with a mumbled apology as he burst into the _atelier_.

CHAPTER XIX

Late that afternoon, in Mrs. Horton's drawing-room at the _Hotel
Palais d'Orsay_, Steele stood at the window, his gaze almost sullen in
the moodiness of his own ineffectual sympathy. The day had grown as
cheerless as himself. Outside, across the _Quai d'Orsay_, a cold rain
pelted desolately into the gray water of the Seine, and drew a wet
veil across the opposite bank. Through the reeking mist, the remote
gray branches in the Gardens of the _Tuileries_ stood out starkly
naked. Even the vague masses of the _Louvre_ seemed as forbidding as
the shadowy bulk of some buttressed prison. The "taxis" slurred by
through wet streets, and those persons who were abroad went with
streaming umbrellas and hurried steps. The raw chill of Continental
hotels permeated the place. He knew that in the center of the room
Duska sat, her elbows resting on the table top; her eyes,
distressfully wide, fixed on the wet panes of the other window. He
knew that, if he spoke to her, her lips would shape themselves into a
pathetic smile, and her answer would be steady. He knew that she had
given herself no luxury of outburst, but that she had remained there,
in much the same attitude, all afternoon; sometimes, crushing her
small handkerchief into a tight wad of lace and linen; sometimes,
opening it out and smoothing it with infinite care into a tiny square
upon the table. He knew that her feet, with their small shoes and
high-arched, silk-stockinged insteps, twitched nervously from time to
time; that the gallant shoulders drooped forward. These details were
pictured in his mind, and he kept his eyes stolidly pointed toward the
outer gloom so that he might not be forced to see it all again in
actuality.

At last, he wheeled with a sudden gesture of desperation, and, going
across to the table, dropped his hand over hers.

She looked up with the unchanged expression of wide-eyed suffering
that has no outlet.

"Duska, dear," he asked, "can I do anything?"

She shook her head, and, as she answered, it was in a dead voice.
"There is nothing to do."

"If I leave you, will you promise to cry? You must cry," he commanded.

"I can't cry," she answered, in the same expressionless flatness of
tone.

"Duska, can you forgive me?" He had moved around, and stood leaning
forward with his hands resting upon the table.

"Forgive you for what?"

"For being the author of all this