"Yes."
"Not to-morrow. The horses had better rest a day. We must have done twenty-five miles to-day…. But early next week——"
She had turned away, as one averts the face from disaster. Even had she not turned from him, it was too dark to see his queer troubled smile, as he said:
"Monday, I go away. It's that ocean matter. Three days will finish it,
I'm sure."
So this was her answer. Beth of the bestowals had not prevailed. This was the inner uprooting. Love-lady she had been—love-lady of thrilling arts this day—and yet his determination to go to the other was not altered…. She would not show him tears of rage and jealousy. She would not see him again. She meant to show him that the day had not stormed her heart of hearts. Her spirit was torn, and she was not above hurting him…. "Three days will finish it, I'm sure." To her the sentence had the clang of a prison door…. It was through the Other that she proceeded now…. How he had struck her through another!….
They had walked for some time through the evergreens. His listening had become like a furious draught, her brain burning intensely beneath it. It had been hard for her to begin, but that was over…. "It was not until to-day that there was any need to tell you," she was saying. "You were inspiring in other ways. I would have been stupid, indeed, not to have seen that, but somehow you seemed remote from everyday habiliments and workday New York—somehow inseparable from silences—until to-day—when you came singing Invictus. You did not let me tell you—out there—in the sunlight. You didn't let me think of telling you…. You mustn't judge me always so susceptible——"
She halted, lost for an instant in the emptiness.
"Please tell me about him," Bedient said.
"Why, he was only a working boy when he first came to our house—here," she went on. "I was just back from Paris—after years. I remember with what a shock of surprise I noted the perfection of his face. The angle was absolutely correct as the old Hellenic marbles, and to every curve was that final warmth which stone can only distantly suggest. Then he was tall, but so light and lithe——"
She knew he would not fail to see the flaw here—the artistic taint. She had heard him deplore the worship of empty line, saying that nature almost invariably travesties it.