Part 7

As for Sonia herself, never had she been in a state of such abject self-abasement. She had donned her gorgeous raiment and gone off to that dinner in exultant self-confidence, and had never doubted her ability to conform circumstances to her will, and to make exactly the impression upon Harold which she desired him to have. What, then, was the secret of her complete and humiliating failure? She asked herself this question, and immediately tried to shut fast her ears to the answer which her heart gave. She had confidently believed, up to this hour of her life, that her woman’s pride was strong enough for any demands which she could possibly make upon it; but it had failed her. She had passed a sleepless night after that dinner, and it took tremendous effort to go to her work next morning. She did it only because she knew that if she did not the news of her absence would reach Harold, and she could not endure the thought of the motive to which he might attribute it. Perhaps the most poignant recollection which rankled in Sonia’s mind was the thought that, in her helplessness, she had made an appeal to him by that look which he had answered with such strength-giving kindness. It had enabled her to get through with the remaining time; but now, as she thought of it, she felt that he had taken it as an appeal of weakness which he had been strong and merciful enough to respond to.

This thought, whenever it recurred, made her cheeks tingle.

And what could she do to right herself? She dared not make any more self-confident plans, only to have them end in fresh humiliation. She now felt afraid of seeing Harold, and it seemed to her that the utmost that was in her power was to be regular and faithful to her work, in the hope that the report of such a sensible course would reach his ears.

Martha made a weak little effort to get her friend to come to her again, but to this she received such a faint response that she let the subject drop. All sorts of conjectures were busy in her mind to account for the present phenomena. She even wondered if she and her brother, with their American education and ideas, could have done anything which offered an affront to the state and dignity of their princess-guest. But this could hardly be. Sonia was as friendly and affectionate as ever, though she now seemed to wish to confine their intercourse to the limits of the atelier, and did not even ask her to come to her own apartments. So Martha was free to give up all her spare time to her brother, and they had numerous trips to the theater and opera; but somehow the _solitude à deux_ with her beloved Harold had not the zest in it which she had counted on beforehand. He was certainly changed, this brother of hers. He had grown more serious, and was given to long silences. She even thought that it was an effort to him to be so much in her society, and that he would perhaps prefer to be alone. This was a hard blow to Martha, but she bore it without making a sign, and was glad of the excuse which her work gave her to be much away from him. He also had important business in Paris, and often worked for many hours at a time, which, as Martha told herself, accounted for his rather careworn expression. She even thought he was getting thin, and begged him not to stay on because of her, as she would far rather give up her lessons and join her mother than be a trouble and injury to him. This, however, he would not listen to, and he even declared it his intention to stay in Paris until after the opening of the Salon, now only a week or so off.

Day after day went by, and although Sonia and Martha were together at least one half of their conscious time, they seemed to have in some way gone backward instead of forward in their intimacy. They still lunched together daily, and had ample opportunity for talk; but there seemed now a dearth of topics such as they had never been aware of before, and a sense of distance had arisen which made it hard for Martha to realize the familiarity and nearness which had marked their former intercourse.

One afternoon, when the work had been going more than usually well, and the model had been more than usually interesting, Sonia and Martha, their easels side by side, had lingered in the atelier after every one else had gone. It was very agreeable to be able to paint and talk together, and the princess, whose carriage had been announced some time before, gladly agreed to wait with Martha until hers should arrive.

While they were talking, a knock was heard at the door, and as all rules were relaxed at this hour, both women called out, “_Entrez!_”

The door was opened, and around the corner of the old sail-cloth screen the tall figure of Harold appeared. The day was raw and chilly, and he wore a fur-lined coat with its large fur collar drawn close around his throat, and carried his high hat and his stick in his hand.

At sight of him Martha uttered a little exclamation of pleasure, and gaily called to him to come on. Sonia, in spite of the jerk at her heart-strings and the rush of blood through all her veins, felt, taken unprepared as she was, a sudden sense of strength and self-possession. Her color deepened, and by a swift motion she drew herself erect; and as she stood there in her old green skirt and red silk blouse, she looked so workman-like and charming that, as Martha drew her brother forward toward their easels, her heart quite glowed with pride in both her dear companions. She always adored Harold in that coat, and Sonia in that dress, and her sensitive organism seemed to be receiving impressions of pleasure from the minds of each. Harold stood still, a little distance off, and bowed, with a look that expressed some hesitation or uncertainty. Looking past his sister and at her friend, he said:

“Do you permit me to look at your work?”

“Oh, if you care to,” said Sonia in a light and natural tone. “It’s a mere daub of a study. One goes through a great deal of discouragement in a place like this, and a great deal of one’s time is spent in acquiring a knowledge of one’s ignorance. After that is quite mastered, things get easier. I think I may say that I have graduated in that branch of study, and am now ready to go on to the more advanced ones.”

Harold stood still, and looked at her picture. She was thinking how natural it would be to ask him if he thought she had improved. He was thinking how natural it would be to tell her that she had. Martha was thinking how beautiful and full of charm they both were, and almost wishing that the atelier could be filled with students to look at such models.

It occurred to her now that Harold remained silent unnecessarily long, and she was afraid that he did not appreciate her friend’s work; so she herself began to speak in voluble praise of it.

Sonia felt a strong impulse to check her, and to explain to her that he was always silent when he really liked a thing exceedingly, and that she therefore felt delighted that he said nothing.

Harold, however, forced himself to utter a few words of praise that sounded very stiff and conventional, and a sort of bewildered look, which Martha could not understand, came into his eyes. Sonia understood it by its reflection in her own heart. She felt as if she were in some strange, confusing dream, where the conditions around her were sad and constrained, and yet which she felt she must hold on to and keep conscious of, lest they should vanish and leave her utterly empty-hearted, estranged, and desolate. While Martha exhibited her own work, and proceeded to pick it to pieces in imitation of what Etienne would say to-morrow, the man and woman standing behind her, so near that they almost touched, were feeling, from this proximity, a force that went to the very deeps of both their natures. Hardness, resentment, wounded pride, regret--all these were parts of this force in each; but there was in it, too, something stronger than any of them, something that warned Sonia that she had better not trust herself, at the same moment that Harold turned abruptly away, and said that he had an engagement, and could not wait longer. He explained in a hurried, confused speech, out of which it was hard to get any intelligent meaning, that he had forgotten Martha’s need of the carriage, and had kept it waiting somewhere for him, which was his excuse for coming to the atelier to see if she had waited or was gone.

Martha saw by his manner that something was wrong, and made haste to put up her brushes, and follow him into the cloak-room, insisting that Sonia should come also, as she objected to leaving her there alone.

Sonia obediently did as she was told, but she felt as if she were stumbling along half blindly, and had not the will-power to object or protest.

She put on her hat, and was reaching for her heavy cloak, when a strong, brown hand, specked with two small dark moles just below the thumb, took it down from the peg, and folded it around her.

As she reached to draw to the collar, her hand touched his. If the sight of that hand had been familiar to her, what was its touch? She felt herself trembling, and her quick breaths almost suffocated her. She had just power to control herself until she was in her carriage, and alone. Then, falling back upon the cushions, her eyes closed, and she passed into a state of semi-consciousness.

She did not really faint, for she was all the time aware that the necessity for self-control was for the moment gone, and that she could rest, and cease to fight.

Long before the carriage stopped at her own door she had recovered, and realized it all. She knew that, miserable as the last two years had been, she had gradually been gaining strength, and recovering her power for the struggle of life. She might have gone on, and met the future bravely, if she had never seen this man again. Not now, however--not after she had heard his voice, and met his eyes, and touched his hand. This encounter had deprived her of her strength so absolutely that she longed only for the safety to be found in flight.

But how would that sudden flight appear to him? That was the question.

XIII

SONIA found herself, after that meeting, in a state of helpless irresolution. She could take no action. She could not even make plans. She could only drift. There was only one solace--work; and she was now generally the last person at the atelier, staying there until the light failed. She had got over all her timidity about being there after the others. The old concierge was apt to put her head in now and then, to nod to her, and give her a sense of protection; and sometimes she would come in and chat with her, while she was doing such sketchy sort of tidying up as an atelier admits of.

A few days had gone by without her having seen or heard of Harold. Martha seemed to divine that the princess wanted to talk only of her work and her atelier interests, and had tacitly adapted herself to her friend. They often worked together now, after regular hours, but Martha generally found it necessary to go before her friend was ready.

One afternoon Martha had left rather earlier than usual, in order to keep an appointment with her brother, and Sonia was at work all alone, save for the companionship of her little terrier Inkling--a tiny, jet-black creature that wore a collar of little silver bells, which, Sonia had amused Martha by saying, had caused some one to give him the name of “Tinkling Inkling.” She did not often bring her pet to the atelier, for fear he might be troublesome. This afternoon, however, she knew that Etienne would not be there; and when the little fellow, palpitating with eagerness, had looked at her beseechingly from the seat of the carriage where she had just shut him in, she had suddenly snapped her fingers and twisted her lips into a sound of encouragement, and he had leaped out of the carriage window, and followed her with an air of perfect understanding that this unusual privilege made a demand on him to be on his best behavior.

He had been propriety itself all the afternoon, and Sonia had seen and appreciated his heroic self-control in not barking at the model, whom he had looked at with inveterate disapproval, only expressed by one little whispered growl. The class of society to which the model belonged were Inkling’s natural enemies; and whether, in spite of nudeness, he recognized this man as a member of that class, or whether the nudeness itself outraged his sense of propriety, certain it was that, during all the hours in which his mistress was painting, Inkling lay at her feet, with his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon his enemy, ready to take advantage of the first excuse to fly at him.

No such occasion had arisen, however; and now the model was gone, and Inkling, off duty at last, was enjoying the reaction of a sound nap at his mistress’s feet.

The room was so profoundly still that Sonia was startled by a rap at the door, gently though it was given. Even Inkling did not wake at it. She looked up from her easel, expecting to see her footman come to announce the carriage, or some workman delivering supplies for the atelier, and saw, instead, Harold Keene standing only a few feet from her. She knew that the swing-door had closed behind him, and that they were alone together. Her heart shook, and for a moment she could not speak. He came forward a little, and said in French:

“I beg your pardon, princess. I came for my sister to fill an engagement. Is she not here?”

“She has just gone,” answered Sonia, also in French. “She expected to meet you at the apartment.”

“I have just been there. Not finding her, I came on here. I suppose I passed her on the way.”

Inkling had opened his eyes at the sound of voices, but, seeing that the model-throne was empty and his enemy gone, he had not troubled himself further. As Harold ceased speaking, a look of sudden interest came over the dog, and he got up, his little bells a-tinkle, and trotted across to where Harold stood.

No sooner had he looked at him than he uttered a gruff bark of surprise, and no sooner had he snuffed once at the legs of his trousers than he grew frantic with excitement. He barked and yelped, and jumped up on him with such evidences of wild delight that no man with a kind heart in his bosom could have refused some recognition of such a welcome.

Harold stooped and patted him, speaking to him in English.

Somehow, to have him treat a dog like that, and to address her in cold formality, in a foreign language, by a pompous title which did not belong to her, seemed to Sonia wilfully cruel.

Inkling, still frantic with delight, left Harold, and rushed over to her, yelping and barking, and shaking his tail violently, looking up in her face with eloquent insistency. Then he ran back to Harold, and again back to her, with fluttering agitation.

Sonia’s spirit did not falter, however, and her voice was firm and steady as she said in English:

“Why do you speak to Inkling in English, and to me in French?”

“Because Inkling and I are old friends, who have a common language, while the Princess Mannernorff is a stranger and a foreigner.”

“It seems very childish to keep up that farce.”

“I thought it was your wish.”

“And you despise me, probably, for the deception I have practised in passing myself off for the Princess Mannernorff! I did not do it deliberately,” she said, with an almost childlike air of contrition and confession. “It has hurt me all along to be deceiving Martha; but some one told her I was a Russian princess, and as my mother had been one before her marriage, and my aunt, with whom I live, is the Princess Mannernorff, I let the false impression remain, and even took advantage of it. It was wrong, I know; but I did want to hold on to Martha’s friendship a little longer. However,” she said, her face and voice hardening, “it is simply a question of time; and a few weeks sooner or later, what does it matter?”

“Why is it a question of time?” said Harold. “Why should you not keep that friendship always, if you care for it? Martha shall know nothing from me.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Sonia said:

“I thought it possible that you might disapprove of our friendship.”

“Why should I? It is a thing absolutely between Martha and yourself.”

“She would cast me off immediately if she knew the truth, and any moment an accident may reveal it to her.”

“Such an accident is most unlikely. It could, as things are now, come about only through me, and I shall be on my guard.”

How confident and strong he was! It roused all the pride in her. The sense of weakness which had overcome her at their last meeting, and which for a moment had threatened her in this one, was utterly gone.

“Besides,” went on Harold, quickly, “I believe you are wholly wrong in thinking that she would give you up if, by chance, she should discover what you have so carefully guarded from her. I see no reason why she should.”

He had spoken in English, since she had criticized his using French, and Inkling seemed at least partly satisfied, as he stood midway between the two, with his front legs wide apart, as if to keep his body firm, while his tail wriggled wildly, and his head turned from one to the other with a quickness which was enough to make him dizzy. He was alertly aware of them, but they had both forgotten him, in the keen absorption in each other which underlay their outward composure.

“Have you, then, told her nothing?” said Sonia, in answer to his last words.

“Only the simple fact.”

“What fact?” she said, looking him in the face with a certain hardness and defiance.

“That the woman whom I had loved no longer loved me; that she had repudiated my name and every connection with me, and had asked for a divorce, which I was taking all possible steps to give her as soon as it could be done.”

“And do you think that Martha, feeling as she does, would continue the acquaintance of a woman who had cast off her brother with no stronger reason than that?”

“It was sufficient for me. There could not be a stronger reason for divorce than absence of love on either side.”

“The world does not agree with you,” she said.

“Yet I fancy Martha would. If it came to remarriage on either side, her verdict would perhaps be condemnation; but I think she would consider separation a higher thing than a loveless marriage.”

Somehow, there was a spirit in these words that touched her heart. Her voice, for the first time, was a little unsteady as she said:

“You do believe that, at least! You do feel that I could never think of another marriage!”

“I have always felt it. Indeed, I may say I have known it. I know that you see the inevitableness of all this as clearly as I do. I have often wished, for your sake, that I had never seen you, to put this blight upon your life.”

“And have not I also blighted yours? Do you suppose that I never think of that?”

“It need not trouble you, if you do. In my case there was a compensation, and a sufficient one. In your case there is none.”

She knew what he meant; that his love for her, and that happy month of marriage, had been enough to pay him for having afterward lost her; and she knew that he held the fact that she had never really loved him to have barred her from any compensation at all. Why did she so resent his assuming this? Had she not told him, in language of such emphatic decision that it rang even now in her ears, that she had found out that she had made a great mistake, and that she had never loved him? He had simply taken her at her word.

She wilfully ignored the true meaning of his last words, as she went on:

“It is a mistake to think that my life has no compensations. My work, whether it ever amounts to anything or not, is a great compensation. The friendship of Martha is another. You are very good to wish not to take that from me; but the present sham conditions cannot be kept up after we separate. Fortune has favored us almost miraculously as it is. She heard that there was a Russian princess studying here, and some one mistakenly pointed me out for her. I had already seen her name on her canvases, and knowing that your mother and sisters were in Paris, of course I knew exactly who she was. Independent of this, her face and manner had strongly attracted me, so I saw no reason why we might not be friends, provided I could keep from her who I was. As soon as I saw that she believed me to be the princess, the fact that my aunt was a Russian and had Russian servants opened the way to my carrying on the idea; and so far there has been no trouble. My little Russian name for Sophia helped me, too. If she had known me as Sophia or Sophie, she would probably have recoiled from me, even if she had had no suspicion as to my identity.”

“I beg you not to have that thought,” said Harold. “If the time ever comes when the truth must be declared to Martha, let me be the one to tell her; and I promise you there shall be no recoil--no lessening of her friendship for you.”

“Thank you,” said Sonia, coldly. “You were always a generous man.”

Her tone smote discordantly upon Harold. It seemed a sort of compulsory tribute to him, which he had no fancy for from her.

“I am thinking of Martha, too,” he said. “She is very lonely in her life, and rarely goes out to any one, in spite of her ardent nature. This friendship with you is very valuable to her, and I am anxious that nothing shall disturb it.”

“Thank you for correcting me,” returned the other, quickly; “though I did not really suppose that it was for my sake that you were willing to take so much trouble.”

She knew that this speech was silly, petulant, and unworthy of her, but she wished him to understand that she asked and expected nothing of him. He could not be so cool and steady during this interview unless he had ceased to care for her. She quite realized that he had, and she wished him to know that she accepted it as a matter of course.

Inkling, meantime, had grown very uneasy. He felt that things were not going well, and he now began to show symptoms of distress, instead of the wild delight of the moment before. He ran whimpering from one to the other; and when they took no notice of him, he sprang upon the lap of his mistress, and, uttering the most expressive plaints and beseechings, tried to lick her face. Sonia, in a fit of irritation very characteristic of her, gave him a hard little slap, which sent him out of her lap, whining, and running to Harold for pity. He was not really hurt; and she felt cross with the clever little brute for posing as a victim so successfully.

“Don’t touch him!” she cried imperatively to Harold. “He’s only pretending to get your pity. You sha’n’t pat him or speak to him. If you do, I’ll be very angry.”

The effect which these words had upon Harold would have surprised her, could she have known it. They were so like her, so absolutely herself, that they brought back the past with a rush; and it seemed such a hollow pretense to suppose that they were separated, and compelled to be as strangers to each other, that he came nearer to losing his head than he had done yet.

Ignoring Inkling’s fawnings and plaints, he said suddenly:

“I am forgetting that Martha is waiting for me”; and then, changing his tone, and speaking in French, he added:

“May I take you to your carriage, princess?”

She answered him in French, as prompt and easy as himself. She thanked him for his offer, but declined it, saying that her servant would let her know when her carriage arrived. She added that she was not ready to leave the atelier yet, as she had lost time, which she must now make up.