“And when?”
“To-day.”
There was a silence. Then, in his gravest professional manner, Fane gave some directions, and wrote others down, while the sculptor looked into the dancing fire. When Fane had finished:—
“Shall I tell her now?” he asked gently.
Brune nodded without speaking. His face looked drawn and contorted as he moved towards the door. His emotion almost strangled him, and the effort to remain calm put a strain upon him that was terrible.
Gerard Fane was left alone for a moment—alone with the statue whose personality, it seemed to him, pervaded the great studio. In its attitude there was a meaning, in its ghost-like face and blind eyes a resolution of intention, that took possession of his soul. He told himself that it was lifeless, inanimate, pulseless, bloodless marble; that it contained no heart to beat with love or hate, no soul to burn with impulse or with agony; that its feet could never walk, its hands never seize or slay, its lips never utter sounds of joy or menace. Then he looked at it again, and he shuddered.
“I am over-working,” he said to himself; “my nerves are beginning to play me tricks. I must be careful.”
And he forcibly turned his thoughts from the marble that could never feel to the man and woman so tragically circumstanced, and to his relation towards them.