The Tiger Lily Part 19

He was seated, wild-eyed and despairing, one morning, when Keren-Happuch came running in, breathless with her exertions to reach the studio, and bear the news which she felt would be like life to the young artist.

"Here she is, sir!" panted the girl, "she's come at last;" and then ran down to open the front door.

Dale staggered and turned giddy, but listened with eyes fixed upon the door, hardly daring to believe till he saw it open, and the dark, closely veiled figure enter quickly.

Then there was a reaction, and he asked himself why he had suffered like this. What was the poorly dressed woman who had just entered to him?

His lips parted, but he did not speak, only waited.

"Am I too late?" she said, in her strongly accented French. "Some other? The picture finished?"

"No," he said coldly; and he wondered at her collected manner as he caught the glint of a pair of searching eyes. "I have waited for you.

Why have you been so long?"

"I have been ill," she said simply, and her tones suggested suffering.

"Ill?" he cried excitedly; and he took a step towards her with outstretched hand. "I am very sorry."

"Thank you," she said quietly, and ignoring the extended hand. "I am once more well, and I must be quick. Shall I stay one more hour every day and you pay me more? Oh, no. For the same!"

"Yes, pray do," he said huskily, and he thrust his hand into his pocket to pay her in advance according to his custom, but she ignored the money as she had previously pa.s.sed his hand without notice, and after pointing to the door, she hurried through into his room, to return in a wonderfully short s.p.a.ce of time and take her place upon the dais.

Dale began to paint eagerly, feverishly, so as to lose himself in his work, but in a few minutes he raised his eyes to see the glint of those which seemed to be watching him suspiciously through the thick veil, as if ready to take alarm at the slightest word or gesture on his part, and at once the power to continue his work was gone. He felt that he must speak, and in a deep husky voice he began--

"You have been very ill, then?"

"Yes, monsieur," curtly and distantly.

"I wondered very much at not seeing you. I was alarmed."

"I do not see why monsieur should feel alarm."

"Of course, on account of my picture," he said awkwardly. Then laying down his palette and brushes, he saw that the model gave a sudden start, but once more stood motionless as he took out his pocket-book, and withdrew the pencil.

"Will you give me your address?"

"Why should monsieur wish for my address?"

"To communicate with you. If I had known, I should have been spared much anxiety. Tell me, and I will write it down."

"With that of the women who wait monsieur's orders? No!"

This was spoken so imperiously that Dale replaced the pencil and book, and took up palette and brushes.

"As you will," he said, and he began to paint once more.

But the power to convey all he wished to the canvas had gone, and he turned to her again.

"Tell me more about yourself," he said. "You are a foreigner, and friendless here in England: I know that, but tell me more. I may be of service to you."

"Monsieur is being of service to me. He pays me for occupying this degrading position to which I am driven."

There was so much angry bitterness in her tones that Dale was again silenced; but his pulse beat high, and as he applied his brush to his canvas from time to time, there were only results that he would have to wipe away.

"I am sorry you consider the task degrading," he said at last. "I have endeavoured to make it as little irksome as I could."

"Monsieur has been most kind till now," she said quickly; and then, in a bitterly contemptuous tone, "monsieur forgets that I am waiting. His pencil is idle."

He started angrily, and went on painting, but the eyes were still watching him, and, strive all he would, there was the intense desire growing once more to see that face which was hidden from him so closely.

He knew that he ought to respect his visitor's scruples, but he could not, and again and again he s.h.i.+vered with a sensation nearly approaching to dread. But the wish was still supreme. That black woollen veil piqued him, and after a few minutes of worthless work, he asked her if she was weary.

"Yes," she replied.

"Then we will rest a few minutes."

"No, monsieur; go on. I am your slave for the time."

He started at her words, and as much at her tone, which was as full of hauteur as if she were some princess. But now, instead of this driving him in very shame to continue his work, it only impressed him the more.

There was a mystery about her and her ways. The almost insolent contempt with which she treated him made him angry, and his anger increased to rage as he fully realised how weak and mortal he was as man. He tried not to own it to himself, but he knew that a strange pa.s.sion had developed itself within him, and with mingled pleasure and pain he felt that this beautiful woman could read him through and through, and that hour by hour her feelings toward him became more and more those of contempt.

He did not stop to reason, for he was rapidly becoming blind to everything but his unconquerable desire to see her face. There were moments when he felt ready to rage against himself for his weakness and, as he called it, folly; but all this was swept away, and at last, as the sitting went on and the model haughtily refused to leave the dais for a time to rest, he found himself asking whether there was not after all truth in the old legends, and whether, enraged by his shrinking from Lady Dellatoria's pa.s.sionate avowals, the author of all evil had not sent some beautiful demon to tempt him and show him how weak he was after all. It was maddening, and at last he threw down palette and brushes to begin striding up and down the room, carefully averting his eyes from his model, who stood there as motionless as if she were some lovely statue.

At last he returned to his canvas.

"You must be tired now," he said hurriedly. "Rest for a while."

"I'm not tired now," she replied coldly, "if monsieur will continue."

"I cannot paint to-day," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "You trouble me. What I have done is valueless."

"I trouble monsieur?" she said coldly. "Am I not patient?--can I be more still?"

He made a mighty effort over self, and for the moment conquered.

Seizing his brushes and palette, he began to paint once more, but in a reckless way, as if merely to keep himself occupied, but as he turned his eyes from his canvas from time to time to study the beautiful model, standing there in that imperious att.i.tude, strange, mysterious, and weird, with the black enmasking above the graceful voluptuous figure, he lost more and more the self-command he had maintained.

For a few minutes he told himself that he was mistaken, that her eyes must be closed; but it was, he knew too well, a mere mental subterfuge: they were gleaming through that black network, and piercing him to the very soul.

He could bear it no longer, and again throwing down brushes and palette, he paced the room for a minute or two before turning to the marble figure standing so motionless before him.

"I tell you I cannot paint," he cried angrily. "It is as if you were casting some spell over me. I must see your face. Why do you persist in this fancy? Your masked countenance takes off my attention. I beg-- I insist--remove that veil."

"I do not quite understand monsieur," she said coldly. "He speaks in a language that is not mine, neither is it his. He confuses me. I am trying to be a patient model, but everything is wrong to-day. Will he tell me what I should do to give him satisfaction?"

"Take off that veil!" cried Dale.

The model caught up the cloak and flung it around her shoulders.

"Now, quick!" cried Dale excitedly, "that veil!"