But they must fight the battle together. That was the Alpha and Omega of her thoughts. He had not yet measured the height and depth of her love. Let her only make this clear to him, and he must give in; if not to-night, at least before his leave was up. Years of living with Michael had accustomed her to getting her own way in all essentials. But she had yet to try her strength against the bed-rock of Scottish granite underlying her husband's surface quietness; against the terrible singleness of mind that cannot—even for Love's dear sake—view harsh facts through a medium of rosy mist.
While she stood thus, trying to see into the darkness that shrouds the coming day, even the coming hour, from inquisitive eyes, the drifting vapour all about her paled from grey to white, from white to a gossamer film; and finally uprose from the valley, like a spotless scroll rolled backward by an unseen Hand, giving gradually to view a multitude of mountains, newly washed; mountains that glowed with richest tints of purple and amethyst and rose, in the level light of afternoon. And Quita, being in a fanciful mood, saw in this "good gigantic smile" of the rain-soaked earth a happy omen; an assurance that so would the mists rise from her own life, and the sunlight prevail. A sudden recollection of the buffalo "Mèla" set her smiling.
"How idiotic I am!" she reproved herself gently;—we are apt to be gentle with our own foolishness; it never seems quite so egregious as other people's—"I might be a girl of twenty, after my first proposal, instead of nearly thirty, and a nominal wife of five years' standing."
She drew out her watch. Four o'clock. Three mortal hours before she could even think of starting. There was nothing for it but to have recourse to her easel, faute de mieux. The last words waked her normal self. They were no less than heresy, treason to her art. Michael would have disowned her, had she spoken them in his hearing! Was Art, then, so small a thing when compared with this overwhelming force of Love, which dwarfed all thoughts and acts that did not minister to its needs? It was too early days as yet to answer so large a question. She simply knew that since that first kiss had set her on the threshold of an unexplored world, Art had lost its grip; that, for the present, at all events, she did not want to paint, but to love and live!
"Pity Michael isn't here to scold me," she thought, as she turned back into the house.
But Michael was away at Jundraghat, the Rajah's summer Residency. His finished portrait had been sent off that afternoon; and he had followed it, for the pleasure of hearing Elsie's thanks and praise in person.
The little room, robbed of the picture that had been its chief ornament for many weeks, looked empty, desolate; and with a restless sigh she went over to her easel. This also was empty. Her study of a hill girl,—begun half jestingly, as a contrast to Michael's flower of Western Maidenhood,—had so grown and beautified under her hands, that it had been voted worthy of a Home Exhibition; and its case now stood against the wall, awaiting mail day. Three or four unfinished pictures leaned against the easel. Quita looked through them, aimlessly, in search of a congenial subject. But they were chiefly landscape studies; and in her present mood Nature seemed a little tame, and bloodless. Her heart cried out for something human, and she wished that Michael would come back.
Then, like a ray of light, came the required inspiration, satisfying at once the counter-claims of Art and Love. She sought out a fresh canvas, set it on the easel, and plunged, forthwith, into a rough head-and-shoulder study of her husband.
Now time no longer stood still. Michael was forgotten. And, while her brush sped hither and thither, she crooned low and clear, the song that had proved the open sesame to her cave of enchantment.
And, in the meantime, Michael—the forgotten—was manipulating a new and delicate complication in a fashion peculiarly his own.