"I thank you," he said. "In fact, I can't thank you…. What a day it will be for me to live over…. There's a little thing that needs doing. It will take me away for three or four days next week."
Beth almost laughed. She caught the laugh of mockery in time. The ride just arranged seized and held her attention, like some baleful creature. There was abomination about it, to her thoughts—the ease with which he had managed, her abject softness…. She was trembling within, all her resistance settling, straining, like a tree before the final stroke of the axe. Her hands trembled crazily and were cold…. She had given her word; yes, they would ride together. She could not evade his eyes, his question, if she refused now…. He must not see that she was whipped…. But she would not see him after that. He could not come back to her from the Wordling arms. She would not see him to-morrow. But the picture——
She had turned from the easel to her desk, and was fumbling with papers there, her back turned to him. A half minute had passed since his last word… One word came from her:
"Yes?"
She had meant it to sound as if spoken absently, as if she were preoccupied in search for a certain paper. Instead it was an eldritch note in the room, like the croak of an evil bird… He was standing near the outer door. Something of her tumult must have come to him, she thought, for his voice was strangely altered when he asked:
"Will three or four days make any difference about the picture?"
… She would not see him again. He could not come back here to-morrow nor afterward. He must go away now… She thought of her wail to the Grey One that he would not go to the ocean with Wordling… It meant nothing to him; she could not punish him by keeping him away… But the picture—that final inner lustre. It had come to her this morning—what havoc in the memory—and she had seen it that day in the great gallery before his Race Mother, but had been unable quite to hold it in mind until the working light of the following day… She must not add to her own punishment, after all her care and labor, by failing in the last touch. And yet he must not come again…
"The picture, did you say?"
He repeated his question.
"Why, the picture is practically done," she said. "I'll sign and deliver it to-morrow. I think it will get to you to-morrow. The long, ridiculously long, preliminary work gave me the modelling, as well as I could have it…. This weather makes one think of the ocean or the mountains——"