The Greater Inclination

THE GREATER INCLINATION

“Of course,” I cried, throwing the revived purpose into my voice. By God, I would finish it!

The merest tinge of relief stole over her face, faint as the first thin chirp before daylight.

“Is it so very difficult?” she asked tentatively. “Not insuperably, I hope.”

She sat silent, her eyes on the picture. At length, with an effort, she brought out: “Shall you want more sittings?”

For a second I blundered between two conflicting conjectures; then the truth came to me with a leap, and I cried out, “No, no more sittings!”

She looked up at me then for the first time; looked too soon, poor child; for in the spreading light of reassurance that made her eyes like a rainy dawn, I saw, with terrible distinctness, the rout of her disbanded hopes. I knew that she knew ...

I finished the picture and sent it home within a week. I tried to make it – what you see. – Too late, you say? Yes – for her; but not for me or for the public. If she could be made to feel, for a day longer, for an hour even, that her miserable secret was a secret – why, she’d made it seem worth while to me to chuck my own ambitions for that ...

Lillo rose, and taking down the sketch stood looking at it in silence.

After a while I ventured, “And Miss Vard – ?”

He opened the portfolio and put the sketch back, tying the strings with deliberation. Then, turning to relight his cigar at the lamp, he said: “She died last year, thank God.”