She had told him her story from beginning to end, as far as she
herself comprehended it. She was lying sideways now, in the depths of
a large armchair, her cheek cushioned on the upholstered wings.
Her hat, with its cheap blue enamel pins sticking in the crown, lay on
his desk; her hair, partly loosened, shadowed a young face grown
pinched with weariness; and the reaction from shock was already making
her grey eyes heavy and edging the under lids with bluish shadows.
She had not come there with the intention of telling him anything. All
she had wanted was a place in which to rest, a glass of water, and
somebody to help her find the train to Gayfield. She told him this;
remained reticent under his questioning; finally turned her haggard
face to the chairback and refused to answer.
For an hour or more she remained obstinately dumb, motionless except
for the uncontrollable trembling of her body; he brought her a glass
of water, sat watching her at intervals; rose once or twice to pace
the studio, his well-shaped head bent, his hands clasped behind his
back, always returning to the corner-chair before the desk to sit
there, eyeing her askance, waiting for some decision.
But it was not the recurrent waves of terror, the ever latent fear of
Brandes, or even her appalling loneliness that broke her down; it was
sheer fatigue--nature's merciless third degree--under which mental
and physical resolution disintegrated--went all to pieces.
And when at length she finally succeeded in reconquering
self-possession, she had already stammered out answers to his gently
persuasive questions--had told him enough to start the fuller
confession to which he listened in utter silence.
And now she had told him everything, as far as she understood the
situation. She lay sideways, deep in the armchair, tired, yet vaguely
conscious that she was resting mind and body, and that calm was
gradually possessing the one, and the nerves of the other were growing
quiet.
Listlessly her grey eyes wandered around the big studio where shadowy
and strangely beautiful but incomprehensible things met her gaze, like
iridescent, indefinite objects seen in dreams.
These radiantly unreal splendours were only Neeland's rejected Academy
pictures and studies; a few cheap Japanese hangings, cheaper Nippon
porcelains, and several shaky, broken-down antiques picked up for a
song here and there. All the trash and truck and dust and junk
characteristic of the conventional artist's habitation were there.
But to Ruhannah this studio embodied all the wonders and beauties of
that magic temple to which, from her earliest memory, her very soul
had aspired--the temple of the unknown God of Art.