew she could keep it secret by telling no one except the two people who already knew; and the third and decisive one was that it was a way suddenly opened to her of giving her message to the world impersonally. She felt a sort of exultation in the thought that in this way she could say: “Look in my face, and see. This is marriage!”
When Sonia got out of her carriage she dismissed it with the maid, and mounted the steps with a look of greater firmness and resolution than she really felt, for physically she was ill and weak. She knew, however, that she might meet with acquaintances here, and might attract the attention of strangers by being quite alone, and therefore she realized the necessity of calmness in her outward manner. Her face was partly hid by a veil, and she had managed to avoid the gaze of one or two people whom she had recognized as she made her way quickly to the room in which she knew that her picture was hung.
In spite of her preoccupation, it quickened her pulses a little to see that there was a small group of people in front of it, evidently talking about it. As she stood behind these, and looked full at the face on the canvas, which was looking full at her, a sudden sense of conscious power, the knowledge that she had created a thing of intrinsic character, came over her, and she could hardly realize that it was she who had done it.
There was certainly no trace of her feature and coloring in this picture, and yet she shrank back, and had an impulse to conceal herself, for what she saw before her was undoubtedly the picture of her soul. Her heart fluttered, and she felt herself beginning to tremble. Was she going to faint here, alone? A wild sense of helplessness seized her, and at the same moment she was conscious of a certain familiarity in the outline of a shoulder and arm between her and the picture. She glanced quickly up at the head of this man, and saw that it was Harold. A little sound—scarcely more than a stifled breath—escaped her, and he turned suddenly, just in time to go to her and take her arm in his steady, reassuring grasp, which seemed to nerve her soul as well as her body to make a desperate effort for self-control.
“You are ill. You should not have ventured out alone,” he said. (Oh, the strong, protecting voice; the firm, availing touch!) Then he led her to a seat, with some quiet words that seemed to put new power into her to endure and to resist.
“I must go home,” she said, rising as she felt her strength return. “I have been ill. I did not know how weak I was.”
“I will take you to your carriage,” he said; and without seeming to recognize the possibility of resistance, he drew her arm in his, and led her from the room and down the steps.
It came to her, suddenly, that her carriage was not there.
“I sent the carriage away,” she said. “I thought I would stay awhile, and see the pictures.”