Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel

by Marie Van Vorst

He was softened. His emotions violently contradicted themselves, and he saw now that she had grown a little thinner and looked pale.

"Have you been ill? What a boor you must think me never to have returned!"

She was standing close to the pedestal and rested her hand on the support near his wooden tools. She wore a beautiful grey drees, such a one as only certain Parisian

hands can create. It fitted her to perfection, displaying her shape, and, where the fur opened at the neck, amongst the lace he saw the gleaming and flashing of a jewel whose value would have made a man rich. Already the air was sweet with the fragrance of the scent she used. She had been in grey when he had first seen her on the day of the unveiling of the monument. Fairfax passed his hand across his eyes, as though to brush away a vision which, like a mist, was still between them. He put his hand down over hers on the pedestal.

"I love you," he said very low. "That is the matter. That is the trouble. I love you. I want you to know it. I dare love you. I am perfectly penniless and I am glad of it. I want to owe everything to my art, to climb through the thorns to where I shall some day reach. I am proud of my poverty and of my emancipation from everything that others think is necessary to happiness. I am rude. I cannot help it. I shall never see you again. I ought not to speak to you in my barren room. I know that you are not free and that you are going to be married, but you must hear once what I have to tell you. I love you.... I love you."

She was as motionless as the grey study. He might himself have made and carved "the woman in her entirety," for she stood motionless before him.

"Tell Cedersholm," he said bitterly, "tell him that a poor sculptor, a struggler who lives to climb beyond him, who will some day climb beyond him, loves you."

The arrogance and pride of his words and her immobility affected him more than a reproof or even speech. He took her in his arms, and she was neither marble nor clay, but a woman there.

"Tell him," he murmured close to her cheek, "that I have kissed you and held you."

And here she said; "Hush!" almost inaudibly, and released herself. She was trembling. She put her hands to her eyes. "I shall tell him nothing. He is nothing to me. I sent him away when he first came, a fortnight ago. I shall never see Cedersholm again."