The place was more bare than of old. The pictures from the walls and many of the ornaments had been removed to the house which Herman had fitted up on his marriage with Ninitta; but in his usual place stood the sculptor, at work by his modelling stand, and over the rail of the gallery above, toward which her eyes instinctively turned as the old memories wakened, she saw the sculptured edge of a marble Grecian altar. The recollections were too poignant, and she started forward quickly, as if to escape an actual presence.
The studio was so large that Herman had fallen into the way of saving himself the trouble of answering the bell by putting up the sign "Come in" upon the door, and he was not aware of Helen"s presence until he saw her standing with her hand upon the portiere, as he had seen her six years before when she had renounced him, placing his honor before their love. With an exclamation that was almost a cry, he dropped his modelling tool and started forward to meet her.
"Helen!" he cried, and the intensity of his feelings made it impossible for him to say more.
Yet, however strong the emotions which were aroused by this meeting,--and for both of them the moment was one of keenest feeling,--they were schooled to self-control, and after that first exclamation the sculptor was outwardly calm as he went to greet his visitor. Even for those who are not guided by principle, self-restraint comes as the result of habit, and none of us in this age of the world a.s.sert the right of emotion to vent itself in utterance. The Philoctetes of Sophocles might shriek to high heaven, and Mars vent the anguish of his wounds in cries and sobs, but we have changed all that.
Even the muse of tragedy is self-possessed in modern days; good breeding has conquered even the fierce impulse of pa.s.sion to find outlet in words.
Both Herman and Helen were alive to the danger of the situation, and their meeting was one of perfect outward calm.
"Good morning," she said, "it seemed so natural to walk in, that I should almost have done it if your card hadn"t been on the door."
She held out her hand as she spoke.
"I cannot shake hands," he said, "I am at work, you see."
She answered by a little conventional laugh which might mean anything.
Both of them hesitated a moment, their real feeling being too deep for it to be easy quickly to call to mind conventionalities of talk. Then the sculptor turned to lead the way up the studio, waving his hand as he did so toward the place where he had been working.
"You couldn"t have come more opportunely," remarked he. "You are just in time to criticise my model for _America_. I was just looking it over for the last touches."
"It was that I came to talk about," Helen returned, moving forward toward the modelling stand on which was a figure in clay. "I have just learned that the commission has already been awarded; and I thought you ought to know how the committee is acting."
"I do know," he answered. "Mr. Hubbard came and told me, although the committee meant to keep the decision quiet until after the models were in."
"But you are finishing yours."
"Yes, I declined to enter a compet.i.tion and was hired to make a model.
Of course I finish that, whatever the decision of the committee. Mr.
Hubbard told me because he had before a.s.sured me of his support, and he wished to avoid even the suspicion of double dealing."
"The action of the committee is outrageous!" Helen protested, indignantly. "They might as well put up a tobacconist"s sign as the thing Orin Stanton will make. It shows that you are right in refusing to enter a compet.i.tion, since they have decided without even seeing the models they asked for."
"Yes," was Herman"s reply. He paused a moment, and added, "Was that the reason you withdrew?"
Helen flushed slightly, and turned her face aside.
"It hardly seemed worth while," she began; but he interrupted her.
"I would not have gone in," he said, "even as I did, if I had known there was a chance of your competing."
She turned toward him, and her eyes unconsciously said what she had been careful not to put into words.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, with sudden comprehension. "You knew I was in it and that is why you withdrew."
"Well," she said, trying to laugh lightly, "it would not have been modest for me to compete against my master."
She moved away as she spoke. She had a tingling sense of his nearness, a pa.s.sionate yearning to turn toward him and to break down all barriers which made her afraid. She felt that she had been rash in coming to the studio, and had overestimated her own strength. She glanced around quickly, as if in search of something which would help to bring the conversation to conventional levels; but her eye fell upon a terra-cotta figure which sent the blood surging into her head so fiercely that a rushing sound seemed to fill her ears. It was the nude figure of a soldier lying dead upon a trampled mound, with broken poppies about him, while across the pedestal ran the inscription,--
"I strew these opiate flowers Round thy restless pillow."
It was the figure beside the clay model of which, yet wet from his hand, the sculptor had told her, that day long ago, of her husband"s death. In the years since, she had believed herself to have worn her love into friendship, to have beaten her pa.s.sion into affection; but every woman, even the most clear-headed, deceives herself in matters of the heart, and now Helen knew what pitiful self-deception her belief had been.
Over and over and over again has it been noted how great a part in human life and action is played by trifles, and despite this constant reiteration the fact remains both true and unappreciated. And yet it is, after all, more exact to consider that the thing is simply our habit of noticing the obvious trifles rather than the underlying causes, as it is the straws on the surface of the current that catch our eye rather than the black flood which sweeps them along. It was the chance sight of the figure of the dead soldier which now broke down Helen"s self-control, but the true explanation of her outburst lay in long pent up and well-nigh resistless emotions.
She turned toward her companion with a pa.s.sionate gesture.
"It is no use," she broke forth, "I did wrong to come home. I should have kept the ocean between us. I must go back."
Herman grasped the edge of the modelling stand strongly.
"Helen," he said, in a voice of intensest feeling; "We may as well face the truth. We were wrong six years ago."
"Stop!" she interrupted piteously, putting up her hand. "You must not say it. Don"t tell me that all this misery has been for nothing, and that we have sacrificed our lives to an error. And, besides," she went on, as he regarded her without speaking, "however it was then, surely now Ninitta has claims on you which cannot be gainsaid."
"Yes," he said bitterly, "and of whose making?"
She looked at him, pale as death, and with all the anguish of years of pa.s.sionate sorrow in her eyes. He faltered before the reproach of her glance, but he would not yield. The disappointment of his married life, his sorrow in the years of separation, the selfish masculine instinct which makes all suffering seem injustice, a.s.serted themselves now. The effect of the fact that he was forbidden to love this woman was to make him half consciously feel as if he had now the right to consider only himself. He almost seemed absolved from any claims for pity which she might once have had upon him. Even the n.o.blest of men, except the two or three in the history of the race who have shown themselves to be possessed of a certain divine effeminacy, instinctively feel that a disappointment in pa.s.sion is an absolution from moral obligation.
"See," he said, with a force that was almost brutal; "we loved each other and we have made that love simply a means of torture. My G.o.d!
Helen, the besotted idiots that fling themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut are no more mad than we were."
She hurried to him and clasped both her hands upon his arm.
"Stop!" she begged, her voice broken with sobs, "for pity"s sake, stop!
It is all true. I have said it to myself a hundred times; but I will not believe it. Don"t you see," she went on, the tears on her cheek, "that to say this is to give up everything, that if there is no truth and no right, there is nothing for which we can respect each other, and our love has no dignity, no quality we should be willing to name."
He looked at her with fierce, unrelenting eyes.
"Ah," he retorted cruelly, "my love is too strong for me to argue about it."
She loosed her hold upon his arm and stepped backward a little, regarding him despairingly. She did not mind the taunt, but the moral fibre of her nature always responded to opposition. She broke out excitedly into irrelevant inconsistency.
"It is right," she cried. "We were right six years ago, and you shall not break my ideal now. I must respect you, Grant. Out of the wreck of my life I will save that, that I can honor where I love."
She stopped to choke back the sobs which shook her voice, and to wipe away the tears which blinded her. The sculptor stood immovable; but his face was softened and full of yearning.
"And, oh," Helen said, the memory of sorrowful years surging upon her, "you would not try to shake my conviction if you realized how absolutely it has been my only support. It is so bitter to doubt whether the thing that wrings the heart is really right after all."
Herman made a sudden movement as if he would start forward, then he restrained himself.
"Forgive me," he said, in a strangely softened voice. "You have forgiven me for being cruel before. To have done a thing because you believe it is right is of more consequence than anything else can be.
The truth is in the heart, not the thing."
She tried to smile. She felt as if she were acting again an old scene, the trick of taking refuge from too dangerous personal feeling in the expression of general truths carrying her back to the time when the expedient had served them both before.
"But people who have faith," she said, "who believe creeds and doctrines, can have little conception how much harder it is for us than for them to do what we think is the right."