"By heaven!" exclaimed Fairfax, grasping Dearborn's hand, "I bless you for saying that!"
Dearborn regarded him quietly. "Do you think I care for money?" he said simply. "I thought you knew me better than that."
Fairfax exclaimed, "Oh, I don't know what I know or think; I am in a bad dream."
Dearborn laid the notes down on the sofa. "It is for you and me and Nora, the bunch, just as long as it lasts."
Between Dearborn and himself, since Antony's engagement, there had been a distinct reserve.
Antony lit a cigarette and Dearborn lighted his from Antony's. The two friends settled themselves comfortably. It was the close of the day. Without, as usual, rolled the sea of the Paris streets, going to, going with the river's tide, and going away from it; the impersonal noise always made for them an accompaniment not disagreeable. The last light of the spring day fell on Fairfax's uncovered work, on the damp clay with the fresh marks of his instruments. He sat in his corduroys, a red scarf at his throat, a beautiful manly figure half curled up on the divan. The last of the day's light fell too on Dearborn's reddish hair, on his fine intelligent face. Fairfax said—
"Now tell me everything, Bob, from the beginning, from the window as you looked over the chimney-pots with the hyacinthine smoke curling up in the air—tell me everything, to the last word the manager said."
"Hark!" exclaimed Dearborn, lifting his hand."Nora is coming. I want to tell it to her as well. No one can tell twice alike the story of his first success—the first agony of first success." He caught his breath and struck Fairfax a friendly blow on his chest. "It will be a success, thank God! There is Nora," and he crossed the studio to let Nora Scarlet in.
The third day he went up to see her and found her in the garden, a basket on her arm, cutting flowers. She wore a garden hat covered with roses and carried a pair of gilded shears with which to snip her flowers. As Antony came down the steps of the house she dropped the scissors into the basket with her garden gloves. She lifted her cheek to him.
"You may kiss me, dear," she said; "no one will see us but the flowers and the birds."
Antony bent to kiss her. It seemed to him as though his arms were full of flowers.
"If you had not come to-day, I should have gone to you. You look well, Tony," she said. "I don't believe you have been ill at all."
"My work, Mary."
She took his arm and started towards the house. "You must let me come and see what wonderful things you are doing."
"I am doing nothing wonderful," he said slowly. "It has taken me all this time to realize I was never a sculptor; I have been so atrociously idle, Mary."
"But you need rest, my dear Tony."
"I shall not need any rest until I am an old man."
He caressed the hand that lay on his arm. They walked past the flower-beds, and she picked the dead roses, cutting the withered leaves, and talking to him gaily, telling him all she had done during the days of their separation, and suddenly he said—
"You do not seem to have missed me."
"Everywhere," she answered, pressing his arm.
They walked together slowly to the house, where she left her roses in the hall and took him into themusic-room, where they had been last when he left her, the afternoon following the luncheon.
"I must impress her indelibly on my mind," Antony thought. "I may never see her again."
When she had seated herself by the window through which he could see the roses on the high rose trees and the iron balcony on whose other side was the rumble of Paris, he stood before her gravely.
"Come and sit beside me," she invited, slowly. "You seem suddenly like a stranger."
"Mary," he said simply, "the time has come for me to ask you——" The words stuck in his throat. What in God's name was he going to ask her? What a fanatic he was! Utterly unconscious of his thoughts, she interrupted him.
"I know what you want to ask me, Tony, and I have been waiting." She leaned against him. "You see, I have had the foolish feeling that perhaps you didn't care as you thought you did. It is that dreadful difference in our age."
"Do you care, Mary?"
She might have answered him, "Why otherwise should I marry a penniless man, five years my junior, when the world is before me?"
She said, "Yes, I care deeply."
"Ah," he breathed, "then it is all right, Mary; that is all we need." After a few seconds he said gently: "Now look at me." Her face was flushed and her eyes humid. She raised them to him. He was holding one of her hands in both of his as he spoke, and from time to time touched it with his lips. "Listen to me; try to understand. I am a Bohemian, an artist; say that over and over. Do you think me crazy? I have not been ill. I went into a retreat. I shut myself up with my soul. This life here,"—he gestured to the room as though it held a host of enemies,—"this life here has crushed me. I had begun to think myself a miserable creature just because I am poor. Now, if money is the only thing that counts in the world, of course I am a miserable creature, and then let us drink life to its dregs; and if it is not the only thing, well then, let us drink the other things to their dregs."She said, "What other things?"
"Why, the beauty of struggling together with every material consideration cast out! Think how beautiful it is to work for one you love; think of the beauty of being all in all to each other, Mary!"
"But we are that, Tony."
Now that Antony had embarked, he spoke rapidly. "You owe your luxury to your husband whom you never loved. Now I cannot let you owe him anything more, Mary."
She began, "But I don't think of my fortune in connection with him."
Antony did not hear her. "I feel lately as though I had been selling my soul," he said passionately. "And what can a man have in exchange for his soul? Of course, it was presumptuous folly of me to have asked you to marry me."
She put both her hands over his and breathed his name. He spoke desperately, and the picture rose up before him of his bare studio and his meagre life.
"Will you marry me now?"
"I said I was quite ready."
"The day will come when I will be rich and great." He paused. He saw that her eyes were already troubled, and asked eagerly, "You believe that, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Great enough, rich enough, not to make a woman ashamed. You must wait for that time with me."
Mary Faversham said quietly, "You have been shutting yourself up with a lot of fanatical ideas."
He covered her lips gently with his hands. His face became grave.
"Oh," he said, "don't speak—wait. You don't dream what every word you say is going to mean—wait. You don't understand what I mean!"
And he began to tell her the gigantic sacrifice he was about to impose upon her. If he had been assured of his love for her, assured of her love for him, he might have made a magnetic appeal, but he seemed to be talking to her through a veil. He shook his head.
"No, I cannot ask it, Mary."
Mary Faversham's face had undergone a change.It was never lovelier than now, as with gravity and sweetness she put her arms around his neck and looked up at him with great tenderness. She said—
"I think I know what you mean. You want me to give up my fortune and go to you."
She seemed to radiate before Fairfax's eyes, and his worship of her at this moment increased a thousandfold. He leaned forward and laid his head against her breast.
In the love of all women there is a strong quality of the maternal. Mary bent over the blond head and pressed her lips to his hair. When Antony lifted his face there were tears in his eyes. He cried—
"Heaven bless you, darling! You don't know how high I will take you, how far I will carry us both. The world shall talk of us! Mary—Mary!"
She smoothed his forehead. She knew there would never be another moment in her life like this one.
He said, "I will take you to the studio, of course. I haven't told you that in June I shall have fifty thousand francs, and from then on I will be succeeding so fast that we will forget we were ever poor." He saw her faintly smile, and said sharply, "I suppose you spend fifty thousand francs now on your clothes!"
She said frankly, "And more; but that makes no difference," and ventured, "You don't seem to think, Tony, what a pleasure it would be to me to do for you." She paused at his exclamation. "Oh, of course, I understand your pride," and asked, "What shall I do with my fortune, Tony?"
"This money on which you are living," he said gravely, "that you have accepted from a man you never loved, give it all to the poor. Keep the commandment for once, and we will see what the treasures of heaven are like."
He thought she clung to him desperately, and there was an ardour in the return of her caress that made him say—
"Mary, don't answer me to-day, please; I want you to think it calmly over. Just now you have shown me what I wanted to see."
She asked, "What?"
"That you love me."
She said, "Yes, I do love you. Will you believe it always?"
Bending over her he said passionately, "I shall believe it when I have your answer, and you are going to make me divinely happy."
She echoed the word softly, "Happy!" and her lips trembled. Across the ante-chamber came the sound of voices. Their retreat was about to be invaded by the people of the world who never very long left Mary Faversham alone.
"Oh!" she cried, "I cannot see any one. Why did they let any one in?" And, lifting her face to him, she said in a low tone, "Tony, kiss me again."
Antony, indifferent as to who might come and who might not, caught her to him and held her for a second, then crossed the room to the curtained door and went down the terrace steps and across the garden.
By the big wall he turned and looked back to where, through the long French windows, he could see the music-room with the palms and gilt furniture. Mary Faversham was already surrounded by the Comte de B—— and the Baron de F——. He knew them vaguely. Before going to get his hat and stick from the vestibule, he watched her for a few moments, with a strange adoration in his heart. She was his, she was ready to give up everything for the sake of his ideals. He thought he could never love more than at this moment. He believed that he was not asking her to make a ridiculous sacrifice, but on the contrary to accept a spiritual gain—a sacrifice of all for love and art and honour, too! As he looked across the room a distinguished figure came to Mary Faversham. He was welcomed very cordially. It was Cedersholm. He had been in Russia for months. Fairfax's heart grew cold.
As though Mary fancied that her mad lover might linger, she came over to the window and drew down the Venetian shade. It fell, rippling softly, and blotted out the room for Fairfax. A wave of anger swept him, a sudden uncertainty regarding the woman herself followed, and immediately he saw himself ridiculous, crude and utterly fantastical in his ultimatum. The egoism and childishness of what he had done stood out to him, and in that second he knew that he had lost her—lost her for ever.
He did not go home. He went into the Bois and walked for miles. His unequal, limping strides tired him to death and he was finally the only wanderer there. Over the exquisite forest of new-leaf trees the stars came out at length, and the guardians began to observe him. At eight o'clock in the morning he had not eaten. He went into a small restaurant and made a light meal. For the first time since Albany, when he had drank too much in despair and grief, he took now too much red wine. He walked on feathers and felt his blood dance. He rang the bell at Mary Faversham's at nine-thirty in the morning, and the butler, intensely surprised, informed him that Mary had gone out riding in the Bois with Monsieur Cedersholm. Antony had given this servant more fees that he could afford. He found a piece of money in his pocket and gave it to Ferdinand.
"But, monsieur," said the man, embarrassed, and handled the piece. It was a louis. Antony waved magnificently and started away. He took a cab back to the studio, but could not pay the cabman, for the louis was his last piece of money. He waked Dearborn out of a profound sleep, in which the playwright was dreaming of two hundred night performances.
"Bob, can you let me have a few francs?"
"In my vest pocket," said Dearborn. "Take what you like."
Tony paid his cab out of the change and realized that it was some of the money from Dearborn's advance royalties. It gave him pleasure to think that he was spending money which had been made by art. It was "serious money." He did not hesitate to use it. He sat by the table when he came in from paying his caband fell into a heavy sleep, his head upon his arm. Thus the two friends slumbered until noon, Dearborn dreaming of fame and Antony of despair.
At two o'clock that afternoon, bathed and dressed, himself again save for a certain bewilderment in his head, he stood in his window looking out on the quays. Underneath, Nora Scarlet and Dearborn passed arm-in-arm. They were going to Versailles to talk of love, of fame and artistic struggle, under the trees. Antony heard the shuffling of his old concierge on the stairs. He knew that the man was bringing him a letter and that it would be from Mary.
With the letter between his hands, he waited some few minutes before opening it. He finally read it, sitting forward on the divan, his face set.
"Dearest," it began, and then there was a long space as though the woman could not bear to write the words, "You will never be able to judge me fairly. I cannot ask it of you. You are too much of a genius to understand a mere woman. I am writing you in my boudoir, just where you came to me that day when you told me your love and when I wept to hear it, dearest. I shall cry again, thinking of it, many times. I have done you a great wrong in taking ever so little of you, and taking even those few months from the work which shall mean so much to the world. Now I am glad I have found it out before it is too late. I have no right to you, Tony. In answer to what you asked me yesterday, I say no. You will not believe it is for your sake, dear, but it is. I see you could not share my life in any way, and keep your ideals. How could I ask you to? I see I could not share your struggle and leave you free enough to keep your ideals."I can never quite believe that love is a mistake. I shall think of mine for you the rest of my life. When you read this letter I shall have left Paris. Do not try to find me or follow me. I know your pride, dear, the greatest pride I ever saw or dreamed of. I wonder if it is a right one. At any rate, it will not let you follow me; I am sure of that. I wish to put between us an immeasurable distance, one which no folly on your part and no weakness on mine could bridge. Cedersholm hasreturned from Russia, and I told him last night that I would marry him.—Mary."
"Dearest," it began, and then there was a long space as though the woman could not bear to write the words, "You will never be able to judge me fairly. I cannot ask it of you. You are too much of a genius to understand a mere woman. I am writing you in my boudoir, just where you came to me that day when you told me your love and when I wept to hear it, dearest. I shall cry again, thinking of it, many times. I have done you a great wrong in taking ever so little of you, and taking even those few months from the work which shall mean so much to the world. Now I am glad I have found it out before it is too late. I have no right to you, Tony. In answer to what you asked me yesterday, I say no. You will not believe it is for your sake, dear, but it is. I see you could not share my life in any way, and keep your ideals. How could I ask you to? I see I could not share your struggle and leave you free enough to keep your ideals.
"I can never quite believe that love is a mistake. I shall think of mine for you the rest of my life. When you read this letter I shall have left Paris. Do not try to find me or follow me. I know your pride, dear, the greatest pride I ever saw or dreamed of. I wonder if it is a right one. At any rate, it will not let you follow me; I am sure of that. I wish to put between us an immeasurable distance, one which no folly on your part and no weakness on mine could bridge. Cedersholm hasreturned from Russia, and I told him last night that I would marry him.—Mary."
Then, for the first time, Tony knew how he loved her. Crushing the letter between his hands, he snatched up his hat and rushed out, took a cab, and drove like mad to her house.
The little horse galloped with him, the driver cracked his whip with utterances like the sparks flying, and they tore up the Champs Elysées, part of the great multitude, yet distinct, as is every individual with their definite sufferings and their definite joys.
Her house stood white and distinct at the back of the garden, the windows were flung open. On the steps of the terrace a man-servant, to whom Antony had given fat tips which he could not afford, stood in an undress uniform, blue apron and duster over his arm; painters came out with ladders and placed them against the wall. The old gardener, Félicien, who had given him countlessboutonnières, mounted the steps with a flower-pot in his hand and talked with the man-servant; he was joined by two maids. The place was left, then, to servants. Everything seemed changed. She might never—he was sure she would never—return as Mrs. Faversham. Immeasurably far away indeed, as she said—immeasurably far—she seemed to have gone into another sphere, and yet he had held her in his arms! The thought of his tenderness was too real to permit of any other consideration holding its place. He sprang out of his cab, rang the door-bell, and when the door was opened he asked the surprised servant for Mrs. Faversham's address.
"But I have no idea of it, monsieur," said the man with a comprehensive gesture. "None."
"You are not sending any letters?"
"None, monsieur."
Fairfax's blue eyes, his pale, handsome face, appealed very much to Ferdinand. He liked Monsieur Rainsford. Although the chap did not know it himself, Tony had been far more generous than were the millionaires. Ferdinand called one of the maids.
"Where's madame's maid stopping in London?" asked the butler.
"Why, at the Ritz," said Louise promptly. "She is always at the Ritz, monsieur."
Tony had no more gold to reward this treachery.
When Dearborn came home that night from Versailles he found a note on the table, leaning up against the box in which the two comrades kept their mutual fund of money. Dearborn's advance royalty was all gone but a hundred francs.
"I have gone to London," Fairfax's note ran. "Sell anything of mine you like before I get back, if you are hard up.—Tony."
"I have gone to London," Fairfax's note ran. "Sell anything of mine you like before I get back, if you are hard up.—Tony."
He spent two pounds on a pistol. If he had chanced to meet Cedersholm with her, he would have shot him. From the hour he had received her letter and learned that she was going to marry Cedersholm, he had been hardly sane.
At five o'clock on a bland, sweet afternoon, three days after he had left Paris, he was shown up to her sitting-room at the Whiteheart Hotel, in Windsor. He had traced her there from the Ritz.
Mary Faversham, who was alone, rose to meet him, white as death.
"Tony," she said, "don't come nearer—stand there, Tony. Dear Tony, it is too late, too late!"
He limped across the room and took her in his arms, looking at her wildly. Her lips trembled, her eyes filled.
"I married him by special license yesterday, Tony. Go, go, before he comes."
He saw she could not stand. He put her in a chair, fell on his knees and buried his head in her lap. He clung to her, to the Woman, to his Vision of the Woman, to the form, the substance, the reality which he thought at last he had really caught for ever. She bent over him and kissed his hair, weeping.
"Go," she said. "Go, my darling."
Fairfax had not spoken a word. Curses, invectives, prayers were in his heart. He crushed them down.
"I love you for your pride," she said. "I adore you for the brave demand you made me. I could not fulfil it, Tony, for your sake."
Then he spoke, and meant what he said, "You have ruined my life."
"Oh no!" she cried. "Don't say such a thing!"
"Some day I shall kill him." He had risen, with tears in his eyes. "You loved me," he challenged, "you did love me!"
She did not dare to say "I love you still." She saw what the tragedy would be.
"We could not have been poor," she said, "could we, dear?"
He exclaimed bitterly, "If you thought of that, you could not have cared." And she was strong enough to take advantage of his change.
"I suppose I could not have cared as you mean, or I should never have done this."
Then Fairfax cursed under his breath, and once again, this time brutally, caught her in his arms and kissed her, crying to her as he had cried once before—
"Tell him how I kissed you—tell him!"
White as death, Mary Faversham pushed him from her. "For the love of God, Tony, go!"
And he went, stumbling down the stairs. Out in Windsor the bugles for some solemn festivity were blowing.
"The flowers of the forest are all wied away."
From the Western world he heard nothing for four years. Meanwhile he brought his new skill, his maturer knowledge, the result of seven years' study and creation in the workshops of masters and in his own studio, to the sculpturing of the second tomb—the Open Door.
There were crowds around his marble in the Salon, and he mingled with them, watching them muse, discuss, criticize, grow sad and thoughtful before his conception of Life and Death. Some of them looked as poor Tom Rainsford had looked, yearningly toward the door of the tomb. Others hurried past the inscrutable beauty of the Open Door. Purely white, stainless, slender, luminous and yet cold, Molly stood immortalized by Antony. His conception made him famous.
He had exhibited each year with increasing success at private exhibitions, but never at the Salon, and had been called "poseur" because of his reluctance to expose his work in national academies. His bas-reliefs had made him favourably known, but nothing equalled the solemn marble that came now from his studio. Antony's work occupied some twenty feet in the Champ de Mars.
His lame foot touched a pile of newspapers on the floor, in which the critics spoke of him in terms he thought fulsome and ridiculous, and they pained him while they dazzled him. He thought of Bella. He had thought ofBella constantly of late, and there were no answers to his questions. She would be twenty-three, a woman, married, no doubt, always enchanting. How she had stood before his bas-relief in Albany, musing, and her eyes had been wet when she had turned to him and asked, "Who is it, Cousin Antony? It is perfectly beautiful, beautiful!" He would have liked to have led Bella to his work in the Salon, and, hand-in-hand with her, until the crowd around them should have melted away, have stood there with her alone. From the night her inspiring little hand had stolen into his, Bella's hand had seemed a mate for his.
"Who is it, Cousin Antony?"
Indeed, who was the woman going through the Open Door? What woman's face and form constantly inspired him, haunting him, promising to haunt him until the end? He was always seeking to unveil the face of his visions and find the one woman, the supplement, the mate, the companion.
Who would inspire him now? His memories, his dead, his past, had done their work. What fresh inspiration would urge him now to create?
The public had no fault to find with him. The tomb made him celebrated in twenty-four hours. At a time when all Paris was laughing at Rodin's Balzac, there was a place for a sculptor like Antony, for the idealist and dreamer, gifted with a strong and faultless technique.
He read hastily and with surprise the exaggerated praise which the "Open Door" called forth from the reviews. "It is not as good as all that," he thought, "and it is too soon to hear thunder about my ears."
He seemed to see the door of his future open and himself standing there, the burden of proof upon him. What work he must continue to produce in order to sustain such sudden fame! TheFigarocalled him a "giant," and several critics said he was the sculptor of the time. His mail was full of letters from friends and strangers. By ten o'clock the night of the "Vernissage" all his acquaintances and intimates in Paris had brought him their felicitations. He turned back to his table where his letters lay. He had just read an affectionate, enthusiastic expression of praise and belief from Potowski.There was another note which he had read first with anger, then with keen satisfaction, and then with as much malice as his heart could hold.
"My dear Sir,
"I have the honour to represent in France the committee for the construction in Boston of a triumphal arch to be raised in commemoration of the men who first fell in the battle of the Revolution. The idea is to crown this arch with a group of figures, either realistic or symbolical, as the sculptor shall see fit. After carefully considering the modern work of men in France, I am inclined to offer this commission to you if you can accept it. Your 'Open Door' is the most beautiful piece of sculpture, according to my opinion, in modern times. An appointment would gratify me very much."I have the honour to be, sir, etc.,"Gunner Cedersholm."
"I have the honour to represent in France the committee for the construction in Boston of a triumphal arch to be raised in commemoration of the men who first fell in the battle of the Revolution. The idea is to crown this arch with a group of figures, either realistic or symbolical, as the sculptor shall see fit. After carefully considering the modern work of men in France, I am inclined to offer this commission to you if you can accept it. Your 'Open Door' is the most beautiful piece of sculpture, according to my opinion, in modern times. An appointment would gratify me very much.
"I have the honour to be, sir, etc.,"Gunner Cedersholm."
Antony had given the appointment with excitement, and he was waiting now to see for the first time in ten years the man who had stolen from him fame, honour, and love.
He had heard nothing of the Cedersholms for six years. As far as he knew, during this time they had never returned to France. Once he vaguely understood that they were travelling for Mrs. Cedersholm's health.
His eyes ached to look upon the man whom he regarded as his bitterest enemy. Of Mrs. Cedersholm he thought now only as he thought of woman, of vain visions which he might never, never grasp or hold. He had bitterly torn his love out of his heart.
After leaving her at Windsor he had remained for some time in London where Dearborn had followed him, and where Dearborn and Nora Scarlet were married. Fairfax had sat with them in the gallery at Regent's Theatre when the curtain rose on Dearborn's successful play. Fairfax took a position as professor of drawing in a girls' school in the West End and taught a group of schoolgirls for several months. Between times he modelled on his statues for his new conception of the "Open Door." Then in the following spring, with ayearning in his heart and homesickness for France, he returned into the city with the May. He could scarcely look up at the windows of the old studio on the quays. He rented a barren place in the Vaugirard quarter and began his work in terrible earnestness.
Now, as he waited for his visitor, he wondered if Mary Cedersholm had visited the Salon, if with others she had stood before his sculpture. His servant announced "Monsieur Cedersholm," then let in the visitor and shut the door behind him. Cedersholm entered the vast studio in the soft light of late afternoon with which the spring twilight, rapidly withdrawing, filled the room. Antony did not stir from his chair, where he sat enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke.
The small man—Fairfax had forgotten how small he was—entered cautiously as though he were entering the room of a foe, which, indeed, he was doing, without being aware of it. Fairfax remembered that he had seen Cedersholm wearing a single eyeglass, and now spectacles of extraordinary thickness covered his eyes. He evidently saw with difficulty. As Fairfax did not rise to greet him, Cedersholm approached, saying tentatively—
"Mr. Rainsford? I believe I have an appointment with Mr. Rainsford."
"Yes," said Fairfax curtly, "I am here. Sit down, will you?"
His lame foot, which would have disclosed his identity, was withdrawn under his chair.
"I have just come from the Soudan," said Cedersholm, "where I had a sunstroke of the eyes. I see badly."
"Blindness," said Fairfax shortly, "is a common failing, but many of us don't know we have anything the matter with our eyes."
"It is, however, a tragedy for a sculptor," said Cedersholm, taking the chair to which Fairfax had pointed.
From the box on the table Fairfax offered his guest a cigar, which was refused. Antony lit a fresh one; it was evident he had not been recognized.
"I have not touched a tool for five years," Cedersholm said. "A man like you who must adore his work can easily imagine what this means."
"For two or three years I did not touch a tool. I know what it means."
"Ah!" exclaimed Cedersholm with interest. "What was your infirmity?"
"Poverty," returned Fairfax. Then added, "You have not come to talk with me about the short and simple annals of the poor."
"All that which goes to make the education and career of a great man," said Cedersholm, "is deeply interesting, especially to a confrère. You have executed a very great piece of work, Mr. Rainsford."
Fairfax made no response.
"You seem," said Cedersholm, "to doubt my sincerity. You received my letter?"
"Yes."
"Would you be reluctant to undertake such a work?"
The man who stood before Fairfax was so altered from his former self that Tony was obliged to whip up his memories, to call up all his past in order to connect this visitor with the man who had ruined him. Pale, meagre, so thin that his clothes hung upon him, disfigured by his thick glasses, he seemed to have shrunk into a little insignificant creature. No man could connect him with the idea of greatness or success. Fairfax answered it would depend upon circumstances.
"I expect you are very much overrun with orders, Mr. Rainsford. I can understand that. I do not take up a newspaper without reading some appreciative criticism of your work." The Swedish sculptor removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with a fragrant silk handkerchief. Then carefully replacing his spectacles, begged Fairfax's pardon. "I have suffered dreadfully with these infirm eyes," he said.
Fairfax leaned forward a little, continuing to whip up his memories, and, once goaded, like all revengeful and evil things, they came now quickly to bring back to him his anger of the past. Hatred and malice had disappeared—his nature was too sweet, too generous and forgiving to brood upon that which was irrevocably gone. He had been living fast; he had been working intensely; he had been loved, and he had shut his eyes and sighed and tried to think he loved in return. But the walls ofhis studio in the Rue Vaugirard melted away, and, instead, Cedersholm's rich, extravagant New York workshop rose up before his eyes. He saw himself again the young, ardent student, his blood beating with hope and trust, and his hands busy over what he had supposed was to be immortal labour; it had been given for this man then, the greatest living sculptor, to adopt it for his own. Now his heart began to beat fast. He clasped his hands strongly together, his voice trembling in his throat.
"I should ask a tremendous price," he said slowly, "a tremendous price."
"Quite right," returned the Swedish sculptor. "Talent such as yours should be paid for generously. I used to think so. I have commanded my price, Mr. Rainsford."
"I know your reputation and your fame," said Fairfax.
The other accepted what his host said as a compliment, and continued—
"The committee is very rich; there are men of enormous fortunes interested in the monument. They can pay—in reason," he added; "of course, in reason—and as you are an American there would be in your mind the ideal of patriotism."
"My demand would not be in reason," said Fairfax.
Cedersholm, struck at length by his tone, finding him lacking in courtesy and manners, began to peer at him keenly in the rapidly deepening twilight.
"In a way," he said sententiously, eager to be understood and approved of by the man who, in his judgment, was important in the sculpture of the time, he continued courteously, "there is no price too much to pay for art. I have followed your work for years."
"Have you?" said Antony.
"Six years ago I bought a little statue in an exhibition of the works of the pupils of Barye's studio." Cedersholm again took out his fine silk handkerchief and pressed it to his eyes. "Since then I have looked for comments on your work everywhere, and, whenever I saw you mentioned, I reminded the fact to my wife, who was an admirer of your talent."
Antony grew cold. At the mention of her name his blood chilled. Mary! Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. He drew his breath hard, clasped one hand across his forehead,and still back in the far remote past he did not bid this vision of Mary Cedersholm to linger.
"When I came back to Paris, I found you had justified my faith in your work. The question of payment now, in case you undertake this group, for instance, I dare say the matter would be satisfactorily adjusted."
"I doubt it, Mr. Cedersholm."
Cedersholm, already interested in the man as a worker, became now interested in his personality, and found him curious, settled himself comfortably in his chair and swung his monocle, which he still wore, by its string. He saw the face of his host indistinctly, and his eyes wandered around the vast, shadowy studio where the swathed casts stood in the corners. The place gave him a twinge of jealousy and awakened all his longings as an artist.
"It makes me acutely suffer," he said, "to come into the workshop of the sculptor. Four years of enforced idleness——" Then he broke in abruptly and said, "You have apparently settled already in your mind—decided not to accept this work for us. I think you are determined not to meet us, Mr. Rainsford."
"The price," said Antony, leaning fully forward, his blue eyes, whose sight was unimpeded, fixed on Cedersholm, "must be great enough to buy me back my lost youth."
His companion laughed gently and said indulgently, "My dear Mr. Rainsford."
"To buy me back my loss of faith in men's honour, in human kindness, in justice, in woman's love."
"He is a true genius," Cedersholm thought to himself, "just a bit over the line of mental balance." And he almost envied Antony this frenzy, for he had always judged himself too sane to be a great artist.
"It must buy me back three years of bitter struggle, of degrading manual toil."
"My dear man," said the sculptor indulgently. "I think I understand you, but no material price could ever do what you ask. Money, unfortunately, has nothing to do with the past; it can take care of the future more or less, but the past is beyond repurchase, you know."
It was growing constantly darker. The corners of thestudio were deep in shadows, and the forms of Antony's casts shone like spectres in their white clothes; the scaffoldings looked ghostly and spirit-like. Cedersholm sighed.
"Why have you come to me?" he heard Fairfax ask in his cutting tone, and he understood that for some reason or other this stranger was purposely impolite and unfriendly to him. He had not even found Fairfax's face familiar. There he sat before Antony, small, insignificant. How often he had crossed Tony's mind in some ugly dream when he had longed to crush him like a reptile. Now that he stood before him in flesh and blood it was astonishing to Fairfax to see how little real he was.
"I have been absent from France for six years," continued the Swede, and paused.... And Antony knew he was going back in his mind over the past six years of his married life with Mary. "I returned to Paris this week, and wandered into the Salon and stood with a crowd before your bas-relief. I stood for quite half an hour there, I should think, and at least one hundred men and women passed and paused as I had paused. I listened to their comments. I saw your popularity and your power, and saw how you touched the mass by the real beauty of real emotion, by your expression of feeling in plastic art. This is not often achieved nowadays, Mr. Rainsford. Sculpture is the least emotional of all the arts; literature, painting, and music stir the emotions and bring our tears, but that calm, sublime marble, that cold stone awes us by its harmonious perfection. Before sculpture we are content to marvel and worship, and in the 'Open Door' you have made us do all this and made us weep. I do not doubt that amongst those people many had lost their own by death." He paused. It was so dark now that the two men saw each other's face indistinctly. In the shadows Cedersholm's form had softened; the shadows blurred him before Fairfax's eyes; his voice was intensely melancholy. "To every man and woman who has lost your bas-relief is profoundly appealing. Every one of us must go through that door. Your conception, Mr. Rainsford, and your execution are sublime."
Fairfax murmured something which Cedersholm didnot make out. He paused a moment, apparently groping in thought as he groped with his weak eyes, and as Fairfax did not respond, he continued—
"You spoke just now of the price we must pay you, the price which you say must buy you back—what I judge you to mean by your progress, by these years of labour and education, by your apprenticeship to art, and, let me say, to life. My dear man, they have already purchased for you your present achievement, your present power. Everything we have, you know, must be paid for. Some things are paid for in coin, and others in flesh and blood and tears. To judge by what we know of the progress of the world in spiritual things and in art, it is the things that are purchased by this travail of the spirit that render eternal possessions, the eternal impressions. No man who has not suffered as you have apparently suffered, no man who has not walked upon thorns, could have produced the 'Open Door.' Do not degrade the value of your past life and the value of every hour of your agony. Why, it is above price." He paused ... his voice shook. "It is the gift of God!"
Antony's hands were clasped lightly together; they had been holding each other with a grip of steel; now they relaxed a bit. He bowed his head a little from its proud hauteur, and said—
"You are right; you are right."
"Four years ago," continued the voice—Cedersholm had become to him now only a voice to which he listened in the darkness—"four years ago, if I had seen the 'Open Door,' I would have appreciated its art as I recognized the value of your figure which I bought at the Exposition, but I could not have understood it; its spiritual lesson would have been lost upon me. You do not know me," he continued, "and I can in no way especially interest you. But these six years of my life, especially the last two, have been my Garden of Gethsemane."
He stopped. Antony knew that he had taken out the silk handkerchief again and wiped his eyes. After a second, Cedersholm said—
"You must have lost some one very near you."
"My wife," said Antony Fairfax.
The other man put out his hand, and he touched Antony's closed hands.
"I have lost my wife as well; she died two years ago."
Cedersholm heard Antony's exclamation and felt him start violently.
"Your wife," he cried, "Mary ... dead ... dead?"
"Yes. Why do you exclaim like that?"
"Not Mary Faversham?"
"Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. Did you know her?"
With a supreme effort Antony controlled himself. His voice suffocated him.
Dead! He felt again the touch of her lips; he heard again her voice; he felt her arms around him as she held him in Windsor—"Tony, darling, go! It is too late."
Oh! the Open Door!
Cedersholm, in the agitation that his own words had produced in himself, and in his grief, did not notice that Fairfax murmured he had known Mrs. Cedersholm in Paris.
"My wife was very delicate," he said. "We travelled everywhere. She faded and my life stopped when she died. To-day, when I saw the 'Open Door,' it had a message for me that brought me the first solace." Again his hands sought Fairfax's. "Thank you, brother artist," he murmured; "you have suffered as I have. You understand."
From where he sat, Fairfax struck a match and lit the candle. Its pale light flickered up in the big dark room like a lily shining in a tomb. He said, with a great effort—
"I made a little bas-relief of Mrs. Cedersholm. Did she never speak of me?"
"Never," said Cedersholm thoughtfully. "She met so many people in France; she was so surrounded. She admired greatly the little figure I bought at the Exposition; it was always in our salon. We spoke of you as a coming power, but I do not recall that she ever mentioned having known you."
To Antony this was the greatest proof she could have given him of her love for him. That careful silence, the long silence, not once speaking his name. He had triumphed over Cedersholm. She had loved him. Cedersholm murmured—
"And you did that bas-relief—a head silhouetted against a lattice? It never left her room, but she never mentioned it to me although I greatly admired it. It Was a perfect likeness." Fairfax saw Cedersholm peer at him through the candle light. "Curious," he continued, "curious."
And Antony knew that Cedersholm would never forget his cry of "Mary—Mary dead!" And her silence regarding his existence and his name, and that silence and that cry would go together in the husband's memory.
The door of the studio was opened by Dearborn, who came in calling—
"Tony, Tony, old man."
Cedersholm rose, and Antony rose as well, putting out his hand, saying—
"I will undertake the work you speak of, if your committee will write me confirming your suggestion. And I leave the price to you, you know; you understand what such work is worth. I place myself in your hands."
Dearborn had come up to them. "Tony," said Dearborn, "what are you plotting in the dark with a single candle?"
Fairfax presented him. "Mr. Cedersholm, Robert Dearborn, the playwright, the author of 'All Roads Meet.'"
Dearborn shook the sculptor's hand lightly. He wondered how this must have been for his friend. He looked curiously from one to the other.
"'All Roads Meet,'" he quoted keenly. "Good name, don't you think? They all do meet somewhere"—he put his hand affectionately on Tony's shoulder—"even if it is only at the Open Door." Then he asked, partly smiling, "And the beautiful Mrs. Cedersholm, is she in Paris too?"
"My wife," said Cedersholm shortly, "died two years ago."
"Dead!" exclaimed Robert Dearborn in a low tone of regret, the tone of every man who regrets the passing of a lovely creature that they have admired. "Dead! I beg your pardon, I did not know. I am too heartily sorry."
He put out his kindly hand. Cedersholm scarcelytouched it. He was excited, overwhelmed, and began to take his leave, to walk rapidly across the big room.
As the three men went together toward the door of the studio, Fairfax turned up an electric light. It shone brightly on them all, on Dearborn's grave, charming face, touched with the news of the death of the woman his friend had loved, on Cedersholm's almost livid face, on his thick glasses, and on Antony limping at his side. Cedersholm saw the limp, the unmistakable limp, the heavy boot, his stature, his beautiful head, and in spite of his infirmity he saw enough of his host to make him know him, to make him remember him, and his heart, which had begun to ache at Fairfax's cry of Mary, seemed to die within him. He remembered the man whom he had cheated out of his work and out of public acknowledgment. He knew now what Fairfax meant by the repurchase of his miserable youth. He had believed Antony Fairfax dead years ago. He had been told that he was dead. Now he limped beside him, powerful, clever, acknowledged, and moreover, there he stood beside him with memories that Cedersholm would never know, with memories that linked him with Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. In an unguarded moment that cry had escaped from the heart of a man who must have loved her. He thought of the bas-relief that hung always above her bed, and he thought of her silence, more eloquent now to him even than Antony's cry, and that silence and that cry would haunt him till the end, and the silence could never be broken now that she had gone through the Open Door.
Dearborn had not been with him all day until now. He had come up radiant to Tony, and putting his hand on his shoulder, said—
"My dear Tony, I had to come in to-day just to bring you a piece of news—to tell you a rumour, rather. The 'Open Door' has been bought by the Government. Your fame is made. I wanted to be the first to tell you. I went into the Embassy for a little while to hear them talk about you, and I can assure you that I did hear them. The ambassador himself told me this news is official. Every one will know to-morrow."
They talked together until the morning light came grey across the panes of the atelier, and the light was full of new creations, of new ideals of fame and life, of new ambitions and dreams for them both. Enthralled and inspired each by the other, the two artists talked and dreamed. Dearborn's new play was running into its two-hundredth performance. He was a rich man. Now Antony paused on the threshold of his studio, looking back into the deserted workroom filling with the April evening. In every corner, one by one, the visions rose and floated. They became new statues, new creations, indistinct and ethereal. Only the space, where the work that had been carried away to the Salon had once stood, was bare. As he shut the door he felt that he shut the door for ever upon his past, upon his young manhood and upon his youth.
In the early days of July he found himself once more alone in the empty studio, where he had worked for twelve months at the "Open Door."
The place where the huge marble had stood was empty; in its stead fame remained.
Looking back, it seemed now that his hardships had not been severe enough. Had success really come? Would it stay? Was he only the child of an hour? Could he sustain? He recalled the little statuettes which he had made out of the clay of the levee when he was a boy. He remembered his beautiful mother's praise—
"Why, Tony, they are extraordinary, my darling."
And the constant fever had run through his veins all his life. He had made his apprenticeship over theft and death. He said to himself—
"I shall sustain."
As he mused there, the praise he had received ringing in his ears, he entertained fame and saw the shadow of laurel on the floor, under the lamplight, where his marble had stood, long and white.
He had made warm friends and bound them to him. He loved the city and its beauties. His refinement and sense of taste had matured. Antony knew that in his soul he was unaltered, that he was marked by his past, and that the scars upon him were deep.
He was very much alone; there was no one with whom he could share his glory. Should he become the greatest living sculptor, to whom could he bring his honours, his joys?
For a long time Bella went with him in everything he did. His visions were banished by the vivid thoughtof her. When he came into his studio at twilight he would fancy he saw her sitting by the table.
She would lean there, not like a spirit-like woman under the shaded lamp, sewing at little children's garments ... not like that! Nevertheless, Bella sat there as a woman who waits for a return, the charming figure, the charming head with its crown of dark hair, and the lovely, brilliantly coloured face. Now there was nothing spirit-like in Antony's picture.
Then again he would imagine that he saw her in the crowd before his bas-relief at the Salon; he would select some woman dressed in an unusually smart spring gown and call her Bella to himself, until he saw her turn.
Once indeed, there, on the edge of the crowd, leaning with her hands upon the handle of her parasol, he was sure he saw her. The pose of the body was charming, the turn of the head almost as haughty as his own mother's, but the slenderness and the magnetism were Bella's own.
Antony chose this woman upon whom to fix his attention, and he thought that when she would move the resemblance would be gone.
The young girl suddenly altered her pose, and Antony saw her fully; he saw the proud beautiful face, piquant, alluring, a trifle sad; the brilliant lips, the colour in the cheeks, like a snow-set peach, the wonderful eyes, could belong to but one woman.
Separated from her by a little concourse of people, Antony could only cry, "Bella!" to himself. He started eagerly toward the place where he had seen her, but she vanished as the mirage on the desert's face.
What had he seen? A real woman, or only a trick of resemblance?
It was real enough to make him search the newspapers and the hotel lists and the bankers. Now he could not think of her name without a mighty emotion. If that were Bella, she was too lovely to be true! Shemustbe his, no matter at what price, no matter what her life might be.
A fortnight after he received in his mail a letter from America. The address, "Mr. Thomas Rainsford," was in a round full hand, a handsome hand; first he thought it a man's. He opened it with slight interest. Thepaper exhaled an intangible odour; it was not perfume, but a delicate scent which recalled to him, for some reason, or other, the smell of the vines around the veranda-trellis in New Orleans. He read—
"Mr. Thomas Rainsford."Dear Sir,—
"This will seem to be a very extraordinary letter, I know. I hardly know how to write such a letter. When I was in Paris a few weeks ago, I stood before the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have ever seen. I do not know that any one could do a more wonderful, a more deeply spiritual thing in clay or marble. But it is not what I think about it in that way, which is of interest. It cannot be of any interest to you, as you do not know me, nor is it for this that I am writing to you. Again, I do not know how to tell you."Where did you get your ideas for your statue? That is what I want to know. Years ago, a bas-relief, very much like yours—I should almost say identically yours—was made by my cousin, Antony Fairfax, in Albany. That bas-relief took the ten-thousand-dollar prize in Chicago. It was, unfortunately, destroyed in a fire, and no record of it was kept. My cousin is dead. For this reason I write to ask you where you got your inspiration for the 'Open Door.' It can be nothing to him that his beautiful work has been more beautifully done by a stranger, can do him no harm, but I want to know. Will you write me to the care of the Women's Art League, 5th Avenue, New York? Perhaps you will not deign to answer this letter. Do not think that I am making any reproach to you. It can be nothing to my cousin; he is dead but it would be a comfort to me. Once again, I hope you will let me hear from you."Yours faithfully,"Bella Carew."
"This will seem to be a very extraordinary letter, I know. I hardly know how to write such a letter. When I was in Paris a few weeks ago, I stood before the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have ever seen. I do not know that any one could do a more wonderful, a more deeply spiritual thing in clay or marble. But it is not what I think about it in that way, which is of interest. It cannot be of any interest to you, as you do not know me, nor is it for this that I am writing to you. Again, I do not know how to tell you.
"Where did you get your ideas for your statue? That is what I want to know. Years ago, a bas-relief, very much like yours—I should almost say identically yours—was made by my cousin, Antony Fairfax, in Albany. That bas-relief took the ten-thousand-dollar prize in Chicago. It was, unfortunately, destroyed in a fire, and no record of it was kept. My cousin is dead. For this reason I write to ask you where you got your inspiration for the 'Open Door.' It can be nothing to him that his beautiful work has been more beautifully done by a stranger, can do him no harm, but I want to know. Will you write me to the care of the Women's Art League, 5th Avenue, New York? Perhaps you will not deign to answer this letter. Do not think that I am making any reproach to you. It can be nothing to my cousin; he is dead but it would be a comfort to me. Once again, I hope you will let me hear from you.
"Yours faithfully,"Bella Carew."
The man reading in his studio looked at the signature, looked at the handwriting, held it before his eyes, to which the tears rushed. He pressed the faintly scented pages to his lips. Gallant little Bella ... He stretchedout his arms in the darkness, called to her across three thousand miles—
"Little cousin, please Heaven he can show you some day, Bella Carew."
It was at this time that he modelled his wonderful bust of Bella Carew.
When he finished the "Open Door," he said that he would not work for a year, that he was exhausted bodily and mentally; certainly he had lacked inspiration. But the afternoon of the day on which he had read this letter—this letter that opened for him a future—he set feverishly to work and modelled. He made a head of Bella which the critics have likened to the busts of Houdon, Carpeaux, and other masters. He modelled from memory, guided by his recollections of that picturesque face he had seen under the big hat on the outskirts of the crowd before his bas-relief. He modelled from memory, from imagination, with hope and new love, from old love too; told himself he had fallen in love with Bella the first night he had seen her, when she had comforted him about his heavy step.
Into the beautiful head and face he worked upon he put all his ideal of what a woman's face should be. He fell in love with his creation, in love with the clay that he moulded. Once more he had a companion in the studio from which had been removed his study for the tomb, and this represented a living woman. It seemed almost to become flesh and blood under his ardent hand. "Bella!" he called to her as he smoothed the lovely cheek and saw the peach bloom under it.
"Little cousin," he breathed, as he touched the hair along her neck, and remembered the wild, tangled forest that had fallen across his face when he carried her in his arms during their childish romps. "Honey child," he murmured as he modelled and moulded the youthful lines of the mouth and lips and stood yearning before them, all his heart and soul in his hands that made before his eyes a lovely woman. She became to him the very conception and expression of what he wanted his wife to be.
They say that men have fallen in love with that beautiful face of Bella Carew as modelled by Fairfax.
Arch and subtle, tender and provoking, distinguished, youthful, alluring, it is the most charming expression of young womanhood that an artist's hand could give to the world.
"Beloved," he murmured like a man half in sleep and half awakening, and he folded the lines of her bodice across her breast and fastened them there by a single rose.
With a sweep of her lovely hair, with an uplift of the corners of her beautiful lips, with the rose at her breast, Bella Carew will charm the artistic world so long as the clay endures.
On the promenade deck of one of the big steamers, as it pushed around into its pier, a man stood in his long overcoat, his hands in his pockets, hoping to avoid the reporters whom he had reason to suppose were ready to make him their prey.
He was entering New York Harbour at an early hour in the morning. It was November, and over the river and over the city hung the golden haze. If the lines of the objects, if the shore and buildings were crude, their impression was not so to him. To and fro the ferries plied from shore to shore, and their whistles and the whistles of the tugs spoke shrilly and loudly to the morning, but there was nothing nasal or blatant to him in the noises. He found the scene, the light of the morning, the greeting of the city as it stirred to life, enchanting. He had gone away from it six years ago, a broken-hearted man, and it seemed now as though he had made his history in an incredibly short time. Down in the hold of the boat, in their cases, reposed his sculptures, some thirty statues and models that he had brought for his exposition in New York. He had come back celebrated. His visions and his dreams so far had been fulfilled.
Once again all his past, all his emotions, his tears and aspirations, culminated in this hour. This was his return, but not as Antony Fairfax. He did not know that he should ever take his old name again. He had made the name of Thomas Rainsford famous, and the fact gave him a singular tender satisfaction, linking him with a dear man who had loved him. He felt almost as though his friend were resurrected or given a new draught of immortal life every time the name was said.
A young man came up to him, pencil in hand, his look eager and appealing, and Fairfax recognized a reporter in search of a good newspaper story. He understood the poor clothes, the dogged determination.
"You want a story?" he said. "Well, sit down."
The newspaper man, highly delighted with the sculptor's sympathy and understanding, wrote his interview with enthusiasm.
Fairfax talked for five minutes, and said at the close, "I had not intended to be interviewed. But you are a rising man; you have secured me against my will."
The reporter put up his pad. "Thank you, Mr. Rainsford; but this is so impersonal. I would like some of your views on art. They tell me you have had a tough fight for success and existence."
"Many of us have that," said Fairfax.
"Your ideals, sir?"
The young chap was only twenty-one. It was his first interview. Fairfax smiled.
"Downstairs in the hold are thirty cases of my work, the labour of the last six years. Go to my exposition, and you will see my ideals."
As the other took his leave Antony saw himself again, poor, unknown, as he had set foot in New York. There was a deputation on the wharf to meet him from the Academy of Design, and he walked down the gang-plank alone, leaving no one behind him in France who stood to him for family, and he would find no one in America who should mean to him hearth and home.
They had taken rooms for him in the old Hotel Plaza overlooking 59th Street; there, toward the afternoon of the first day, he found himself at three o'clock, alone in his parlour overlooking Central Park.
The trees were still in leaf. November was mild and golden. The air of America, of the city which had once been unfriendly to him, and which now opened its doors, blew in upon him through the open window like a caress. He looked musingly at the little park where he had wandered with Gardiner and Bella, on the Sunday holiday, when Bella had told him "all things she wanted to do were wicked."
Amongst his statues he had brought over was onelately bought by France and presented to the Metropolitan Museum. It was the marble of a little girl mourning over a dead blackbird. Everything in the city was connected now with Bella Carew.
There was a sheaf of invitations on the table from well-known New Yorkers, invitations to dinners, invitations to lecture, and he knew that he would be taken into the kindliest heart of New York. Well, if work can give a man what he wants, he had worked enough for it; there was no doubt about that. It had been nearly a year since his interview with Cedersholm. He brought with him casts and statues for the triumphal arch in Boston, and he intended taking a studio here and continuing his work in America, but he had no plans. In spite of his success and the prices he could command, his thoughts and his mind were all at sea. His personality had not yet developed to the point where he was at peace. He knew that such peace could only come to him through the companionship of a woman.
No commonplace woman would satisfy Fairfax now.
Money and position meant absolutely nothing to him. If Bella Carew were a rich and brilliant heiress it would probably alienate him from her. His need called for a woman who could work at his side with a kindred interest, a woman who knew beauty, who loved art, whose appreciation and criticism could not leave him cold.
What would Bella Carew, when he found her—as he should—prove herself to be? Spoiled she was, no doubt, mistress for several years of a large fortune, coquette, flirt; of these things he was partly sure, because she had not married. Children with her great promise develop sometimes into nonentities, but Bella, at sixteen, had surpassed his wildest prophecies for her. Bella, as he had seen her on the outskirts of the crowd, had driven him mad. He knew that it had been she; there was no doubt about it in his mind. Now to find her, to see what she had become.
He knew that Bella, when she opened the morning papers the next day—if she were in New York—would discover who he was. There would be descriptions of him as a lame sculptor; there would be reproductionsof his "Open Door"; there would be the fact that he was born in New Orleans; that he assumed the name of Rainsford. Now that he had no longer any secret to keep, his own name, Antony Fairfax, would appear. Bella would not fail to know him.