Though it had not the beauty of line of the other girl's, it possessed something that hers had not.
Then she commenced walking up and down the room. She was asking herself this question:
"That girl, with all her possessions and her beauty, could she make a man as happy as I can, I wonder?"
The thing interested her, and she pondered over it deeply and nearly made herself late in dressing for dinner.
When Everest came back she recounted the whole incident, just as it had happened, and saw him contract his eyebrows.
"So Sybil's in town now," he remarked merely, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject.
For many days after this, Everest was very much occupied, and out a great deal, and Regina devoted herself to the painting for Burton.
They would be leaving England shortly for the winter, and she was anxious to complete her work in good time before they had to start. She had called her subject "The Great Denial," and she hoped to make it as strong a picture as "The Murderer."
It was the interior of a monastic cell, of which the cold grey stone was illumined by a feeble candle flame. On the stone ledge, that served as table, stood a plate of untouched bread, by a flagon of water, equally untasted. On the floor, stretched out, with his arms extended in the form of a cross, lay the poor, attenuated, emaciated figure of a young monk, apparently asleep.
Upon his face rested an expression of extreme beatitude. The whole end of the cell was in vivid light, a sort of rose colour deepening into crimson and shot through with gold, and from the centre of the rosy mist lifted itself the etherealised form of a woman. In her face shone all the purest and tenderest qualities of sexual love, as she seemed to smile on the poor, thin figure on the flagstones.