'But the scene is no longer Egypt, my lord; it is Corinth,' replied
Wilderspin.
During this dialogue I stood motionless before the predella: I could not stir; my feet seemed fixed in the floor by what can only be described as a wild passion of expectation. As I stood there a marvellous change appeared to be coming over the veiled figure of the predella. The veil seemed to be growing more and more filmy—more and more like the 'steam' to which Sleaford had compared it, till at last it resolved itself into a veil of mist—into the rainbow-tinted vapours of a gorgeous mountain sunrise—and looking straight at me were two blue eyes sparkling with childish happiness and childish greeting, through flushed mists across a pool on Snowdon.
That she was found at last my heart knew, though my brain was dazed. That in the next room, within a few yards of me, my mother and Sleaford and Wilderspin were looking at the picture of Winifred's face unclouded by the veil, my heart knew as clearly as though my eyes were gazing at it, and yet I could not stir. Yes, I knew that she was now neither a beggar in the street, nor a prisoner in one of the dens of London, nor starving in a squalid garret, but was safe under the sheltering protection of a good man. I knew that I had only to pass between those folding-doors to see her in Wilderspin's picture—see her dressed in the 'azure-coloured tunic bordered with stars,' and the upper garment of the 'colour of the moon at moonrise,' which Wilderspin had so vividly described in Wales; and yet, paralysed by expectation, I could not stir.
III
Soon I was conscious that my mother, Sleaford, and Wilderspin were standing by my side, that Wilderspin's hand was laid on my arm, and that I was pointing at the predella—pointing and muttering,
'She lives! She is saved.'
My mother led me into the other studio, and I stood before the great picture. Wilderspin and Sleaford, feeling that something had occurred of a private and delicate nature, lingered out of hearing in the smaller studio.
'I must be taken to her at once,' I muttered to my mother; 'at once.'
So living was the portrait of Winifred that I felt that she must be close at hand. I looked round to see if she herself were not standing by me dressed in the dazzling draperies gleaming from Wilderspin's superb canvas.
But in place of Winifred the profile of my mother's face, cold, proud, and white, met my gaze. Again did the stress of overmastering emotion make of me a child, as it had done on the night of the landslip. 'Mother!' I said, 'you see who it is?'