She would do it. With feverish impatience she threw off her rich dress and wrapped herself in a plain cloak. She put on the quietest hat she could find, stole down stairs, and was out of the house before second thoughts had time to bring irresolution. Her heart beat wildly. She hailed a cab and was driven to Nelson Studios. On the way she remembered it was an unlikely hour to find an artist in his studio, but, nevertheless, now she had set out, resolved to complete her journey.
She walked quickly to Gerald’s door. She knocked softly, but met with no response. She dared not wait longer outside. The pictured consequences of her rash act were assuming tremendous proportions in her brain. Another minute’s delay and she must leave the spot never to return. She turned the handle of the door and entered the room.
Now, Miss Herbert’s half-formed plan of action when she found herself face to face with her ill-treated lover, had been something like this—she would walk up to him and simply say, “Gerald, I am come.” The rest must be left to him, but she believed, in spite of her weakness and treachery, he would freely forgive her all.
Gerald was not in the studio. The gas was half-turned down, and the clay casts on the wall looked grim and spectral. But, if Gerald was not in the room it was still inhabited. On a low couch—a couch covered by a rich Oriental rug—lay a woman, fast asleep.
She crept across the room and gazed on the sleeper. Even by the dim gas-light she knew that she gazed on beauty before which her own must pale. The woman might have been some five years older than herself, and those wonderful charms were at their zenith. The rich, clear, warm color on the cheek, the long black lashes, the arched and perfect eyebrows, told of Southern lands. The full, voluptuous figure, the shapely, rounded arms, the red lips, the soft creamy neck—before these the heart of man would run as wax before a fire. Eugenia, seeking her lover, found this woman in her stead.
A bitter, scornful smile played on Miss Herbert’s lips as she gazed at the sleeper. Somehow that oval, sunny face seemed familiar to her. Well might it be. In London, Paris, everywhere, she had seen it in the shop windows. There were few people in France or England who had not heard the name of Mlle. Carlotta, singer, dancer, darling of opera-bouffe, whose adventures and amours were notorious, who had ruined more men than she could count on the fingers of her fair hands.
Eugenia recognized her, and her smile of scorn deepened. The sight of a half-emptied champagne bottle close to the sleeper, a half-smoked cigarette lying on the floor just as it had fallen from her fingers, added nothing to the contempt Miss Herbert’s smile expressed. Gathering her skirts together to avoid any chance of contamination by touch, she was preparing to leave the studio as noiselessly as she had entered it, when suddenly the sleeper awoke.
Awoke without any warning. Simply opened her splendid dark eyes, stared for half a second, then, with wonderful lightness and agility, sprang to her feet.
“Que faites vous la? Why are you here?” she cried.
Without a word Eugenia moved towards the door. Mlle. Carlotta was before her. She turned the key and placed her back against the door.