It was this struggle for existence under adverse circumstances that first turned the thoughts of the young man to authorship.
“I shall have to give up my position on the paper; I shall have to find work that I can do on the wing, as it were,” he thought, drearily; and his first clever sketch was penned en route to a distant western city, Camille being left behind until such time as her well-paid detective should hunt him down.
This time his escape and his disguise were so cleverly planned that his fair foe was baffled several years. In the meantime, a publisher was found in the editor of a first-class magazine. The public was pleased with the firstling of his eager pen. He achieved success and a flattering offer—all under a nom de plume. At last he had found his vocation.
The unhappy mother, parted now for three long years from her exiled son, heard with delight the news of her idol’s success. She had broken with Camille long ago. Indeed, the heartless woman had coolly dropped her when there was no more comfort to be had out of her. So Norman wrote:
“Mother you must forgive me for deserting you so long. Indeed, there was no other way. I shall try now to make a little home where you can come to me and we can be peaceful, if not happy, after our old fashion. You and I have both had so bitter a lesson that I do not believe you will ever betray me again to Camille.”
Mrs. de Vere was quite sure of that. However much she might pity Camille and feel sorry for her, she resolved that she would not interfere again between the unhappy pair. Within a short time she journeyed West to a simple little home where her son was essaying his first ambitious work—a serial for the magazine which had published his sketches for a year past.
Meanwhile, Camille’s detective had been thrown off the track by a clever little ruse of Norman, and he reported to his employer that her husband had sailed for Europe. Thither went Camille and her maid by the next steamer. She remained several years, and strangely enough on her return to America the man she sought had only very recently gone abroad with his mother. Fate seemed to be playing at cross-purposes with the imperious beauty. For five years she had not looked on the face of the man she now loved and hated almost equally in her resentful wrath, for Norman did not return for two years, and eleven years had now passed since the dark days of her terrible sin, when sentence of doom had been passed upon her by her outraged husband.
“Eleven years! My God! only to think of it, Finette! Kept at bay, scorned, despised for eleven years by the man I once had at my feet! And I am an old woman now. Old in spite of the fire that burns in my veins—old in spite of this passionate heart!”
“Non, non, miladi—you look as young as you did ten years ago. Dat artiste in Paree she is one clever mistress of her art. Your skin is smooth and fine as a baby’s; the gray is gone out of your hair—”