CHAPTER XXXVII.

WHEN he had gone away that evening and I had returned to the studio to put out the lights and see that all was safe, it being past midnight, I found her there, beside the work of her hands. A long, loose, white robe clung lose to her, and fell about her feet; she looked taller, whiter, lovelier, perhaps, than ever, but it seemed to me that there was in her beauty something unearthly: one could have imagined her to be that | | 350 Sospitra of her lover's poem, who was lifted above all earthly woes save the two supreme sorrows,--Love and Death.

She sat down on the wooden bench that stood near the statue, and motioned me to stay.

"You brought Maryx here?" she asked me.

"Yes: I thought you were asleep."

"I seldom sleep. In my chamber I could hear your voices, but not what you said. Does it seem good to him--what I have done?"

"It seems great."

Then I told her all that he said to me; and the noble soul of him seemed to me to shine through the words like the light through a lamp of alabaster; and I saw that they touched her deeply. Her sad eyes gathered moisture in them, and her grand mouth, always so resolutely closed as though afraid that any reproach of her lost lover should escape them, trembled and grew soft.

"He is too good to me," she said, at length. "Oh, why was I born only to bring so much misery to others!"

"Nay, there is some misery dearer to us than joy," said I. "Maryx loves you."

A shudder ran through her, and she stopped me.

"Never speak of love to me. A woman faithful will not even think that any can feel love for her,--save one: it is almost infidelity."

"Nay, I spoke not of love so: would I insult you? I mean simply and truly that his love for you is great enough to vanquish any remembrance of himself,--great enough, too, to make him hold his hand because you bid him: greater there cannot be."

She put out her hand to silence me.

"He received me into his house when I had no friend and no hope in the world, and he was so good to me. If he would but forget me! I have been thankless. He taught me the strength and the secrets of the arts, and I have given him in return only pain and ingratitude."

"Dear, it is on pain that love lives longest."

Alas! that she knew. She was silent some moments, whilst above her rose the beauty of her own creation.

Since she had returned to the pursuit and the occupation of art, the youth in her had revived; the numbness and | | 351 deadness which had seemed like a half-paralyzed intelligence had passed off her; she had gathered up the clue and lifted up the sword, and, though it was love that nerved her and not art, the effort had brought back inspiration, and inspiration to the artist is the very breath of life: without it his body may live, but his soul does not.

She looked at her statue with wistful eyes.

"You will send it to Paris."

"In Paris. Before showing it here?"

Yes: he does not come here; he would not see it."

A deep flush came on the paleness of her face, as it always did at the very mention of Hilarion.

"He will know that I have made it,--he will believe in it," she said, a little later,--"because he saw me make the Love in Venice."

"Where did that Love go?"

"It was sent from Venice in a ship; and the ship foundered, and went down in a storm."

And the statue was lost?"

"Yes."

She leaned her head upon her hands, so that I could not see her face. She had never before spoken to me of that time. I stood silent, thinking how terrible an augury had been that foundered Love, sunk to the bottom of the deep sea, companioned only with the dead.

Almost I longed to tell her of all that he had said by the temple of Agrippa, but I dared not. She believed that he had loved her once: I had not courage to say to her, Even his first caresses were a lie!

To her Hilarion remained a creature who could do no wrong: I had not heart to say to her, There was no sort of truth in him ever, not even when he swore to you eternal faith.

"And if he do read the message of your marble," I asked her, abruptly, "if he do read it, if he be touched by it,--if he come back to you, what then? Will you let him come--now?"

Her face was leaning on her hands, but I could see the blush that covered her throat and rose to her temples.

"It would be different now," she muttered. "Then I did not know; no, I did not know. I obeyed him. I had no idea that I became worthless in his sight. When you spoke to me | | 352 so bitterly in Venice, you pained me, but I did not understand: I never did until those friends of his in Paris (he called them friends) wrote to me and sent me their jewels when he was away. It is not that I care what the whole world thinks me, but to be lowered in his sight, to seem to him only a frail foolish thing--like the rest----"

A great heavy sob heaved her heart; she lifted her face to mine: it was burning now, with an indignant pain in her uplifted eyes.

"Look! what does it mean?--who is to tell the ways of the world? That vile woman whom he lived with here in Rome, she is faithless and cruel and false, and betrayed him as well as her husband, and yet he goes back to her and the world sees no shame in her, though she wears his jewels about her neck and dishonors her children. And I, who, sleeping and waking, never think but of him, who have never a thought he might not know, who am his alone, his always, in life and in eternity, if eternity there be, I am shameful, you say, and he has ceased to love me because I loved him too well. Who can understand? I cannot."

I knew not what to say to her: the laws and the ways of the world are sadly full of injustice, and cast in stiff lines that fit in but ill with the changeful and wayward needs of human life. I knew not what to say.

She lapsed into silence. It was natural to her to endure: it was very seldom that any reproach escaped her either of fate or of him. Her brain perplexed itself wearily over the problem of where her fault had lain by which she had lost him: she was too loyal to see that the fault was in himself.

"Shall it go, then, to Paris?" I said, to lead her thoughts back to her labors.

She gave a sign of assent.

"May it be sold?"

"Ah, no!--never!"

"It is to come back to you, then?"

"Unless he wish for it."

"Would you give it to him?"

"I have given him my life!"

"Shall I put your name on it, or will you carve it there?"

"No. Let it go as the work of a pupil of Maryx. That is true."

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"Maryx thinks it will give you a fame not second to his own."

"Fame? I do not care for fame."

She looked up at the marble once more.

"Once I used to think I should like all the ages that are to come to echo my name; but that is nothing to me now. If only it may speak to him,--that is all I want. Perhaps you do not believe, because he has left me; but indeed when I was with him he heard only the nightingales, and the apes and the asps never came near. Do you remember when we walked by Nero's fields that night of Carnival, you said he was like Phineus? But the evil spirits never had any power on him when I was there: he told me so, so often. If only by that marble I can speak to him!--if one could only put one's soul and one's life into the thing one creates, and die in one's body, so as to be alive in art alone, and close to what one loves!--there are legends----"

She wound her arms close about the white limbs of her statue, and laid her lips to them as she had done to the Hermes, and leaned on the cold sculpture her beating breaking heart.

"Take my life away with you," she cried to it; "take it to him!--take it to him!"

Then she broke down and wept, and sobbed bitterly, as women do.