第83章

Passion never plays the game.It, at all events, is free from self-consciousness, and pride; from dignity, nerves, scruples, cant, moralities; from hypocrisies, and wisdom, and fears for pocket, and position in this world and the next.Well did the old painters limn it as an arrow or a wind! If it had not been as swift and darting, Earth must long ago have drifted through space untenanted--to let....

After that fevered night Lennan went to his studio at the usual hour and naturally did not do a stroke of work.He was even obliged to send away his model.The fellow had been his hairdresser, but, getting ill, and falling on dark days, one morning had come to the studio, to ask with manifest shame if his head were any good.After having tested his capacity for standing still, and giving him some introductions, Lennan had noted him down: "Five feet nine, good hair, lean face, something tortured and pathetic.Give him a turn if possible." The turn had come, and the poor man was posing in a painful attitude, talking, whenever permitted, of the way things had treated him, and the delights of cutting hair.This morning he took his departure with the simple pleasure of one fully paid for services not rendered.

And so, walking up and down, up and down, the sculptor waited for Nell's knock.What would happen now? Thinking had made nothing clear.Here was offered what every warm-blooded man whose Spring is past desires--youth and beauty, and in that youth a renewal of his own; what all men save hypocrites and Englishmen would even admit that they desired.And it was offered to one who had neither religious nor moral scruples, as they are commonly understood.In theory he could accept.In practice he did not as yet know what he could do.One thing only he had discovered during the night's reflections: That those who scouted belief in the principle of Liberty made no greater mistake than to suppose that Liberty was dangerous because it made a man a libertine.To those with any decency, the creed of Freedom was--of all--the most enchaining.

Easy enough to break chains imposed by others, fling his cap over the windmill, and cry for the moment at least: I am unfettered, free! Hard, indeed, to say the same to his own unfettered Self!

Yes, his own Self was in the judgment-seat; by his own verdict and decision he must abide.And though he ached for the sight of her, and his will seemed paralyzed--many times already he had thought:

It won't do! God help me!

Then twelve o'clock had come, and she had not.Would 'The Girl on the Magpie Horse' be all he would see of her to-day--that unsatisfying work, so cold, and devoid of witchery? Better have tried to paint her--with a red flower in her hair, a pout on her lips, and her eyes fey, or languorous.Goya could have painted her!

And then, just as he had given her up, she came.

After taking one look at his face, she slipped in ever so quietly, like a very good child....Marvellous the instinct and finesse of the young when they are women!...Not a vestige in her of yesterday's seductive power; not a sign that there had been a yesterday at all--just confiding, like a daughter.Sitting there, telling him about Ireland, showing him the little batch of drawings she had done while she was away.Had she brought them because she knew they would make him feel sorry for her? What could have been less dangerous, more appealing to the protective and paternal side of him than she was that morning; as if she only wanted what her father and her home could not give her--only wanted to be a sort of daughter to him!