"I am going to Jack Armstrong now," continued Emory, savagely. "I am going to tell him what a brute he is and demand you of him. I did not give you up to be tortured by neglect while he devotes himself to his 'affinity.'" Emory's voice grew bitter. "And he calls it his 'masterpiece'! Better men than he have called it by another name."

Helen rose, white and ghostlike in the pale, dim light. She was calm again, and her voice was compelling in its quiet force.

"You have been my friend, Phil--a friend on whom I have felt I could rely always; yet you take this one moment, when I need real, honest friendship more than ever before in all my life, to add another burden.

Is it kind, Phil--is it n.o.ble? I have suffered--I admit it. Jack is the cause of it--I admit that, too. You have discovered all this by pulling aside the veil which by my friend should have been held sacred; but with my heart laid bare before you, can you not see that it contains no thought except of him?"

"I do not believe it," Emory replied, stubbornly.

"You must believe it," she continued, with finality. "You know that my words are true. Jack Armstrong is my husband and I am his wife. We must forget what you have said and never refer to it again. Come, let us join them in the house."

"I can't, Helen."

"Then we must say good-night here."

Emory took the outstretched hand in his. For a moment their eyes met firmly. Then he raised her fingers to his lips.

"It is not good-night, Helen," he said, his voice breaking as he spoke; "do you understand, it is not good-night--it is good-bye."

Her glance did not falter, though a new sensation of pain pa.s.sed through her heart. "Good-bye," she replied, faintly, as she gently withdrew her hand.

Armstrong watched Emory's hasty departure and Helen's slow return to the house from his unintentional place of concealment behind the oleanders, where his footsteps had been arrested by the sound of voices. The contessa's remarks had recalled with vivid intensity his conversation with Helen about Inez. She regarded his relations with Miss Thayer to be at least questionable, and he impatiently awaited the departure of the guests to tell Helen what had happened and to set himself right in her eyes. Now he had just heard Emory express himself even more pointedly upon the same subject.

The consciousness that he had been an eavesdropper, even though unwittingly, prevented him from carrying out his purpose. As he saw Helen drag herself rather than walk along the paths, he longed to fold her to his heart and brush away her doubts for all time; but to do this he must disclose his uncomfortable position, and this he could not do.

His resentment against Emory faded away in the face of Helen's splendid loyalty. "My heart contains no thought except of him," he had heard her say; and he thanked G.o.d that his awakening had not come too late.

After a few moments he returned to the house from the opposite side of the garden.

"Where is Helen?" he asked Uncle Peabody, whom he met at the door.

"She has gone to her room, Jack," Mr. Cartwright replied, without meeting his eyes. "She said she was very tired, and asked particularly not to be disturbed."

Armstrong hesitated. She was hardly strong enough to talk the matter over to-night, anyway. It would be a kindness to leave it until to-morrow.

"Thank G.o.d it is not too late!" Uncle Peabody heard him repeat to himself, and the old man wondered if, after all, the sun was going to shine through the cypress-trees.

XXII

Helen did not come down to breakfast the next morning, so Armstrong and Miss Thayer found themselves at the library at their usual hour in spite of the festivities of the night before. The events of the evening impressed upon Jack the necessity of bringing his work to a speedy conclusion. With feverish haste, and forgetful of his companion, he seized his pen and transferred to the blank paper before him the words which came faster than they could be transcribed. Left to her own resources, Inez picked up the bunch of ma.n.u.script and settled back in her chair to run it over, glancing from time to time at Armstrong, who seemed consumed by the task before him. Accustomed as she was to his moods while at work, Inez was almost frightened by the present intensity. She hesitated even to move about lest he be disturbed, yet until he gave her something to do she was wholly unemployed.

For over an hour Armstrong's pen ran on. The fever was upon him, the message was in his mind, the spirit must be translated to the more tangible medium of words. At length, utterly exhausted for the moment, he threw aside his pen and leaned back in his chair.

"It is finished!" he cried, looking for the first time into Inez' face; "all is now actually written, and the revision alone remains."

Inez started to speak a word of congratulation, but in a flood of realization she knew that the companionship of the past three months was at an end. For the revision Armstrong would need no a.s.sistance; so she faltered for a moment, but the omission was unnoticed.

"I have just written the summary in the last chapter," Armstrong continued. "I have taken Michelangelo's allegorical statues in the Laurentian Chapel as typifying the characteristics and the tendencies of the period. All that I have written seems naturally to lead up to them.

Listen."

In a rich, tense voice Armstrong read from the sheets which he gathered together in proper sequence:

"'Michelangelo himself has given us in his marbles the truest interpretation of the times in which he lived. After a.n.a.lyzing his correspondence and deducing from this the customs of the people, we turn to a consideration of the principles which lay beneath. The sculptor was a poet, and the soul of the poet found expression not through his words but through his hands. In the sacristy of San Lorenzo there are the tombs of the Medici, designed by Michelangelo. They are unfinished, as is typical of the period in which they were designed. At the entrance to these tombs rest allegorical figures, which to the casual observer indicate phases of darkness and of light, of death and of life. They are two women and two men, and tradition names them 'Night' and 'Day,'

'Twilight' and 'Dawning.' To one who a.n.a.lyzes them, however, after a profound study of the times in which they were produced, comes a realization that they typify the character and the religious belief of the people themselves. These statues and their attendant genii are a series of abstractions, symbolizing the sleep and waking of existence, action, and thought, the gloom of death, the l.u.s.tre of life, and the intermediate states of sadness and of hope that form the borderland of both. Life is a dream between two slumbers; sleep is death's twin-brother; night is the shadow of death, and death is the gate of life.

"'In each of these statues there is a palpitating thought, torn from the artist's soul and crystallized in marble. It has been said that architecture is petrified music; each of these statues becomes for us a pa.s.sion, fit for musical expression, but turned, like Niobe, to stone.

They have the intellectual vagueness, the emotional certainty that belong to the motives of a symphony. In their allegories, left without a key, sculpture has pa.s.sed beyond her old domain of placid concrete form.

The anguish of intolerable emotion, the quickening of the consciousness to a sense of suffering, the acceptance of the inevitable, the strife of the soul with destiny, the burden and the pa.s.sion of mankind--this is the symbolism of the period as expressed by their cold, chisel-tortured marble.'"

"Splendid, my son!" spoke Cerini's proud voice as the librarian advanced toward them out of the dim recess in which he had been standing; "that is a fitting ending to a magnificent work. Your use of the statues as symbolisms of their period is masterly. I myself have felt it often, but with me the feeling has never found expression."

"What a period that was!" exclaimed Armstrong. "How it seizes one, even now, after four hundred years! Padre," he said to Cerini, after a moment's pause, "you say that this work of mine is good?"

The librarian nodded a.s.sent.

"If that is so," continued Armstrong, impressively, "it is no more to my credit than if Machiavelli or Leonardo or the Buonarroti himself had written it. It is they who have held my hand and guided my pen."

"Ah, my son," cried Cerini, with delight, "you are indeed a true humanist--a man in whom the ancients take delight! Too bad that you must drop it all, after your brief experience among this galaxy of greatness, to return to the humdrum of commonplace existence--too bad, too bad!"

"I shall never give it up, padre," Armstrong replied, firmly; "I could not if I tried." He paused as he recalled Helen's wan face and spiritless step. "I have been too intense. I owe it to my wife to share with her interests which lie along other lines, but my life-work has already been plotted out for me. I met these G.o.ds years ago, and I did not know them; I felt them calling me back to them, and I obeyed. They have let me sip their cup of wisdom, and he who once tastes that delectable draught runs the risk of becoming no longer his own master. I must leave them for a breathing-spell; I can never wholly give myself to them again; but never fear, I shall ever come back to them. I could not help it if I tried."

The librarian watched the enthusiasm of the younger man with rapture.

"My son, my son!" he cried, joyfully; "my life has not been spent in vain if I have succeeded in joining one such modern intellect to that n.o.ble band of sages who, though of the past, are ever in the present.

And you, too, my daughter," he continued, turning to Inez--"you, too, have sipped the draught our friend speaks of; you, too, are linked irrevocably to the wisdom of the ages."

Inez bowed her head as if receiving a benediction.

"I have tasted of it, father," she replied, seriously, "but only in degree. This experience is one which can never be forgotten, can never be repeated. I feel as if I were saying good-bye to friends dear and true whom I shall never see again."

Armstrong looked at her curiously.

"I do not understand," he said. "Why should you ever say good-bye?"

Inez tried to smile, but her attempt ended in a pitiful failure.

"There is nothing very strange about it," she continued. "You and I drifted into this work together almost by accident. To me it has been a happy accident, and I like to think that I have helped a little in your splendid achievement. It has been an experience of a lifetime, but, like most experiences which are worth anything, it could never happen again."

Armstrong failed utterly to grasp the significance of her words.

"Of course not, unless you wished it so," he said.

"Not even though I wished it," replied Inez, firmly.

The contessa's words were in Armstrong's mind as he looked into her face. If Helen could hear what she had just said his explanations would be unnecessary. He wished the contessa were there, if she really possessed any such idea as her conversation had suggested. This girl in love with him, yet calmly stating that their a.s.sociation was at an end, and that any continuance was an impossibility!

"It has been a strain, Miss Thayer, as Helen said," he replied, finally; "I feel it myself. With the ma.n.u.script actually completed, I shall take my time in putting it into final shape. And now I suggest that we get out into the air. Suppose we take a little run in the motor-car out around San Domenico, and then back home, to surprise them at luncheon?"