Why not, indeed! He had not prevented Rainsford from sitting there.
"Is the chair weak in its legs?" she laughed. "I'm light--I'll risk it," and, half defiantly, she seated herself by the table, leaning both elbows on it. She looked back at him. "Now, make a little drawing of me as you used to do. I'll show it to the girls in school to prove what a genius we have in the family; and I must go back, too, or I'll have more bad marks than ever."
Fairfax did not obey her. Instead, he looked at her as though he saw through her to eternity.
Bella sprang up impulsively, and came toward him. "Cousin Antony," she murmured, "I'm perfectly dreadful. I'm selfish and inconsiderate. It's only because I'm a little wild. I don't mean it. You've told me nothing." She lifted his cravat from the chair. "You wear a black cravat and your clothes are black. Is it for Aunt Arabella still?"
Fairfax seemed to himself to look down on her from a height. Her brilliance, her sparkle and youth were far away. His heart ached within him.
"One goes mighty far in five years, Bella.... One loses many things."
"I know--Gardiner and your mother. But who else?"
He saw her face sadden; the young girl extended her hand to him, her eyes darkened.
Fairfax put out his arms toward her, but did not enfold her. He let his hands rest on her shoulders and murmured, "Bella, little Bella," and choked the other words back.
"No," she said, "I'm not little Bella any more. Please answer me, Cousin Antony."
He could not have told her for his life. He could tell her nothing; her charm, her lifted face, beautiful, ardent, were the most real, the most vital things the world had ever held for him. The fascination found him under his new grief. He exclaimed, turning brusquely toward his covered scaffolding--
"Don't you want to see my work, Bella? I've been at it nearly a year."
He rapidly drew the curtain and exposed his bas-relief.
There was in the distance a vague indication of distant sky-line--a far horizon--upon which, into which, a door opened, held ajar by a woman's arm and hand. The woman's figure, draped in the clinging garment of the grave, was passing through, but in going her face was turned, uplifted, to look back at a man without, who, apparently unconscious of her, gazed upon life and the world. That was all--the two figures and the feeling of the vast illimitable far-away.