Better secure her now."

"He wants to marry her?" repeated Drene, in a curiously still voice.

"He's mad about her. He's abject. It's no secret among his friends. Men like that--and of that age--sometimes arrive at such a terminal--men with Graylock's record sometimes get theirs. She has given him a run, believe me, and he's brought up with a crash against a stone wall. He is lying there all doubled up at her feet like a rabbit with a broken back.

There was nothing left for him to do but lie there. He's lying there still, with one of her little feet on his bull neck. All the town knows it."

"He wants to marry her," repeated Drene, as though to himself.

"She may not take him at that. They're queer--some women. I suppose she'd jump at it if she were not straight. But there's another thing--"

Guilder looked curiously at Drene. "Some people think she's rather crazy about you."

Drene gazed into s.p.a.ce.

"But that wouldn't hurt her," added Guilder, in his calm, pleasant voice. "She's a straight little thing--white and straight. She could come to no harm through a man like you."

Drene continued to stare at s.p.a.ce.

"So," continued the other, confident, "when she recovers from a natural and childlike infatuation for you she'll marry somebody... Possibly even such a man as Graylock might make her happy. You can't ever tell about such men at the eleventh hour."

Drene turned his eyes on him. There was no trace of color in his face.

"Aren't you pretty d.a.m.ned charitable?"

"Charitable? Well, I--I'm so inclined, I fancy."

"You'd be content to see that girl marry a dog like that?"

"I did not say so. I am no judge of men. No man knows enough to condemn souls."

Drene looked at him:

"Well, I'll tell you something. I know enough to do it. I had rather d.a.m.n my soul--and hers, too--than see her marry the man you have named.

It would be worth it to me."

After a strained silence, Guilder said:

"There is a mode of dealing with those who have injured you, which is radically different--"

"I deal with such people in my own fashion!"

"But, after all, the infamy is Graylock's. Why oblige him by sharing it with him?"

"Do you know what he did to me and mine?"

"A few of us know," said Guilder, gently, "--your old friends."

There came a pale, infernal flicker into Drene's eyes:

"I'll take your commission for that altar piece," he said.

"What is it? An Annunciation?"

IV

Composition had been determined upon, and the sketch completed by the middle of August; Cecile had sat for him every day from nine until five; every evening they had dined together at the seash.o.r.e or other suburban and cool resorts. Together they had seen every summer entertainment in town, had spent the cooler, starlit evenings together in his studio, chatting, reading loud sometimes, sometimes discussing he work in hand or other subjects of he moment, even topics covering a wider and more varied range than he had ever before discussed with any woman.

He seemed to have become utterly changed; the dark preoccupation had been absent from his face--the gauntness, the grayness, seemed to have become subdued; the deep lines of pain, imperceptible at times, smoothed out and shadowed in an almost gay resurgence of youth.

If, during the first week or two of her companionship, his gaiety had been not entirely spontaneous, his smile shadowed with something duller, his laughter a trifle forced, she had not perceived it in her surprised and shyly troubled preoccupation with this amazing and delightful transfiguration.

At first she scarcely knew what to look for, what to expect from him, from herself, when she came into the studio after many weeks of absence; and she always halted in the doorway, trembling a little, as always, when in contact with him.

But he was very delightful, smiling, easy, and deferential enough to rea.s.sure her with a greeting that became him, as he saluted her pretty hand, held it a moment in possession, laughingly, and released it.

From the moment of their reunion he had never touched her, save for a quick, firm, smiling hand-clasp in the morning and another at the night's parting.

Now, little by little, she was finding herself delightfully at ease with him, emerging by degrees from her charming bewilderment out of isolation to a happy companionship never before shared with any man.

Nor even vaguely had she dreamed that Drene could be such a man, such a friend, never had she imagined there was in him such kindness, such patience, such gentleness, such comprehension, such virile sense and sympathy.

And never, now, was her troubled consciousness aware of anything disquieting in his att.i.tude, of anything to perturb her.

He seemed to enjoy himself like a boy, with her companionship, wholly, heartily, without any motive other than the pleasure of the moment; and so, little by little, she gave herself up to it too, in the same fashion, unguardedly, frankly, innocently revealing herself to him by degrees as their comradeship became deliciously unembarra.s.sed.

He was making a full length study in clay now. All day long she sat there enthroned, her eyes partly closed, the head lifted a trifle and fallen back, and her lovely hands resting on her heart--and sometimes she strove to imagine something of the divine moment which she was embodying; pondering, dreaming, wondering; and sometimes, in the stillness, through her trance crept a thrill, subtle, exquisite, as though in faint perception of the heavenly moment. And once, into her half-dreaming senses came the soft stirring of wings, and she opened her eyes and looked up, startled and thrilled.

But it was only a pigeon which had come through the great window from the cote on the adjacent roof and which circled above her on whimpering wings for a moment and then sheered out into the sunlight.

They dined together at a roof garden that evening, the music was particularly and surprisingly good, and what surprised him even more was that she knew it and spoke of it. And continued speaking of music, he not interrupting.

Reticent hitherto concerning her antecedents he learned now something of them--and inferred more; nothing unusual--a musical career determined upon, death intervening dragging over her isolation the steel meshes of dest.i.tution--the necessity for self-support, a friend who knew a painter who employed models--not anything unusual, not even dramatic.

He nodded as she ended:

"Have you saved anything?"

"A hundred dollars."

"That's fine."

She smiled, then sighed unconsciously.

"You are thinking," he said, "that youth is flying."

She smiled wistfully.