“I’m glad you look on me as a friend. I wish I could help you.”
“You are helping me by letting me talk to you. I wonder do you understand a bit of what’s the matter? Can you understand? You’ve always been free, and could make your life for yourself. I’m strong, but I mayn’t even try to use my strength. I hate all this cant about women’s rights; every woman can have her rights if she only dares to take them. But we’re all bred up to be dependent cowards. Now, I suppose you’re shocked?”
“Why? I think I understand what you mean—what you feel. Does—your husband know?”
“He? He couldn’t understand! He would try to, and would advise me to go out and work here with him. I did do some work with him, but it only sickened me. And the people he works with! Gossiping, chattering, self-important humbugs. So now I sit all day with my hands in my lap and cry like a baby for a moon I could have if I dared take it. I’m young—and—what’s the use of not saying it?—pretty, and——”
She clenched her hands on the arms of her chair and set her teeth firmly. The fire shed a warm glow over the handsome, alluring face; he watched her with admiration. A picture ready to his hand. The dull, stupid room; the woman, splendidly rebellious. What was she going to make of her future?
“I’m going to ask you to help me!” he exclaimed. “Let me paint your portrait; not an ordinary portrait. The subject has been in my head for a long time, but I’ve never been able to grasp it until just a moment ago. I shall call it ‘The Rebel.’ Will you come up two or three times a week to my studio and sit for me?”
“Shall I?” she answered, looking doubtfully at him—“shall I? And then when it’s over, come back here—here!”
He had his thoughts and she had hers, but neither expressed them or guessed the other’s.
“It would only make me more angry with things,” she said; “no, you don’t understand me a bit. It must be all—or nothing. A sweet to-day and bread-and-butter every other day? No, no. Understand? It has been so bad with me that I stood on Westminster Bridge the other night after I left you, and looked at the water; I am such a coward that I came home to this.”
“So—you won’t help me to paint my picture?”