She bowed graciously and then sat in her chair gazing at the picture bought by the state. Pride was in every line of her old face. She seemed returned from the shadows only to gaze at this picture. Then, in a voice which was cracked with age, she said, turning to Hazelton:
“I know your work, too. Monsieur—the opposite of my son’s. It is as though between you you encompassed all of nature’s moods. To me there has always been—you will laugh I know—a strange similarity, as though you were two halves of a whole, as day and night.”
A cold wave flowed over Hazelton, a feeling as though his hair were lifting on the back of his head. It was as though this frail old lady was linking him irrevocably to Raoul. He was powerless now to take his own.
“Madame,” he said, “I feel as if no one had understood my work before.”
But she had turned to gaze upon her son’s painting. A sort of senility enveloped her, and his drunkenness reached out to it. His gaze had in it respect and tenderness and abnegation. His manner, more eloquent than words, said: “I give up; I resign. Take it.”
He went to the end of the gallery, and Raoul saw him sit down in the attitude of one who waits. When Mme. de Vilmarte left, Raoul joined him.
Hazelton’s head sank deeply between his shoulders; his pugnacity had oozed away. After a time he spoke with an effort. “I understand,” he said. “I understand—”
A curious sense of liberation seized De Vilmarte. His old liking for Hazelton returned. “I am sorry for all of us,” he said.
“My poor friend, there is no way out,” said Hazelton. “I am vile—a beast. But trust me—believe in me.”
“I will,” cried De Vilmarte, deeply touched.