“You don't enter this house, and I sail with you to-morrow.”
“What train shall I catch and from what station shall I start?”
“_Au revoir_,” she said, holding out her hand.
He raised his hat and walked away briskly. The door opened, and Norma entered the house.
WHAT she wrote to him is no great matter.
Her letter, which he opened on coming down to breakfast the next morning, filled many pages. It was a rhapsody of passionate love and self-abasement, with frantic appeals for forgiveness. In its cowardice there was something horribly piteous. Jimmie read it beneath the high north window of the studio, his back turned towards Aline, who was seated at the breakfast-table at the other end. For a long, long while he stood there, quite still, holding the letter in his hand. Aline, in wonder, stole up quietly and touched his arm. When he turned, she saw that his face was ashen-grey, like a dead man's.
The shock left its mark upon him. Physically it accomplished the work of ten years, wiping the youth from his face and setting in its stead the seal of middle age. It is common enough for grief or illness to lay its hand on the face of a woman no longer young and shrivel up her beauty like a leaf and set her free, old and withered. But with a man, who has no such beauty to be marred, the case is rare.
For a week he remained silent. The two women who loved him waited in patience until the time should come for their comforting to be of use. From the very first morning he let no change appear in his habits, but set his palette as usual and went on with the new picture that was nearing completion. In the afternoon he went for a walk. Aline, going down to the studio, happened to look at his morning's work. For a moment she was puzzled by what she saw, for she was familiar with his methods. Gradually the solution dawned upon her. He had been painting meaninglessly, incoherently, putting in splotches of colour that had no relation to the tone of the picture, crudely accentuating outlines, daubing here, there, and anywhere with an aimless brush. It was the work of a child or a drunken man. Aline cast herself on the model-platform and cried till she could cry no more. When he came back, he took a turpentine rag and obliterated the whole picture. For days he worked incessantly, trying in vain to repaint. Nothing would come right. The elementary technique of his art seemed to have left him. Aline strove to get him away. He resisted. He had to do his day's work, he said.