She made no answer: she stood looking steadfastly at the picture; but the tremor of the nostrils, the long deep breaths she drew, told me of the fierce struggle waging within her breast between conscience and pity, with rage and cruel pride. My old awe of her returned. I was a little boy again, trembling for Winnie. In some unaccountable and, I believe, unprecedented way I had always felt that she, my own mother, belonged to some haughty race superior to mine and Winnie's; and nothing but the intensity of my love for Winnie could ever have caused me to rebel against my mother.
'Dear mother,' I murmured, 'all the mischief and sorrow and pain are ended now; and we shall all be happy; for you have a kind heart, dear, and cannot help loving poor Winnie, when you come to know her.'
She made no answer save that her lips slowly reddened again after the pallor; then came a quiver in them, as though pity were conquering pride within her breast, and then that contemptuous curl that had often in the past cowed the heart of the fearless and pugnacious boy whom no peril of sea or land could appal.
'She is found,' I said. 'And, mother, there is no longer an estrangement between you and me. I forgive you everything now.'
I leapt from her as though I had been stung, so sudden and unexpected was the look of scorn that came over her face as she said, 'You forgive me!' It recalled my struggle with her on that dreadful night: and in a moment I became myself again. The pleading boy became, at a flash, the stern and angry man that misery had made him. With my heart hedged once more with points of steel to all the world but Winnie, I turned away. I did not know then that her attitude towards me at this moment came from the final struggle in her breast between her pride and that remorse which afterwards took possession of her and seemed as though it would make the remainder of her life a tragedy without a smile in it. At that moment Wilderspin and Sleaford came in from the smaller studio. 'Where is she?' I said to Wilderspin. 'Take me to her at once—take me to her who sat for this picture. It is she whom I and Sinfi Lovell were seeking in Wales.'
A look of utter astonishment, then one of painful perplexity, came over his face—a look which I attributed to his having heard part of the conversation between my mother and myself.
'You mean the—the—model? She is not here, Mr. Aylwin,' said he. 'The same young lady you were seeking in Wales! Mysterious indeed are the ways of the spirit world!' and then his lips moved silently as though in prayer.
'Where is she?' I asked again.
'I will tell you all about her soon—when we are alone,' he said in an undertone. 'Does the picture satisfy you?'
The picture! He was thinking of his art. Amid all that gorgeous pageant in which mediæval angels; were mixed with classic youths and flower-crowned; maidens, in such a medley of fantastic beauty as could never have been imagined save by a painter; who was one-third artist, one-third madman, and one-third seer—amid all the marvels of that strange, uncanny culmination of the neo-Romantic movement in Art which had excited the admiration of one set of the London critics and the scorn of others, I had really and fully seen but one face—the face of Isis, or Pelagia, or Eve, or Natura Benigna, or whosoever she was looking at me with those dear eyes of Winnie's which were my very life—looking at me with the same bewitching, indescribable expression that they wore when she sat with her 'Prince of the Mist' on Snowdon. I tried to take in the ensemble. In vain! Nothing but the face and figure of Winifred—crowned with seaweed as in the Raxton photograph—could stay for the thousandth part of a second upon my eyes.