"I am sorry!" she said, at last—"I thought—I hoped—you might be proud of my work, Amadis! I was planning it all for that! You see"—she hesitated—"I learned so much from the Sieur Amadis de Jocelin—the brother of your ancestor!—that I have been thinking all the time how I could best show you that I was worthy of his teaching. The world—or the public—you know the things they say of me—but I do not want their praise. I believe I could do something really great if YOU cared!—for now it is only to please you that I live."
A sense of shame stung him at this simple avowal.
"Nonsense!" he said, almost brusquely—"You have a thousand other things to live for—you must not think of pleasing me only. Besides I'm not very—keen on literature,—I'm a painter."
"Surely painting owes something to literature?" she queried—"We should not have had all the wonderful Madonnas and Christs of the old masters if there had been no Bible!"
"True!—but perhaps we could have done without them!" he said, lightly—"I'm not at all sure that painting would not have got on just as well without literature at all. There is always nature to study—sky, sea, landscape and the faces of lovely women and children,—quite enough for any man. Where is Lord Blythe now?"
"In Italy," she replied—"He will be away some months."
She spoke with constraint. Her heart was heavy—the hopes and ambitions she had cherished of adding lustre to her fame for the joy and pride of her lover, seemed all crushed at one blow. She was too young and inexperienced to realise the fact that few men are proud of any woman's success, especially in the arts. Their attitude is one of amused tolerance when it is not of actual sex-jealousy or contempt. Least of all can any man endure that the woman for whom he has a short spell of passionate fancy should be considered notable, or in an intellectual sense superior to himself. He likes her to be dependent on him alone for her happiness,—for such poor crumbs of comfort he is pleased to give her when the heat of his first passion has cooled,—but he is not altogether pleased when she has sufficient intelligent perception to see through his web of subterfuge and break away clear of the entangling threads, standing free as a goddess on the height of her own independent attainment. Innocent's idea of love was the angelic dream of truth and everlastingness set forth by poets, whose sweet singing deludes themselves and others,—she was ready to devote all the unique powers of her mind and brain to the perfecting of herself for her lover's delight. She wished to be beautiful, brilliant, renowned and admired, simply that he might take joy in knowing that this beautiful, brilliant, renowned and admired creature was HIS, body and soul—existing solely for him and content to live only so long as he lived, to work only so long as he worked,—to be nothing apart from his love, but to be everything he could desire or command while his love environed her. She thought of the eternal union of souls,—while he had no belief in the soul at all, his half French materialism persuading him that there was nothing eternal. And like all men of his type he estimated her tenderness for him, her clinging arms, and the lingering passion of her caresses, to be chiefly the outflow of pleased vanity—the kittenish satisfaction of being stroked and fondled—the sense of her own sex-attractiveness,—but of anything deep and closely rooted in the centre of a more than usually sensitive nature he had not the faintest conception, taking it for granted that all women, even clever ones, were more or less alike, easily consoled by new millinery when lovers failed.
Sometimes, during the progress of their secret amour, a thrill of uneasiness and fear ran coldly through her veins—a wondering doubt which she repelled with indignation whenever it suggested itself. Amadis de Jocelyn was and must be the very embodiment of loyalty and honour to the woman he loved!—it could not be otherwise. His tenderness was ardent,—his passion fiery and eager,—yet she wondered—timidly and with deep humiliation in herself for daring to think so far—why, if he loved her so much as he declared, did he not ask her to be his wife? She supposed he would do so,—though she had heard him depreciate marriage as a necessary evil. Evidently he had his own good reasons for deferring the fateful question. Meanwhile she made a little picture-gallery of ideal joys in her brain,—and one of her fancies was that when she married her Amadis she would ask Robin Clifford to let her buy Briar Farm.
"He could paint well there!" she thought, happily, already seeing in her mind's eye the "Great Hall" transformed into an artist's studio—"and I almost think I could carry on the farm—Priscilla would help me,—and we know just how Dad liked things to be done—if—if Robin went away. And the master of the house would again be a true Jocelyn!"
The whole plan seemed perfectly natural and feasible. Only one obstacle presented itself like a dark shadow on the brightness of her dream—and that was her own "base" birth. The brand of illegitimacy was upon her,—and whereas once she alone had known what she judged to be a shameful secret, now two others shared it with her—Miss Leigh and Lord Blythe. They would never betray it—no!—but they could not alter what unkind fate had done for her. This was one reason why she was glad that Amadis de Jocelyn had not as yet spoken of their marriage.