An Unpardonable Liar | Page 7

I was then."
He looked down at her. She was turning a ring about on her finger abstractedly. He hesitated to reply. He was afraid that he might say something to press a confidence for which she would be sorry afterward. She guessed what was passing in his mind.
She reached out as if to touch his arm again, but did not, and said: "I am placing you in an awkward position. Pardon me. It seemed to me for a moment that we were old friends--old and candid friends."
"I wish to be an old and candid friend," he replied firmly. "I honor your frankness."
"I know," she added hastily. "One is safe--with some men."
"Not with a woman?"
"No woman is safe in any confidence to any other woman. All women are more or less bad at heart."
"I do not believe that as you say it."
"Of course you do not--as I say it. But you know what I mean. Women are creatures of impulse, except those who live mechanically and have lost everything. They become like priests then."
"Like some priests. Yet, with all respect, it is not a confessional I would choose, except the woman was my mother."
There was silence for a moment, and then she abruptly said: "I know you wish to speak of that incident, and you hesitate. You need not. Yet this is all I can tell you. Whoever the man was he came from Tellaire, the place where I was born."
She paused. He did not look, but he felt that she was moved. He was curious as to human emotions, but not where this woman was concerned.
"There were a few notes in that woodcutter's chant which were added to the traditional form by one whom I knew," she continued.
"You did not recognize the voice?"
"I cannot tell. One fancies things, and it was all twelve years ago."
"It was all twelve years ago," he repeated musingly after her. He was eager to know, yet he would not ask.
"You are a clever artist," she said presently. "You want a subject for a picture. You have told me so. You are ambitious. If you were a dramatist, I would give you three acts of a play--the fourth is yet to come; but you shall have a scene to paint if you think it strong enough."
His eyes flashed. The artist's instinct was alive. In the eyes of the woman was a fire which sent a glow over all her features. In herself she was an inspiration to him, but he had not told her that. "Oh, yes," was his reply, "I want it, if I may paint you in the scene."
"You may paint me in the scene," she said quietly. Then, as if it suddenly came to her that she would be giving a secret into this man's hands, she added, "That is, if you want me for a model merely."
"Mrs. Detlor," he said, "you may trust me, on my honor."
She looked at him, not searchingly, but with a clear, honest gaze such as one sees oftenest in the eyes of children, yet she had seen the duplicities of life backward and said calmly, "Yes, I can trust you."
"An artist's subject ought to be sacred to him," he said. "It becomes himself, and then it isn't hard--to be silent."
They walked for a few moments, saying nothing. The terrace was filling with people, so they went upon the veranda and sat down. There were no chairs near them. They were quite at the end.
"Please light a cigar," she said with a little laugh. "We must not look serious. Assume your light comedy manner as you listen, and I will wear the true Columbine expression. We are under the eyes of the curious."
"Not too much light comedy for me," he said. "I shall look forbidding lest your admirers bombard us."
They were quiet again.
"This is the story," she said at last, folding her hands before her. "No, no," she added hastily, "I will not tell you the story, I will try and picture one scene. And when I have finished, tell me if you don't think I have a capital imagination." She drew herself up with a little gesture of mockery. "It is 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.