“It was neither, it was prophetic,” said Strange in a low voice only audible to her.
She glanced at him for a second with curling scornful lips.
“Was it impossible then to make a decent picture of me as I look now?” she asked with a laugh, turning to Brydon, who was blushing furiously and wishing he could swallow himself.
“No fellow living could do justice to you,” he blurted out painfully, “however you may look! but I was trying to paint a bride, and there in that first study you didn’t look just like one—from my own confounded fault, no doubt, so I tried the other.”
“You have certainly succeeded in producing your bride,” she remarked with a curious, absent smile.
To give her her due, she did not know how cruel her own pain made her. Her husband did, however; he winced as he put the two sketches side by side to compare them. He had the delicate sensitive respect of most strong men for feelings and other frail nervous things of that sort.
Gwen came and stood beside her husband, and looked from one to the other of the sketches.
“Now in this first one,” she said, “the girl looks as if she were pre-ordained to the rôle of bride; in this other one, as you observe, she does not, but she is me. I am so sorry to disillusion you of your idea.”
“You have not,” said Brydon softly, “only showed her many-sidedness.”
“I can get my wedding dress over,” said Gwen, with a touch of malice about her mouth, “shall I, and give you a few sittings in the character of bride?”