“I will take you abroad, Eugenia, if you will promise to be Sir Ralph’s wife.”
Eugenia had chosen her own path, and knew where it would lead; yet for very shame she would not show her thoughts to others.
“I can promise nothing,” she said. “Take me away.”
Three days afterward, Gerald Leigh learned that Eugenia had gone abroad with her aunt.
Although in his studio all day long, the sculptor did no work for weeks; at last he aroused himself, engaged a model and set to work with feverish energy. From morn to night he thumbed and pushed about the ductile clay. He laughed in a sort of bitter triumph. His hands had not lost their cunning. The work grew and grew apace until the clay was done with, and a fair white block of marble stood in the centre of the studio waiting to be hewn into the statue which was to be Gerald Leigh’s first high bid for fame.
CHAPTER IV.
It was early in May. The Academy had been open about a week, long enough for the newspaper critics to tell the public what it ought to admire. Strange to say, this year the critics were unanimous in bestowing their highest praises on a piece of statuary, and a great future for the sculptor was predicted.
No. 1460 in the catalogue appealed to no one by cheap sentiment or sensational treatment. It was but the lightly-draped figure of a beautiful girl; one in the first flush of womanhood. She was in the act of stepping hastily forward. Her arms were extended as if to welcome, perhaps embrace, some one who was coming towards her. Her face bore a smile of eager delight. The grace, the likeness, the life of the figure arrested each passer by. The fall of the drapery, the position of each well-rounded limb, conveyed the idea of rapid motion. It was indeed hard to believe that she was doomed to remain forever in one fixed attitude. The stock remark of the spectators was that in a minute they expected to see her at the other side of the room.
This statute bore no distinguishing title, but those persons who turned to their catalogues found, under the number and the artist’s name, a few words of poetry: