As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella. But somehow no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set her heart upon. Moreover, as he reflected upon receipt of her assured little missive commissioning him to paint her portrait, he would be obliged to return to England sooner or later, and by now he felt he had himself sufficiently in hand to risk the contingency of a possible meeting with Magda. But he had hardly counted upon finding himself actually under the same roof with her for days together, and, although outwardly unmoved, he was somewhat taken aback when halfway through his visit to the Hermitage, Lady Arabella cheerfully communicated the prospect to him.
He could read between the lines and guess her purpose, and it afforded him a certain sardonic amusement. It was like Lady Arabella’s temerity, he reflected! No other woman, knowing as much of the special circumstances as she did, would have ventured so far.
Well, she would soon realise that her attempt to bridge matters over between himself and her god-daughter was foredoomed to failure. He would never trust Magda, or any other woman, again. From the moment he had left England he had made up his mind that henceforth no woman should have any place in his life, and certain subsequent occurrences had confirmed him in this determination.
At the same time he was not going to run away. He would stay and face it out. He would remain at the Hermitage until he had finished the portrait upon which he was at work, and then he would pack up and depart.
So that when finally he and Magda met in the sun-filled South Parlour at the Hermitage each of them was prepared to treat the other with a cool detachment.
But Magda found it difficult to maintain her pose after her first glance at his face. The alteration in it sent a swift pang to her heart. It had hardened—hardened into lines of a grim self-control that spoke of long mental conflict. The mouth, too, had learned to close in a new line of bitterness, and in the grey eyes as they rested on her there lay a certain cynical indifference which seemed to set her as far away from him as the north is from the south. She realised that the gulf between them was almost as wide and impassable as though he were in very truth the Spanish dancer’s husband. This man proposed to give her neither love nor forgiveness. Only the feminine instinct of pride—the pride of woman who must be sought and never the seeker—carried her through the ordeal of the first meeting. Nor did he seek to make it easier for her.
“It is a long time since you were in England,” she remarked after the first interchange of civilities.
“Very long,” agreed Quarrington politely. “It would probably have been still longer if Lady Arabella had not tempted me. But her portrait was too interesting a commission to refuse.”
“It sounds banal to say how good I think it. You never paint anything that isn’t good, do you?”
“I paint what I see.”