"Oh!" he exclaimed, and he smiled a little, thinking of Nora Scarlet.

"It is not quite what you think."

He was angry with her, with the facts of their existence, with her great fortune, and her engagement to the man he despised above all others, his own incognito and the fact that she had sent Cedersholm to buy his study, and that he could not express to her, without insult, his feelings or tell her frankly who he was.

"You were not kind, Mr. Rainsford."

He reflected that she thought him the lover of a Latin Quarter student, if she thought at all, which she probably did not. Without humility he confessed--

"Yes, I have been very rude indeed." He wiped his clay-covered hands slowly, each finger separately, his eyes bent. He rose abruptly. "Would you care to look at a study I am making for Barye?" He drew off the cloths from the clay he was engaged in modelling. She only glanced at the group and he asked her, almost roughly: "Why did you buy by proxy my little study in the exhibition? Why did you ask Cedersholm to do so?"

Mrs. Faversham looked at him in frank surprise. "Your study in the exhibition? I knew nothing of it. I did not know you had exhibited. I have been ill for a fortnight, and have not seen a paper or heard a hit of news."

He was softened. His emotions violently contradicted themselves, and he saw now that she had grown a little thinner and looked pale.

"Have you been ill? What a boor you must think me never to have returned!"

She was standing close to the pedestal and rested her hand on the support near his wooden tools. She wore a beautiful grey drees, such a one as only certain Parisian hands can create. It fitted her to perfection, displaying her shape, and, where the fur opened at the neck, amongst the lace he saw the gleaming and flashing of a jewel whose value would have made a man rich. Already the air was sweet with the fragrance of the scent she used. She had been in grey when he had first seen her on the day of the unveiling of the monument. Fairfax pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes, as though to brush away a vision which, like a mist, was still between them. He put his hand down over hers on the pedestal.

"I love you," he said very low. "That is the matter. That is the trouble. I love you. I want you to know it. I dare love you. I am perfectly penniless and I am glad of it. I want to owe everything to my art, to climb through the thorns to where I shall some day reach. I am proud of my poverty and of my emanc.i.p.ation from everything that others think is necessary to happiness. I am rude. I cannot help it. I shall never see you again. I ought not to speak to you in my barren room. I know that you are not free and that you are going to be married, but you must hear once what I have to tell you. I love you.... I love you."

She was as motionless as the grey study. He might himself have made and carved "the woman in her entirety," for she stood motionless before him.

"Tell Cedersholm," he said bitterly, "tell him that a poor sculptor, a struggler who lives to climb beyond him, who will some day climb beyond him, loves you."

The arrogance and pride of his words and her immobility affected him more than a reproof or even speech. He took her in his arms, and she was neither marble nor clay, but a woman there.

"Tell him," he murmured close to her cheek, "that I have kissed you and held you."

And here she said; "Hush!" almost inaudibly, and released herself. She was trembling. She put her hands to her eyes. "I shall tell him nothing.

He is nothing to me. I sent him away when he first came, a fortnight ago. I shall never see Cedersholm again."

"What!" cried Tony, looking at her in rapture, "what, you are _free_?"

At his heart there was triumph, excitement, wonder, all blending with the bigger emotion. He heard himself ask her eagerly: "Why, why did you do this?"

There were tears on her eyelids.

His face flushing, his eyes illumined, he looked down on her and lifted her face to him in both his hands.

"Why?"

"I think you know," she murmured, her lips trembling.

He gave a cry, and as he was about again to embrace her they heard Dearborn's step upon the stairs.

Mrs. Faversham was in the window looking out upon Paris, and Fairfax was modelling on his study when the playwright came in with a can of milk, some madeleines and a pot of jam.

After she had gone he wanted to escape and be alone, but Dearborn chatted, pacing the studio, whilst Fairfax dressed and shaved, praising the visitor.

"She's a great lady, Tony. What breeding and race! And she's not what the books call 'indifferent' to you."

"Go to the devil, Dearborn!"

Dearborn went to work instead, not to lose the inspiration of the lovely woman. He began a new scene, and dressed his character in dove grey with silver fox at her throat.

CHAPTER XVI

Fairfax, at the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, found instead of the entrance he had expected, a note for him.

"I cannot see you to-night. Be generous,--understand me. Mr.

Cedersholm leaves for Russia to-morrow, he has asked me as a last favour to let him see me. I have done him so much wrong that I cannot refuse him. Come early to-morrow morning, and we will walk in the Bois together. I am yours,

"MARY."

He read the letter before the footman, and the "yours, Mary" made his heart bound and his throat contract. He walked toward the Champs Elysees slowly, thinking. Cedersholm sailed to-morrow, away from France. He was sent away beaten, bruised, conquered. He must have loved her. No man could help it. Was this the beginning of Fairfax's triumph? Well, he could not help it--he was glad. Cedersholm had stolen his fire, the labour of his youth, and now he would not have been human if there had not been a thrill through him that the conqueror knows. He could spare him this farewell evening with the woman who signed herself "I am yours, Mary."

"Vade in Pace," he murmured.

Then the vision of the woman rose more poignant than anything else, and he saw her as she had stood under his hands, the tears in her eyes, and the fire and pallor of pa.s.sion on her face.

What should he do now? Marry her, of course. He would be married, then, twice at thirty. He shook his broad shoulders as though instinctively he chafed under the sudden adjusting to them of a burden. He limped out into the Champs Elysees, under the rows of light where the lamps were like illumined oranges. The vehicles twinkled by like fire-flies in the mist. Before him was the Palais de l'Industrie and back of it stretched the Champ de Mars and Napoleon's tomb. The freedom of the night and the hour was sweet to him; and he dreamed as he limped slowly down the Avenue under the leafless trees. Probably wisdom would tell him that, if he married now, it would be the end of his career. Love was an inspiration, a sharp impelling power to art, but marriage, a home, another household, another hearth and family, beautiful as the picture was, seemed to him, even bright and keen as was his pa.s.sion, to be captivity. And the memory of Albany came back to him, the cold winter months, the days on the engine, the blizzards against the tenement panes, household cares, small and petty, the buying of coal and food, and the constant duties which no man can shrink from and be a man, and which fret the free spirit of the creator. Moreover, the anguish of those days returned, biting his very entrails at the remembrance of his griefs, his remorse, his regrets. Molly by the study light, patient and wifely, rose before his eyes. There was his wife, and she seemed holy and stainless, set apart for that position and very perfect. He saw her lying pale and cold, beautiful as marble, with the little swathed form on her bosom, which had given and never nourished. He saw them both--his wife and child. Can a man begin over again? Can he create anew, perfectly anew, the same vision? He saw her go through the open door, holding it wide for him. So she should hold it at the last. He could give her this. He had defrauded her of so much. He could give to her to eternity a certain faithfulness.

He was exalted. He walked freely, with his head uplifted. It was a misty evening and the mists blew about him as he limped along in his student's cape, his spirit communing with his ideals and with his dead. Before, his visions took form and floated down the Avenue. Now they seemed unearthly, without any stain of human desire, without any worldly tarnish. He must be free. The lat.i.tude of his life must be unbounded by any human law, otherwise he would never attain. The flying forms were s.e.xless and his eyes pursued them like a worshipper. They were angelic.

For the moment he had emanc.i.p.ated himself from pa.s.sion.

He reached the Place de la Concorde. It was ten o'clock. He could not go home to be questioned by Dearborn--indeed, he could not have stood a companion. He called a cab and told the man to drive him up to the Bois de Boulogne, and they rolled slowly up the Avenue down which he had just come. But in what position did he stand toward Mary Faversham? She had refused Cedersholm because she loved him and he loved her--more than he ever could love, more than he ever had loved. A cab pa.s.sed him in which two forms were enlaced. The figures of two lovers blotted in the darkness. Along the alleys, under the winter trees, every now and then he saw other lovers walking arm-in-arm, even in winter warmed by the eternal fire. He touched his pocket where her note lay and his emotions stirred afresh.

He dreamed of her.

He had been tortured day by day, these weeks, by jealousy of Cedersholm, and this helped him on in his sentimental progress. They pa.s.sed the street, which a moment before he had taken from her house, to come out upon the Champs Elysees. They rolled into the Bois, under the damp darkness and the night, and the forest odours came to him through the window of the cab. She would have to wait until he was rich and famous.

As far as her fortune was concerned, if she loved him she could give it to the poor. He could tell her how to use it. She should never spend a cent of it on herself. He must be able to suffice for her and for him.

Rich or poor, the woman who married him would have to take him as he was. On the lake the mists blew over the water. They lay white as spirits among the trees. Everything about the dark and silent night was beautiful to him, made beautiful by the sacred warfare in his own mind.

Above all came the human eagerness to see her again, to touch her again, to tell his love, to hear her say what Dearborn's coming had prevented.

And he would see her to-morrow morning. It was profanity to walk in these woods without her.

"Go back," he called to the coachman, "go back quietly to the Quais."

He hoped that he should be able to sleep and that the next day would come quickly. He became ardent and devoted as he dreamed, and all the way back his heart ached for her.

When he entered the studio and called Dearborn he received no response.

There was a note from the playwright on the table--he would not be back until the next morning.

Fairfax, his hand under his pillow, crushed her letter, and the words: "I am yours, Mary," flushed his palm and his cheek.