“Christine!” a frown contracted her brow for a second, but she worked on.
He looked at her as if fearing she had lost her reason, but there was no madness in her swift, intelligent strokes. Then like a flash the thought came to him: “It is my face, not myself, that she wants! This, then, has been the secret of her new hope as an artist. She would not feel, as I told her she must, but she would call out and copy my emotion; and this scene, which means life or death to me, is to her but a lesson in art, and I am no more than the human subject under the surgeon’s knife. But surely no anatomist is so cruel as to put in his lancet before the man is dead.”
Every particle of color receded from his face, and he watched her manner for the confirmation of his thought.
Her face was indeed a study. A beautiful smile parted her lips, her eyes glowed with the exultation of assured and almost accomplished success, and she looked like an inspired priestess at a Greek oracle.
But a bitterness beyond words was filling his heart.
A few more skilful strokes, and she threw down her brush, crying in ecstatic tones, “Eureka! Eureka!” as she stood before the painting in rapt admiration. In an instant he stood by her side. With all the pride of triumph she pointed to the picture, and said: “Criticise that, if you can! Deny that there is soul, life, feeling there, if you dare! Is that painting but a ‘beautiful corpse’?”
Dennis saw a figure and features suggesting his own, pleading with all the eloquence of true love before the averted face of the maiden in the picture. It was indeed a triumph, having all the power of the reality.
He passed his hand quickly across his forehead, as if to repel some terrible delusion, while yet he whispered its reality to himself, in silent, despairing confession: “Ah, my God! How cold she must be when she can see anyone look like that, and yet copy the expression as from a painted face upon the wall!”
Then, his own pride and indignation rising, he determined at once to know the truth; whether he held any place in her heart, or whether the picture was all, and he nothing.
Drawing a step nearer, as if to examine more closely, he seized a brush of paint and drew it over the face that had cost both him and Christine so much, and then turned and looked at her.
For a moment she stood paralyzed, so great seemed the disaster. Then she turned on him in fury. “How dare you!” she exclaimed.
Only equal anger, and the consciousness of right, could have sustained any man under the lightning of her eyes.
“Rather, let me ask, how dare you?” he replied, in the deep, concentrated voice of passion; and lover and lady stood before the ruined picture with blazing eyes. In the same low, stern voice he continued, “I see the secret of your artistic hope now, Miss Ludolph, but permit me to say that you have made your first and last success, and there in that black stain, most appropriately black, is the result.”
She looked as if she could have torn him to atoms.
“You have been false,” he continued. “You have acted a lie before me for weeks. You have deceived in that which is most sacred, and with sacrilegious hands have trifled with that which every true man regards as holy.”
She trembled beneath his stern, accusing words. Conscience echoed them, anger and courage were fast deserting her in the presence of the aroused and more powerful spirit of her wronged lover. But she said, petulantly, “Nonsense! You know well that half the ladies of the city would have flirted with you from mere vanity and love of power; my motive was infinitely beyond this.”
Until now this had almost seemed sufficient reason to excuse her action, but she distrusted it even to loathing as she saw the look of scorn come out on his noble face.
“And is that your best plea for falsehood? A moment since I loved you with a devotion that you will never receive again. But now I despise you.”
“Sir!” she cried, her face scarlet with shame and anger, “leave this room!”
“Yes, in a moment, and never again to enter it while Christine Ludolph is as false in character as she is beautiful in person. But before I go, you, in your pride and luxury, shall hear the truth for once. Not only have you been false, but you have been what no true woman ever can be—cruel as death. Your pencil has been a stiletto with which you have slowly felt for my heart. You have dipped your brush in human suffering as if it were common paint. Giotto stabbed a man and mercifully took him off by a few quick pangs, that he might paint his dying look. You, more cruel, accomplish your purpose by slow, remorseless torture. Merciful Heaven only knows what I have suffered since you smiled and frowned on me by turns, but I felt that if I could only win your love I would gladly endure all. You falsely made me believe that I had won it, and yet all the while you were dissecting my heart, as a surgeon might a living subject. And now what have you to offer to solace the bitterness of coming years? Do you not know that such deeds make men bad, faithless, devilish? Never dream of success till you are changed utterly. Only the noble in deed and in truth can reach high and noble art.”
She sat before the disfigured picture with her face bowed in her hands.
She thought he was gone, but still remained motionless like one doomed. A few moments passed and she was startled by hearing his voice again. It
