I--"
When Mrs. Taine was gone, Sibyl Andres sat for a little while before her
portrait; wondering, dumbly, at the happiness of that face upon the
canvas. There were no tears. She could not cry. Her eyes burned hot and
dry. Her lips were parched. Rising, she drew the curtain carefully to hide
the picture, and started toward the door. She paused. Going to the easel
that held the other picture, she laid her hand upon the curtain. Again,
she paused. Aaron King had said that she must not look at that
picture--Conrad Lagrange had said that she must not--why? She did not know
why.
Perhaps--if the mountain girl had drawn aside the curtain and had looked
upon the face of Mrs. Taine as Aaron King had painted it--perhaps the rest
of my story would not have happened.
But, true to the wish of her friends, even in her misery, Sibyl Andres
held her hand. At the door of the studio, she turned again, to look long
and lingeringly about the room. Then she went out, closing and locking the
door, and leaving the key on a hidden nail, as her custom was.
Going slowly, lingeringly, through the rose garden to the little gate in
the hedge, she disappeared in the orange grove.
Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange, returning from a long walk, overtook Myra
Willard, who was returning from town, just as the woman of the disfigured
face arrived at the gate of the little house in the orange grove.
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