ong
the panel looking back at him. Her figure was in the shadow, but the
light fell on her face, on her hair and on her hand. The unconscious
charm of her pose, her slow pause, her attitude of farewell and waiting,
the solemnity of it, the effect of light and shadow, struck Fairfax.

"Molly," he cried, "wait!"

But she had dropped her arm. "You'll be coming along," she said,
smiling, "and it's getting late."

* * * * *

He found that the spell for work was broken after she left, though a
fleeting idea, a picture, an image he could not fix, tantalized him. He
followed his wife. He had passed the most peaceful hour in his Canal
Street studio since he had signed the lease with the money of his
mother's ring. He would have told Molly this, but Rainsford was there
for supper.

CHAPTER XXXI

Molly came and sat with him Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Fairfax
made studies of his wife as she sewed, a modern conception of a woman
sitting under a lamp, her face lifted, dreaming. He told Rainsford that
when the lease was up he should vacate the studio, for he could not go
on with his scheme for the monument. He had the memories of Molly's
coming to him during the late autumn and winter afternoons. The
remembrance of these holidays soothed and pardoned many faults and
delinquencies. She seemed another Molly to the Sheedy counter girl, the
Troy collar factory girl, and an indefinable Presence came with her,
lingered as she sewed or read some book she had picked up, and if
Fairfax the artist watched the change and transformation of her face as
it refined and thinned, grew more delicate and meditative, it was
Fairfax the man who recalled the picture afterward.

She was exceedingly gentle, very silent, ready with a word of
encouragement and admiration if he spoke to her. She knew nothing of the
art he adored, but seemed to know his temperament and to understand. She
posed tranquilly while the short days met the early nights; she
disguised her fatigue and her ennui, so that he never knew she grew
tired, and the Presence surrounded her like an envelope, until Antony,
drawing and modelling, wondered if it were not the soul of the child
about to be born to him, and if from the new emotion his inspiration
would not stir and bless him at the last?

What there was of humour and fantasy in her Irish heart, how imaginative
and tender she was, he might have gathered in those hours, if he had
cho