“You are not yourself,” he said.
“Aha! I know what you think of me. Ha! De Vilmarte, but I am a master, a great painter. Paint, and betray yourself. Ha! sale voyou, you will not? You are waiting to steal from me my final beautiful expression. You stand there— How is it that you permit me to call the Vicomte de la Tour de Vilmarte names? Why do you not strike me?”
“Oh, call me what you like,” Raoul cried. “Only finish the picture. There is very little more to do.”
“I tell you what I shall call you,” Hazelton jeered at him. “I will call you nothing worse than Raoul—Ra-oul—Ra—o—u—l!” He meowed it like a tom-cat. “How can I be so vile when I paint like an angel, Ra—o—u—l ... Ra—o—u—l!”
Sweat stood on Raoul’s forehead. He stood quiet. The picture was finished.
“Sign, my little Raoul, sign!” cried Hazelton. And with murder in his heart, a bitter tide of dark and sluggish blood mounting, ever mounting, Raoul signed and then fled into the lovely spring evening.
“This is the end,” he thought. “There shall be no more of this. Not for any one—not for any one, can I be so defiled!” For he felt the mystic identity between himself and his mother—that he was flesh of her flesh, and that in some vicarious way she was being insulted through him.
But it was not the end. It was with horror that Raoul learned that the picture had been bought by the state, that he was to receive the Legion of Honor. His mother was wild with joy.
“Now,” she cried, embracing him—“now I can depart in peace.” She looked so fragile that it seemed as if indeed her spirit had lingered only for this joy. She looked at him narrowly. “But you have been working too hard—you look ill. A long rest is what you need.”
“A very long rest,” Raoul agreed. He left the house, and, as if it was a magnet, the great exhibition drew him to it, and in front of his picture stood the thick, familiar figure of Hazelton, his nose jutting out truculently from his face, which was red and black like a poster. He broke through his attitude of devoted contemplation to turn upon Raoul.