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He had heard indeed that he was not even entitled to the name of Cramier, but had been adopted by a childless man, who had brought him up and left him a lot of money. There was something in this that went against the grain of the childless Colonel. He had never adopted, nor been adopted by anyone himself.
If this man who had her happiness beneath his heel had come here to mock, he should at all events get what he had come to give. And he waited. "I see. You are giving the poor brute horns!" If Cramier had seen, he had dared to add a touch of cynical humour, which the sculptor himself had never thought of. And this even evoked in the young man a kind of admiring compunction.
"Those are not horns," he said gently; "only ears." Cramier lifted a hand and touched the edge of his own ear. "Not quite like that, are they human ears? But I suppose you would call this symbolic. What, if I may ask, does it represent?" All the softness in Lennan vanished. "If you can't gather that from looking, it must be a failure." "Not at all.
To have this something to look forward to, however furtive and barren, helped. But on a Saturday night there would be no sitting at the House. Cramier would be at home; or they would both be out; or perhaps have gone down to their river cottage. Cramier! What cruel demon had presided over that marring of her life! Why had he never met her till after she had bound herself to this man!
A man who had never had any balance to speak of at his bank, and from the nomadic condition of his life had no exaggerated feeling for a settled social status deeming Society in fact rather a bore he did not unduly exaggerate the worldly dangers of this affair; neither did he honestly believe that she would burn in everlasting torment if she did not succeed in remaining true to 'that great black chap, as he secretly called Cramier.
He lay down on a couch, and there stayed a long time quite still, his forehead pressed against the wall. His will was already beginning to recover for a fresh attempt. It was merciful that she was going away from Cramier, going to where he had in fancy watched her feed her doves. No laws, no fears, not even her commands could stop his fancy from conjuring her up by day and night.
He came in with his deliberate step, light and well-poised for so big a man. "So this," he said, "is where you produce your masterpieces! Anything great since you came back?" Lennan lifted the cloths from the half-modelled figure of his bull-man. He felt malicious pleasure in doing that. Would Cramier recognize himself in this creature with the horn-like ears, and great bossed forehead?
Then, past that figure planted solidly between them, he caught a look from her, swift, sure, marvellously timed again and again as if she were being urged by the very presence of this danger. One of those glances would surely surely be seen by Cramier. Is there need for fear that a swallow should dash itself against the wall over which it skims? But he got up, unable to bear it longer. "Going?"
There was such a thing as incompatibility. Oh yes! And there was the matter of difference in their ages! Olive was twenty-six, Robert Cramier forty-two. And now this young Mark Lennan was in love with her. What if she were in love with him! John would realize then, perhaps, that the young flew to the young. For men even the best, like John, were funny!
"Take Olive alone," she said. "I don't really care to go." When the Colonel went to fetch his niece he found her ready, and very half-heartedly he asked for Cramier. It appeared she had not told him. Relieved, yet somewhat disconcerted, he murmured: "He won't mind not going, I suppose?" "If he went, I should not." At this quiet answer the Colonel was beset again by all his fears.
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