An Unpardonable Liar | Page 8

comedy, you know.
"Her name was Marion Conquest. She was beautiful--they said that of
her then--and young, only sixteen. She had been very happy, for a man
said that he loved her, and she wore his ring on her finger. One day,
while she was visiting at a place far from her home, she was happier
than usual. She wished to be by herself to wonder how it was that one
could be so happy. You see, she was young and did not think often. She
only lived. She took a horse and rode far away into the woods. She
came near a cottage among the trees. She got off her horse and led it.
Under a tree she saw a man and a woman. The man's arm was round
the woman. A child four or five years old was playing at their feet--at
the feet of its father and mother. * * * The girl came forward and faced
the man--the man she had sworn to marry. As I said, his ring was on
her finger."

She paused. People were passing near, and she smiled and bowed once
or twice, but Hagar saw that the fire in her eyes had deepened.
"Is it strong enough for your picture?" she said quietly.
"It is as strong as it is painful. Yet there is beauty in it, too, for I see the
girl's face."
"You see much in her face, of course, for you look at it as an artist. You
see shame, indignation, bitterness--what else?"
"I see that moment of awe when the girl suddenly became a woman--as
the serious day breaks all at once through the haze of morning."
"I know you can paint the picture," she said, "but you have no model
for the girl. How shall you imagine her?"
"I said that I would paint you in the scene," he answered slowly.
"But I am not young, as she was; am not--so good to look at."
"I said that I saw beauty in the girl's face. I can only see it through
yours."
Her hands clasped tightly before her. Her eyes turned full on him for an
instant, then looked away into the dusk. There was silence for a long
time now. His cigar burned brightly. People kept passing and repassing
on the terrace below them. Their serious silence was noticeable.
"A penny for your thoughts," she said gayly, yet with a kind of
wistfulness.
"You would be thrown away at the price."
These were things that she longed yet dreaded to hear. She was not free
(at least she dreaded so) to listen to such words.
"I am sorry for that girl, God knows!" he added.
"She lived to be always sorry for herself. She was selfish. She could
have thrived on happiness. She did not need suffering. She has been
merry, gay, but never happy."
"The sequel was sad?"
"Terribly sad."
"Will you tell me--the scene?"
"I will, but not to-night." She drew her hands across her eyes and
forehead. "You are not asking merely as the artist now?" She knew the
answer, but she wanted to hear it.
"A man who is an artist asks, and he wishes to be a friend to that
woman, to do her any service possible."
"Who can tell when she might need befriending?"

He would not question further. She had said all she could until she
knew who the stranger was.
"I must go in," she said. "It is late."
"Tell me one thing. I want it for my picture--as a key to the mind of the
girl. What did she say at that painful meeting in the woods--to the
man?"
Mrs. Detlor looked at him as if she would read him through and
through. Presently she drew a ring from her finger slowly and gave it to
him, smiling bitterly.
"Read inside. That is what she said."
By the burning end of his cigar he read, "You told a lie."
At another hotel a man sat in a window looking out on the esplanade.
He spoke aloud.
"'You told a lie,' was all she said, and as God's in heaven I've never
forgotten I was a liar from that day to this."

CHAPTER II
.
THE MEETING.
The next morning George Hagar was early at the pump-room. He found
it amusing to watch the crowds coming and going--earnest invalids and
that most numerous body of middle aged, middle class people who
have no particular reason for drinking the waters, and whose only
regimen is getting even with their appetites. He could pick out every
order at a glance--he did not need to wait until he saw the tumblers at
their lips. Now and then a dashing girl came gliding in, and, though the
draft was noxious to her,