Therewith she drew herself up proudly, and, carrying her charming head high, looked bravely around the strange and somewhat sinister place. Noted the wide divans on either side the fireplace and the diminutive scarlet cane chair set on the hearth-rug; the five-fold red lacquer screen; the trophy of arms—swords, rapiers, simitars, daggers, and other such uncomfortably cutting, ripping, and stabbing tools—upon the chimney-breast above the mantelpiece. Noted, not without a shudder of disgust, the glass tank and its slimy swimming and crawling population; the tables loaded with books, materials and implements of the draftsman's craft; the model's platform; the array of portfolios, canvases, drawing-boards—surely the place had been very scrupulously swept and garnished against her coming! It was minutely, even rigidly, clean and neat. This pleased her as a pretty tribute of respect. Finally, her eyes sought the nearly life-size red-chalk drawing set on an easel in the center of the studio immediately beneath the electric light.
René Dax stood beside her. She tall, noticeably elegant in her short-waisted, long-coated, pale-gray, braided walking-dress. He reserved and weary in bearing, but very watchful and very intent.
"You observe my drawing?" he inquired softly. "I have been waiting for that—waiting for you to grasp the fact that there is nothing new, nothing extraordinary in your being here with me—you, and Mademoiselle Bette. For months now you are my companions all day and all night—yes, then very sensibly also. Look, I lie there upon the divan. I fold the red screen back—it is loot from the Imperial Palace at Peking, that screen. Grotesquely sanguinary scenes figure upon it. But I forget them and the entertainment they afford me.—I fold the screen back, I turn upon my side among the cushions and I look at you. I look until, on those nights when my will is active and yours in abeyance, or perhaps a little weak, you step off the paper and cross the room, there—between the platform and the long table—always carrying Mademoiselle Bette on your arm; and, coming close, you bend down over me. You never speak, neither do you touch me. But I cease to suffer. The tension of my nerves is relaxed. The hideous pain at the base of my skull, where the brain and spinal-cord form their junction, no longer tortures me. I am inexpressibly soothed. I become calm. I sleep."
Gabrielle St. Leger had grown very serious. For this small, sad human being to whom she proposed to minister and to mother had disconcertingly original and even consternating ways with it. Should she resent the said ways, soundly snubbing him? Or, making allowance for his ill-health and acknowledged eccentricity, parley with and humor him? To steer a wise course was difficult.
"I willingly believe your intention in making this drawing was not disloyal," she said, quietly. "Yet I cannot but be displeased. Before making it you should have asked my approval and obtained my consent."
"Which you would have refused?—No, I knew better than that. But dismiss the idea of disloyalty. Rise above paltry considerations of expediency and etiquette. You can do so if you choose. Accept the position in its gravity, in its permanent consequences both to me and to yourself. In making this drawing I thought not merely of the ease and relief I might obtain through it. I thought of you also. For I perceived the perversion which threatened you. I decided to intervene, to rescue you. I decided to co-operate with destiny, to interest myself in the evolution of your highest good. So now it amounts to no less than this—that your future and mine are inextricably conjoined, intermingled, incapable of separation henceforth."
"Gently, gently, my poor friend," Gabrielle said.
"Are you not then sorry for me?" he asked quickly, with very disarming and child-like pathos. "Is it a fraud, a heartless experiment, coming to-day to see me thus? Have you no real desire to console or bring me hope?"
"From my heart I pity and commiserate you," Gabrielle said.
"Then where is your logic, where is your reason? For I—I—René Dax—I, and my recovery, my welfare, constitute your highest good. I am your destiny. Your being here to-day regardless of etiquette, your stepping off the paper there upon the easel, crossing the room and bending over me at night, carrying the little maiden child, the flower of innocence, in your arms, these are at least a tacit admission of the truth of that."