"You look," said Adrienne, studying his countenance in the pallor of
the moonlight, "as though you were seeing ghosts."
"I am," said Samson. "Let's go."
Adrienne had not yet seen her portrait. Samson had needed a few hours
of finishing when he left New York, though it was work which could be
done away from the model. So, it was natural that, when the party
reached Paris, Adrienne should soon insist on crossing the Pont d'
Alexandre III. to his studio near the "Boule Mich'" for an
inspection of her commissioned canvas. For a while, she wandered about
the business-like place, littered with the gear of the painter's craft.
It was, in a way, a form of mind-reading, for Samson's brush was the
tongue of his soul.
The girl's eyes grew thoughtful, as she saw that he still drew the
leering, saturnine face of Jim Asberry. He had not outgrown hate, then?
But she said nothing, until he brought out and set on an easel her own
portrait. For a moment, she gasped with sheer delight for the colorful
mastery of the technique, and she would have been hard to please had she
not been delighted with the conception of herself mirrored in the
canvas. It was a face through which the soul showed, and the soul was
strong and flawless. The girl's personality radiated from the canvas
--and yet--A disappointed little look crossed and clouded her eyes. She
was conscious of an indefinable catch of pain at her heart.
Samson stepped forward, and his waiting eyes, too, were disappointed.
"You don't like it, Drennie?" he anxiously questioned. But she smiled
in answer, and declared: "I love it."
He went out a few minutes later to telephone for her to Mrs. Lescott,
and gave Adrienne carte blanche to browse among his portfolios
and stacked canvases until his return. In a few minutes, she discovered
one of those efforts which she called his "rebellious pictures."
These were such things as he painted, using no model except memory
perhaps, not for the making of finished pictures, but merely to give
outlet to his feelings; an outlet which some men might have found in
talk.
This particular canvas was roughly blocked in, and it was elementally
simple, but each brush stroke had been thrown against the surface with
the concentrated fire and energy of a blow, except the strokes that had
painted the face, and there the brush had seemed to kiss the canvas.
The picture showed a barefooted girl, standing, in barbaric simplicity
of dress, in the glare of the arena, while a gaunt lion crouched eying
her. Her head was lifted as though she were listening to faraway music.
In the eyes was indomitable courage. That canvas was at once a
declaration of love, and a miserere. Adrienne set it up beside
her own portrait, and, as she studied the two with her chin resting on
her gloved hand, her eyes cleared of questioning. Now, she knew what
she missed in her own more beautiful likeness. It had been painted with
all the admiration of the mind. This other had been dashed off straight
from the heart--and this other was Sally! She replaced the sketch where
she had found it, and Samson, returning, found her busy with little
sketches of the Seine.