Part 21 (1/2)

Now that she was face to face with the task, her heart was oddly apathetic. ”I might be out to buy postage stamps,” she said to herself, while crossing the ferry.

None the less, she wished she didn't have to look at this water down which Bob had sailed only four or five hours previously. Off toward the south, in the haze of the warm May afternoon, there was a giant steamer lying as if becalmed. It might be his. There was one still farther out to sea. That, too, might be his. Far down on the horizon, just pa.s.sing out of sight, there was a little black spot with a pennon of black smoke. That could very easily be his. She watched it. It might be carrying him away to where he would forget her. Perhaps he had forgotten her already. His mother had said-and his mother must know him-that he made love to girls one day and forgot them on the next, and it was already two days since Sat.u.r.day. Very well! Let him forget! Only, it didn't seem as if those kisses and those tears were quite in keeping with a heart which treated love so easily.

She was glad when the ferryboat b.u.mped softly against its pier and she could get away from the great stream of which the very smells and sounds would now begin to make her think of him. She wished there was another means of returning home. She wished he had gone by train. She wished....

At the door of the studio building she was seized with a great terror.

She began to understand what it was she had come to do. She had come to give herself up. She was to say, in fact, ”Here I am-take me.” And he would take her-if he hadn't already taken some one else. The betrayal of a husband who was hardly a husband was no longer in her mind. She was appalled at this yielding of herself.

Yet she did everything as she had been accustomed to do it and entered the studio by the door she generally used.

At first she thought there was no one there. Certainly the other woman was not there, and that was so far a relief. Slowly, cautiously, she made her way between the brocades, old furniture, and pedestals. Then she saw Hubert and Hubert saw her.

She stood very much as a deer stands when surprised in the bracken-head erect, eyes curious. Till he gave her a sign she made no movement to go farther. And for a minute he gave her no sign. He only remained seated and looked. He looked, with a sketch and pencil in his hand. He had been occupied in touching something up.

But she couldn't mistake it. It was the girl in the Byzantine chair. Her heart, which seemed to swell to thrice its size, thumped painfully.

Then, at last, a smile broke over his face, lifting his mustache and mounting to his violet eyes. He didn't speak; he didn't move. He only looked, hushed, enraptured, as the hunter at the startled deer.

CHAPTER XII

Feeling that an explanation of her presence in the studio should come from herself, Jennie faltered:

”I-I only looked in to say that if you hadn't found a model for-for the picture you wanted to paint, I might-I might be able to pose.”

Though she hadn't advanced and he hadn't moved, the extraordinary light in his eyes made her heart thump more wildly.

”You'd do it”-he held up the sketch-”dressed like that?”

She remembered his own phrase, ”If I'm to be that kind of a model I must _be_ that kind of a model-and do what's expected.”

The process of starving out being so far successful, Wray felt it well to push it a little more. He rose with an air of distress.

”I wish you could have told me this last week, Jennie. As it is-”

”You've got some one else?”

”Not definitely. I've tried out three-two of them no good, though the third might-”

”Might do as well as me?”

”Perhaps better in some ways. I mean,” he added hastily, as she seemed about to go, ”that she's a real professional model, and for this kind of job, of course, a professional would be-let us say, more at her ease.”

So many good things had, during the past few days, swum into Jennie's vision, only to swim out again, that she had grown almost used to this fading of her hopes. Nevertheless, the bliss of loving Hubert and getting twenty-five thousand dollars for it had seemed tolerably sure.

To lose it now would be hard; but harder still, for the moment, at least, was this tone of detachment, of indifference. That another woman should, in some ways, do better than herself was worse than the last indignity. Her lip trembled. She was about to turn away with that collapse of the figure which marks the woman who has lost all hope.

He hurried up to her, laying his hand on her arm in a way that made a thrill run through her frame.

”Wait a minute, Jennie! I'd like to talk it over. If you want me to try you out-”