He loved his art, but the money was no object to him. Fortune had already showered her golden favors on him in lavish measure. He could not be tempted to remain.
"No, mother, I can not stay," he answered, sadly, when she pleaded with him. "I must get away as soon as this divorce business is settled. That will be soon—in a week or so, my lawyers tell me. Then I will go abroad and try to live down this unpleasant notoriety. You do not blame me, mother?"
She sighed, but answered bravely:
"No; but it will be very lonely, my son."
"You will have my brother, his wife and little ones to cheer you," he said, moved to the heart by her tears. He knew well that he was her favorite son.
He kissed her, and went to his own room, wrote some letters, and then went with his mother for a drive. At night he felt as if the day had been a month long. Oh, how cruel it was, this love that mastered him in spite of his pride!
"You may rouse your pride, you may use your reason,
And seem for a space to slay Love so;
But all in his own good time and season
It will rise and follow where'er you go."
He threw himself down, dressed, on a couch in the luxurious room, and gave himself up to bitter-sweet memories of the girl he loved so hopelessly, living over in his thoughts every time he had met her until now, when her dark eyes had made shipwreck of his life. Time passed unnoted, although the tiny French clock had tinkled musically the midnight hour.
What a picture of manly beauty he made, lying there with half-shut eyes on the rich couch with its Oriental draperies. The gas-light, half-turned down, cast weird shadows all about the room. In the little sleeping-room beyond, seen through the half-drawn portière, all was dark and still. Did a white, desperate face with gleaming eyes peer out of that gloom upon the young man resting there in his velvet dressing-gown, one shapely hand tossed up over his brown curly head, the dark, curly lashes drooping downward to the pale cheek?
Yes, he was well worth looking at, this gifted young actor, this genius who at barely twenty-five had scored such dazzling successes in the dramatic world, and written his name up high upon the scroll of fame. It was no wonder that women raved over his beauty and his genius, and that they filled his daily mail with love letters that he flung into the fire after one contemptuous glance.