The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and the Masterpiece Part 26

"I have always believed the face indicative of the character, and I'm sorry that mine should have suggested to you the character of a liar,"

said Miss Jones. It was evident that already she was hurt and, disregarding my reiterated "It did not! It did not! upon my honour," she opened the door to go. I still detained her.

"Miss Jones," I said, standing before her, "I know that you are going to misjudge me, and that, because you see certain things from an ethical and I from a purely aesthetic point of view."

"I can't admit the division. But no; I hope I shall never _misjudge_ you." She gave me a brief little smile and walked quickly away.

Carrington did not come in that evening, and I was glad that my mental anguish had no observer.

The next afternoon at two I awaited Miss Jones. My picture, virtually finished, stood regally dominant in the centre of the studio.

I hated and I adored it. I saw it with Miss Jones's eyes and I saw it with my own; but her crude ethics had, on the whole, poisoned my aesthetic triumph.

At two there came the familiar rap. Miss Jones entered. I was sitting before the picture and rose to meet her. Her face was very white and very cold, and from under the tipped brim of the little hat her eyes looked sternly at me. I looked back at her silently.

"I have read 'Manon Lescaut,'" said Miss Jones. I found nothing to say.

"You will understand that I cannot sit to-day. You will understand that I never should have sat for you at all had I _known_," Miss Jones pursued.

I said that I understood.

"I have come to-day to bring you back the money that I have earned under false pretences."

She laid the little packet down upon the table. I turned white. "And to ask you"--here Miss Jones observed me steadily--"whether you do not feel that you owe me apologies."

"Miss Jones," I said, "I have unwittingly, unintentionally, given you great pain; that, with my present knowledge of your exceptional character, I now see to have been inevitable. I humbly beg your pardon for it, but I also beg you to believe that from the first I never thought of you but with respect and admiration."

Miss Jones's face took on quite a terrible look.

"Respect! Admiration! While you were looking from me to _that_!" She pointed to Manon. "While I was clothing your imagination, personifying to you that vile creature!"

I tried to stop her with an exclamation of shocked denial, but she went on, with fierce dignity:

"Exceptional! You call it exceptional to feel debased by that a.s.sociation? Can I ever look at my face again without thinking: 'The face of Manon Lescaut?' Can I ever forget that we were thought of as one? No"--she held up her hand--"let me speak. Do you suppose I cannot see now the cleverness, yes, the diabolical cleverness, of your picture of me there? The likeness is horrible; and there I shall stand for the world to gaze at as long as the canvas lasts and as long as people look at any pictures. There _I_ shall be, gibbeted in that woman's smile! No, I have not done! There will be no escape possible. Somewhere--I shall always feel it like a hot iron searing me--somewhere that other I will be all my life long, and when I am dead, and for centuries perhaps, she will smile on, and my image will be looked at as a type of vice! I see it now," and with a sort of grandeur of revelation she turned upon Manon, "I see that it is a masterpiece!"

I placed myself between her and it.

"Miss Jones," I said, "this is rather a supreme moment for me, more supreme than you will ever understand. I forgot you for my picture; I will not forget my picture for you." The icy fire of her eyes followed me while I went to the table and took up a sharp, long dagger which lay beside the little packet of money. I returned to the picture and, giving it one long look, I ripped the canvas from top to bottom. Miss Jones made neither sound nor sign. With dogged despair I pierced the smiling face, I hacked and rent the exquisite thing. The rose-coloured tatters fell forward; in five minutes "Manon Lescaut" was dead, utterly annihilated, and Miss Jones surveyed the place where she had been. I turned to her, and I have no doubt that my face expressed my exultant misery.

"And now!" I exclaimed.

"Now," said Miss Jones, looking solemnly at me, "you have done right, you have done _n.o.bly_, and you will be the happier for it."

"Shall I?" I said, approaching her. "Shall I?"

"Yes. I can confidently say it. That bad thing would have poisoned your life as it would have poisoned mine." I ignored the misstatement.

"Miss Jones," I said, "for your sake I have destroyed the best thing in my life; may I hope for a better? I love you."

Her pale and beautiful face looked very little less calm, but certainly a little dismayed, certainly a little sorry.

"The best thing has been this act of sacrifice," she said; "don't spoil that by any weak regret. You have gained my admiration and my respect; but for better things, if better there are, I accepted Mr. Carrington last night."

Perhaps I don't regret. Though she was a prig, I had loved her in the half hour's exaltation. I am certainly not sorry that she married Carrington. They seem to be very happy. But the chivalrous moment was worth while--perhaps. However that may be, since then I have never painted anything as good as Manon Lescaut.

THE END

Other Books by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

TANTE

A masterpiece of character creation and delineation, the fascinating story of a woman of genius, whose genius is matched only by her wayward temperament.

FRANKLIN WINSLOW KANE

The story, exquisitely told, of two men and two women, and of the unraveling of their strangely tangled love-affairs.

AMABEL CHANNICE

"For poignancy of emotional effect few love romances equal this drama, wherein the love of mother and son is raised to its height of heroic possibility."

A FOUNTAIN SEALED

"To have known and loved Valerie Upton, even in a book, is to have added a new store of sweetness to one's life. In the wide range of modern fiction, one cannot recall a feminine figure of such immense attractiveness."--_Manchester Guardian._

THE SHADOW OF LIFE

A study of love's psychology, with, in the beginning, a most exquisite picturing of two children--later lovers--and their life in the Scottish open.