For a moment, he lost control of himself—they were close together, and the dark had obliterated the room.
“I mean I can’t stand it! Flesh and blood can’t stand it!” he broke out. “Inga, I can’t have you near me—that I can’t do! It’s got to be one way or the other—all or nothing!”
“You mean I can’t—can’t come here any more?” she said, with a catch in her voice. “You mean I must go?”
“Yes; you must go,” he said, with a long breath. His hands flashed up and caught her shoulders and then fell limply again. He turned with an inarticulate cry and went hurriedly over to the switch and flung on the lights. At a gesture he gave of mute entreaty she went to the door, slowly and heavily, with dragging step. With her hand on the knob she turned.
“I can’t,” she said hopelessly. “There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t give you, Mr. Dan—except that. I can’t—it’s my belief; it’s—it’s me!”
XXXIII
Dangerfield kept his promise to Inga. Breeding and training in him were too finely aristocratic for him to surrender weakly under the girl’s eyes. He went to his easel each morning with the early hours, sometimes in the company of Tootles, sometimes alone. Each day he passed Inga in the hall and exchanged cheery greetings with forced gaiety, but beyond this they did not meet. He laid before himself the task of finding himself if it could be done, now that his whole day had to be reorganized and the figure of the young girl banished from it. At the bottom he knew the task was beyond him. He knew himself and the child in the artist that cried out for comradeship and love.
If the change was noticed in the Arcade, no one spoke to him of it. Tootles had looked surprised when Inga had not appeared the first mornings, but kept his own counsel. Mr. Cornelius, too, after a first inquiry, made no further reference to Inga’s absence, though he made a point of dropping in more frequently.