"They want to hear Nan play," she persisted.

"And to see me paint?" he suggested ironically.

She ignored his retort and, turning to Nan, appealed to her directly.

"Shan't you come?" she asked bluntly.

"Well, if Maryon wants me to sit for him--" Nan began hesitatingly.

"The sooner the portrait's begun, the sooner it will be finished,"

interposed Rooke. "Can't you dispense with your fiancee to-morrow, Trenby? . . . But just as you like, of course," he added courteously.

Roger hesitated. The frank appeal was disarming, shaking the suspicion he was harbouring.

"Let's leave it like this," continued Rooke, following up his advantage. "If the light's good, you'll let me have Nan, but if it's a dull day she shall be swept into the gilded portals of the Peabodys."

"Very well," agreed Roger, rather reluctantly.

"I think you'll find," said Isobel, as she and Roger strolled back to the car, "that the light _will_ be quite good enough for painting."

And that seemingly harmless remark lodged in Roger's mind and rankled there throughout the whole of the following day when the Peabody lunch took place as arranged--but lacking the presence of Maryon Rooke and Nan.

CHAPTER x.x.x

SEEKING TO FORGET

"And this is my holiday!" exclaimed Maryon, standing back from his easel the better to view the effect of his work. "Nan, you've a lot to answer for."

Another fortnight had gone by, and the long hours pa.s.sed is the music-room, which had been temporarily converted into a studio, were beginning to show fruit in the shape of a nearly completed portrait.

Nan slipped down from the makeshift "throne."

"May I come and look?"

Rooke moved aside.

"Yes, if you like. I've been working at the face to-day."

She regarded the picture for some time in silence, Rooke watching her intently the while.

"Well?" he said at last, interrogatively.

"Maryon"--she spoke slowly--"do I really look like--that?"

He nodded.

"Yes," he replied quietly. "When you let yourself go--when you take off the meaningless mask I complained of."

With that uncanny discernment of his--that faculty for painting people's souls, as Nan described it--he had sensed the pa.s.sionate, wistful, unhappy spirit which looked out from her eyes, and the face on the canvas gave back a dumb appeal that was almost painfully arresting.

Nan frowned.

"You'd no right to do it," she exclaimed a little breathlessly.

"I painted what I saw."

She was silent, tremulously disturbed. He could see the quick rise and fall of her breast beneath the filmy white of her gown.

"Nan," he went on in low, tense tones. "Did you think I could be with you, day after day like this, and not--find out? Could I have painted your face, loving each line of it, and not learned the truth?" She stretched out her hand as though to check him, but he paid no heed.

"The truth that Roger is nothing to you--never will be!"

"He's the man I'm going to marry," she said unevenly.

"And I'm only the man who loves you! . . . But because I failed once, putting love second, must I be punished eternally? I'm ready to put it first now--to lay all I have and all I've done on its altar."

"What--what do you mean?" she stammered.

He put his hands lightly on her shoulders and drew her nearer to him.

"Is it hard to guess, Nan? . . . I want you to leave this life you hate and come with me. Let me take you away--right away from it all--and, somewhere we'll find happiness together."

She stared at him with wide, horrified eyes.

"Oh, you're mad--you're mad!"

With a struggle she freed herself from his grasp and stood away from him.

"Listen," she said. "Listen to me and then you'll understand what you're asking. I'm not happy--that's true. But it's my own fault, not Roger's. I ought never to have given him my promise. There was someone else--"

"Mallory!" broke in Rooke.

"Yes--Peter. It's quite simple. We met too late. But I learned then what love means. Once I asked him--I _begged_ him--to take me away with him. And he wouldn't. I'd have gone to the ends of the earth with him. I'd go to-morrow if he'd take me! But he won't. And he never will." She paused, panting a little. "And now," she went on, with a hard laugh, "I don't think you'll ask me again to go away with you!"

"Yes, I shall. Mallory may be able to live at such high alt.i.tudes that he can throw over his life's happiness--and yours, too--for a scruple.

I can't--and I don't want to. I love you, and I'm selfish enough to be ready to take you any minute that you'll come."

Throwing one arm about her shoulders, he turned her face up to his.

"Don't you understand?" he went on hoa.r.s.ely. "I'm flesh and blood man, and you're the woman I love."

The hazel eyes blazed with a curious light, like flame, and she shivered a little, fighting the man's personality--battling against that strange kinship of temperament by which he always drew her.

"I can wait," he said, quietly releasing her. "You can't go on long as you're living now; the tension's too high. And when you're through with it--come to me, Nan! I'd at least make you happier than Trenby ever will."

Without reply she moved towards the door and he stood aside, allowing her to pa.s.s out of the room in silence.