The little clock on the mantel had long since chimed noon, and the hour hand had crept around the circle nearly to five before he finally laid aside his brushes and palette, and stepped back to view his finished work.
"It is wonderful wonderful," he said, aloud. "Oh, my precious darling!"
There was a sound behind him as of some one choking. He turned and stood face to face with Evelin March. She was very pale, and her eyes burned like two stars.
"Who is that woman?" she said, fiercely.
He knew that she had overheard him, but he endeavored to address her calmly. He felt the cowardliness of his nature rising, and he cursed himself inwardly.
"I I was not expecting you to-day, Evelin," he stammered; "to-morrow, you know, is the day for your sitting."
She did not take her eyes from the portrait; she had gone very close to it and as she turned upon him to reply there was a mingled look of terror and ferocity in her face.
"No, it is quite evident that you did not expect me, and that you were too much absorbed to remember or care when my sitting was due. And now you will please to answer my question. Who is that woman? "
What would he not have given, at that moment, to have had courage to say, "She is to be my wife;" but the magnificent fury of the woman before him, and the recollection of the shameful words of love he had spoken to her, overwhelmed him.
"She is a a Miss Delorme, I believe; a sitter of mine," he managed to say at last.
"You believe! You lie! You know who she is, and you love her! You love that nun-faced baby! I heard your words. You believe you"
"Evelin, stop!"
"Don't speak to me, you traitor! 'Your precious darling.' Oh, I could kill her! I will kill her!"
He could not understand this wild fury, that seemed to be half inspired by a sort of terror. She had turned to the portrait again and was examining it, oblivious, for the moment, to all else. Then suddenly she turned upon him again with blazing eyes.
"I will kill her!" she hissed. "I could kill her with that ," and she pointed to the jeweled stiletto on the wall.
She was so magnificent in her rage that he could not help admiring her through it all. The love for him which had aroused this tempest was so fierce that he felt his savage blood beginning to throb with an answering glow. He felt that once more he was about to be a traitor to all that was good within him. The ground was slipping from under his feet. The glamour of her voluptuous beauty was ruling his brain like the fumes of liquor. His eyes, too, were beginning to shine fiercely, but not with anger.
"Evelin," he said, "listen. You know I love you and have from the first. She is nothing to me. The words that you overheard were addressed only to the picture. It is my masterpiece. I was not thinking of the original." And down in his heart the small voice was whispering, "Coward traitor fool!"
But the hot blood of passion was sweeping through his veins, and he heeded it not. He put out his hand and laid it upon her arm.
"Don't touch me!" she said, angrily, but the expression in her eyes softened. He saw his advantage and followed it up.
"Evelin," he said, huskily, "I love you I love you!" Again he laid his hand upon her and this time she allowed it to remain. They were standing near the curtained arch of the adjoining room. He parted back the heavy draperies, and gently drew her within.
The savage blood was rioting fiercely within him. He caught both her hands in his and drew her to his embrace. She hid her face upon his shoulder, and would not let him touch her lips. Other than this she made no further resistance. Half dragging, and half carrying her he approached a large divan that stood in a little alcove on the opposite side of the room. Suddenly he took her bodily in his arms and they sank down upon it together. For a second, only; then, with a quick powerful effort she threw him backward and sprang to her feet, staring about her with a wild, startled look in her eyes.
Goetze, wholly at a loss to account for the suddenness and fierceness of the resistance, was for a moment stunned. As he recovered himself and made a movement toward her, she gave him one quick, piteous look a look that recalled to him suddenly and strangely the beautiful, innocent girl whom he had wronged and forgotten the face of Eva Delorme then, as if seized with sudden panic she sped from the room, out through the dim studio and into the dusky hall-way beyond.
He heard the opening and closing of the outside door, and knew that she was gone. Then the tide of reaction swept over him. The glamour of conquest had passed, and there remained only the shame, the treachery and the remorse.
With a curse of anguish he flung himself down upon the floor, and lay groveling with his face in the dust. The moments flew by unheeded. An hour passed. The electric lamps were turned on, and a white ray of light shot in through the half-curtained window. The little clock on the mantel chimed the hour.
The sound roused him. Starting to his feet he gazed stupidly about him for a moment as if undecided what to do, then seizing his hat from the wall rack he hurried out through the studio and the dark hall-way without pausing to remove his working jacket, or to lock the door. Out into the street where people were hurrying home, chattering and laughing, and glancing only for a second at the figure in the velvet studio coat and broad hat, wondering a little at the dark, intense face that flashed so swiftly past them toward the glare and confusion of the business center.