“It was odd,” Tristrem answered; “who was she?”
“I don’t know. French, I fancy. Her name was Dupont, or Duflot—something utterly bourgeois. There was an old lady with her, her mother, I suppose. I remember, at table d’hôte one evening, a Russian woman, with an ‘itch’ in her name, said she did not think she was comme il faut. ‘She is comme il m’en faut,’ I answered, and mentally I added, ‘which is a deuced sight more than I can say of you, who are comme il n’en faut pas.’ The Russian woman was indignant at her, I presume, because she did not come to the public table. You know that feeling, ‘If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for you.’ But my sphinx not only did not appear at table d’hôte, she did not put her foot outside of the chalet. One bright morning she disappeared from the window, and a few days later I heard that she had been confined. Shortly after she went away. It did not matter, though, I had her face. Let me give you another glass of Monkenkloster.”
“She was married, then?”
“Yes, her husband was probably some brute that did not know how to appreciate her. I don’t mean, though, that she looked unhappy. She looked impassible, she looked exactly the way I wanted to have her look. If you have finished your coffee, come up to my little atelier. I wish you could see the picture by daylight, but you may be able to get an idea of it from the candles.” And as Mr. Yorke led the way, he added, confidentially, “I should really like to have your opinion.”
The atelier to which Yorke had alluded as “little” was, so well as Tristrem could discern in the darkness, rather spacious than otherwise. He loitered in the doorway until his companion had lighted and arranged the candles, and then, under his guidance, went forward to admire. The picture, which stood on an easel, was really excellent; so good, in fact, that Tristrem no sooner saw the face of the sphinx than to his ears came the hum of insects, the murmur of distant waters. It was Viola Raritan to the life.
“She guarded her secret, indeed,” he muttered, huskily. And when Yorke, surprised at such a criticism, turned to him for an explanation, he had just time to break his fall. Tristrem had fallen like a log.
As he groped back through a roar and turmoil to consciousness again, he thought that he was dead and that this was the tomb. “That Monkenkloster must have been too much for him,” he heard Yorke say, in German, and then some answer came to him in sympathetic gutturals. He opened his eyes ever so little, and then let the lids close down. Had he been in a nightmare, he wondered, or was it Viola? “He’s coming to,” he heard Yorke say. “Yes, I am quite right now,” he answered, and he raised himself on his elbow. “I think,” he continued, “that I had better get to my room.”
“Nonsense. You must lie still awhile.”
For the moment Tristrem was too weak to rebel, and he fell back again on the lounge on which he had been placed, and from which he had half arisen. Was it a dream, or was it the real? “There, I am better now,” he said at last; “I wonder, I—Would you mind ordering me a glass of brandy?”
“Why, there’s a carafon of it here. I thought you had had too much of that wine.”
Some drink was then brought him, which he swallowed at a gulp. Under its influence his strength returned.
“I am sorry to have put you to so much trouble,” he said collectedly to Yorke and to a waiter who had been summoned to his assistance; “I am quite myself now.” He stood up again and the waiter, seeing that he was fully restored, withdrew. When the door closed behind him, Tristrem went boldly back to the picture.
It was as Yorke had described it. In the background was a sunset made of cymbal strokes of vermilion, splattered with gold, and seamed with fantasies of red. In the foreground fluttered a chimera, so artfully done that one almost heard the whir of its wings. And beneath it crouched the Sphinx. From the eyrie of the years the ages had passed unmarked, unnoticed. The sphinx brooded, motionless and dumb.
With patient, scrutinizing attention Tristrem looked in her eyes and at her face. There was no mistake, it was Viola. Was there ever another girl in the world such as she? And this was her secret! Or was there a secret, after all, and might he not have misunderstood?
“Tell me,” he said—“I will not praise your picture; in many respects it is above praise—but tell me, is what you said true?”
“Is what true?”
“What you said of the model.”
“About her being in the chalet? Of course it is. Why do you ask?”
“No, not that, tell me—Mr. Yorke, I do not mean to be tragic; if I seem so, forgive me and overlook it. But as you love honor, tell me, is it true that she had a child in this place?”
“Yes, so I heard.”
“And you say her name was—”
“Madame Dubois—Dupont—I have forgotten; they can tell you at the bureau. But it seems to me—”
“Thank you,” Tristrem answered. “Thank you,” he repeated. He hesitated a second and then, with an abrupt good night, he hurried from the atelier and down the corridor till he reached his room.
Through the open window, the sulphur moon poured in. He looked out in the garden. Beyond, half concealed in the shadows, he could see the outline of the chalet. And it was there she had hid! He pressed his hands to his forehead; he
