Eugénie looked bewildered.
'A hexecution, ma'am,' whispered the woman as she led the way.
'Oh!' It was a cry of distress, checked by the sight of Fenwick, who stood in the door of his studio.
'I am sorry you were kept waiting,' he said, hoarsely.
She made some commonplace reply, and they shook hands. Mrs. Flint looked at them curiously, and withdrew again into the back premises.
Fenwick turned and walked in front of Eugénie towards the table from which he had risen. She looked at him in sudden horror—arrested—the words she had come to speak stifled on her lips. Then a quick impulse made her shut the door behind her. He turned again, bewildered, and raised his hand to his head.
'My God!' he said, in a low voice; 'I oughtn't to have let you come in here. Go away—please go away.'
Then she saw him totter backward, raise an overcoat which hung across the back of a chair, and throw it over something lying on the table. Terror possessed her; his aspect was so ghastly, his movements so strange. She flew to him, and took his hand in both hers.
'No, no—don't send me away! My friend—my dear friend—listen to me.
You look so ill—you've been in trouble! If I'd only known!
But I've thought of you always—I've prayed for you. And
listen—listen!—I've brought you good news.'
She paused, still holding him. Her eyes were bright with tears, but her mouth smiled. He looked at her, trembling. Her pale charm, her pleading grace moved him unbearably; this beauty, this tenderness—the sudden apparition of them in this dark room—unmanned him altogether.