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For a full minute he remained silent, although she spoke to him twice, thinking the connection might have been interrupted. Then his voice came, curiously altered: "Who asked that of me?" "Mr. Drene." "Mr. Drene is very ill, I hear." "He is convalescent." "Did he ask you to call me?" "Certainly." "Then you are with him?" "Yes." "Where?" "In his apartment. I came downstairs to the janitor's rooms.
"He bears that name also He!" "Oh! And so, spiritually as well as artistically, you believe in the Virgin?" "You also can make a better Virgin if you believe in her otherwise than esthetically." Drene gazed at him incredulously, then, with a shrug: "When do you want this thing started?" "Now." "I can't take it on now." "I want a sketch pretty soon the composition.
There was nothing left for him to do but lie there. He's lying there still, with one of her little feet on his bull neck. All the town knows it." "He wants to marry her," repeated Drene, as though to himself. "She may not take him at that. They're queer some women. I suppose she'd jump at it if she were not straight. But there's another thing " Guilder looked curiously at Drene.
Drene nodded: "I expect to go for a walk this evening." But he did not. He lay on his couch, eyes open in the darkness, wondering what Graylock was doing, how he lived, what occupied his days. What were the nights of a condemned man like? Did Graylock sleep? Did he suffer? Was the suspense a living death to him?
She had not posed for Drene during the last two weeks, and he had begun to miss her, after his own fashion that is, he thought of her when not preoccupied and sometimes desired her companionship when unoccupied.
The girl on the model-stand laughed outright at the rebuke, stretched her limbs and body, and relaxed, launching a questioning glance at Drene. "All right; rest a bit," said the sculptor, smearing the bit of wax he was pinching over the sketch before him.
You might fool me one way or another if you were dead." Graylock lifted his head from his hands: "I don't know how much of the other debt I've already paid, Drene. But I've paid heavily since I knew her if that is any satisfaction to you.
"I had to see Drene that's why we are late," explained Guilder. "We're ready to go ahead and let your contracts for you " "Drene?" interrupted Graylock, looking straight at Guilder with a curious and staring intensity. "Why drag Drene into an excuse?" "Because we went to his studio," said Guilder. "Now about letting the contracts " "Were you at Drene's studio?" "Yes.
He was putting something into his coat pocket, and his back was still turned to the open door when Graylock stepped quietly across the threshold; and Drene heard him, but closed his desk, leisurely, and then, as leisurely, turned, knowing who had entered. And so they stood alone together after many years. Graylock looked at Drene's heavily sagging pocket and knew what was in it.
But this is enough of the world to suit me, Guilder and I can go to a noisy restaurant to eat in when I'm so inclined " He laughed a rather mirthless laugh and glanced up, catching a peculiar expression in Guilder's eyes. "You're thinking," said Drene coolly, "what a god I once set up on the altar of domesticity.
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