His parting words were an injunction to Joan that she should not go out again during the hot hours, but endeavor to obtain the rest of which she had been deprived during the night.
"Good-by, dear," she said. "You may feel quite certain that when next we meet I shall be a different person altogether to the pallid creature whom you met at breakfast this morning."
Alec was still conscious of some strange detachment in her words. His earlier feeling that she was acting a part came back with renewed force; but he again attributed it to the reaction that comes to highly strung natures after a surfeit of excitement in the midst of a new and difficult environment.
He kissed her tenderly, and Joan seemed to be on the verge of tears. He was puzzled; but thought it best to refrain from comment. "Poor girl!" he said to himself. "She feels it hard to be surrounded by people who are all strangers, and mostly shut off by the barrier of language."
But he was in no sense alarmed. He left the palace convinced that a few hours of repose would bring back the color to her cheeks and the natural buoyancy to her manner. Then he meant to chaff her about her distracted air; for Joan was no neurotic subject, and she herself would be the first to laugh at the nervous fit of the morning.
Poluski, hard at work at his frescoes since an early hour, and grudgingly snatching a hasty meal at midday, was surprised when Joan came to him after the King's departure and told him that she meant to finish her picture that afternoon. He made no comment, however, indeed he was glad of her company, and the two drove away together in the capacious closed carriage that brought them to and fro between cathedral and palace. During their working hours, they refused to be hampered by the presence of servants. An old Greek, who acted as caretaker, took charge of canvases, easels, paintboxes, and other utensils of the painter's craft, and he came out gleefully from his lodge as soon as their vehicle rumbled under the deep arch of the outer porch.
Usually, Joan had a word and a smile for him, though the extent of her Greek conversation was a phrase or two learned from Felix; but to-day she hardly seemed to see him, and lost not a moment in settling down to work. She had not much to do; in fact, so far as Felix took note of her action, after adjusting the canvas and mixing some colors on the palette, she sat idle for a long time, and even then occupied herself with an unnecessary deepening of tints in the picture, which already displayed an amazing resemblance to its stilted and highly colored prototype.
At last she spoke, and Felix, perched on a platform above her head, was almost startled by the sorrow laden cadence of her voice.
"I did not really come here to-day to paint," she said. "The picture is finished; my work in Delgratz is ended. You and Pauline are the only two people in the world whom I can trust, and I have brought you here, Felix, to tell you that I am leaving Delgratz to-night."
The hunchback slid down from the little scaffolding he had constructed to enable him to survey the large area covered by the frescoes. "I suppose I have understood what you said," he cried. "It is impossible to focus one's thoughts properly on the spoken word when a huge dome adds vibrations of its own, and I admit that I am invariably irritated myself when I state a remarkable fact with the utmost plainness and people pretend to be either deaf or dull of comprehension."