"No, only unhappy. Graham, why did you not come for me to-day? I waited for you all the afternoon."
"Did I not tell you, dear, that I was very busy? I have begun a new picture. I quite forgot my engagement with you,--I am very sorry," he answered, puzzled at her emotion.
"Then it is your picture that is my rival. I hate it, I hate it! I never want to see it!
"Millicent, what do you mean?"
Her only answer was to lay her aching head upon his breast, to twine her arms about him, and to sob out incoherent words of love and grief, all of which puzzled and wearied him. He soothed her tenderly; and when they parted there was a smile upon her lips, though her breast still trembled with the slow after-waves of a grief which shook her whole being. Graham, unnerved by the tempest which he had all unwittingly aroused, reached his tower in an excited and irritable frame of mind. The first thing that met his eyes was the picture of the lovers lying at the foot of the easel. He picked it up, placed it on the table before him, and long and critically surveyed his work.
"I painted better than I knew," he sighed. "Yes, thus it is that we stand toward each other, man and woman, and ever shall stand,--the man looking out beyond, above, the woman, and she finding her utmost limit of self-projection in him. Alas and alas!" He placed the painting with its face toward the wall, and with a moody brow turned to his new sketch.
"Bah, I can do nothing, see nothing in that picture; I have been too rudely summoned back to earth, to the little griefs of humanity, by a woman's tears. I was never meant for it, I cannot bear it." So ran his thoughts impatiently. He had been living in the passionless perfection of art, and had been suddenly recalled by a little creature, full of small human feelings, to this narrow world. Nettled and unstrung, he threw himself upon his hard bed, to dream of Millicent,--a happy dream, in which she knelt before him, acknowledging her fault, pleading his forgiveness; a dream of sweet reconciliation, wherein was memory of that hour among the redwoods, of that mystic soul-embrace but once known to him his whole life through. He awoke refreshed and strengthened, with a love-song on his lips tender as that of the mourning dove. Sundown showed him again at his easel after a long day's work; but that evening Millicent listened in vain for the patter of Tasso's hoofs among the softly rustling autumn leaves.
In the week which followed Graham did not venture to see Millicent again, fearing her disturbing influence on his work. He sent her every day by his faithful henchman some little memento. One morning it was a quick sketch of the sunset of the previous night. Another day it was a bunch of pretty brown quails, the result of an hour's shooting. Once she found hung upon her window-ledge a garland of dewy red roses; and easily guessed what strong, light figure had swung itself up the piazza post, and over the trellis-work, to lay this offering before her curtained window.
Henry Deering, passing by the piazza on the night the lovers had parted, heard the sound of weeping. In the days that followed, he noticed Millicent's reddened eyes and restless mood. He felt sure that some misunderstanding had arisen between them; and as the days passed, and Graham failed to appear, he began to believe that the breach was a serious one. In the old days he had loved Graham as a brother; but in the last months his affection had grown cold, and held a weak place in his heart, from whence jealousy was fast banishing it. Now that he believed his old friend to have grieved the woman they both loved, a feeling of antipathy and an undefined distrust possessed him.
After the long day's work it was his custom to sit for an hour or so upon the piazza beneath Millicent's window, watching the beam of light which shone through her closed blinds until it was extinguished. One night, as he sat alone, the drowsy humming of the insects soothed him into a light sleep. When he awoke with a start, the moon, which had not before been visible, was high in the heavens. As he was about to go in-doors he heard a footstep on the path outside the house. He remained motionless in his chair, resolved to see who was abroad so late. The footsteps were uncertain and stealthy. The person first approached the house, and then retreated to the turf, where the steps were hardly audible. Deering stepped lightly to the edge of the piazza and peered through the honeysuckle screen. At a distance of twenty feet from him stood a man looking up at the house, at Millicent's window. His face was hidden by a muffler and a broad hat pulled low over the brows. Deering drew his revolver and cocked it. The click of the lock evidently reached the intruder's ears, for he turned and fled toward the orchard. Deering sprang from the piazza, and shouting, "Who are you? Stop, or I 'll fire!" ran down the path. The fugitive neither answered nor slackened his pace. Deering fired, aiming low down; but the ball whistled by the man and buried itself in the heart of a peach-tree. In the close shrubbery which surrounded the orchard Deering missed his man; and three minutes later he heard the swift tramp of a pair of horses on the path which led to the high-road. He ran to the stable. Nothing there but the mules and old Sphinx; his own fleet mare and Millicent's thorough-bred were grazing in the pasture. He slipped a bridle over the old mustang's head, and sprang on his back without waiting for a saddle. By the time he reached the highway the riders were out of sight, and the echo of the distant hoof-beats reached his ears. Pursuit was useless; they were well mounted; and Sphinx had gone dead lame the day before. The young man listened to the faint sound of the hoofs until it died in the silent night. Then he dismounted and examined the road. There were the traces of two horses. As he looked closely at the impressions left on the thick dust, he saw that only one of the horses had carried a rider; the other had been led.