r the lamp-light--Mrs. Faversham, as he had watched her leaning
on her hand--not Bella. He looked and thought. Bella was a child, a
little girl. There was nothing reposeful or meditative about Bella, yet
he had seen her pore over a book, her hair about her face. Would she
ever sit like this, tranquil, reposeful, reading, dreaming? The face was
like her, but the resemblance passed.

CHAPTER XI

Mrs. Faversham's dresses and jewels, her luxuries, her carriages and her
horses, the extravagance of her life, had not dazzled Antony; his eyes
had been pleased, but her possessions were a distinct envelope
surrounding her and separating them. After watching Potowski's
natatorial gestures, Fairfax had longed to swim out of the elegance into
a freer sea.

He had told her nothing of his companion or of his life. He often longed
to stuff some of the dainties of the table into his pockets for
Dearborn, to carry away some of the fire in his hands, to bring
something of the comfort back, but he would not have spoken for the
world. Once she had broached the subject of further payment, and had
seen by his tightening lips that she had made a mistake. In spite of the
fact of his reserve and that he was proud to coldness and sometimes not
quite kind, intimacy grew between them. Mrs. Faversham was engaged to be
married, but Fairfax did not believe that she loved Cedersholm. What her
feelings were, or why she wanted to marry him, he could not guess. The
intimacy between them was caused by what they knew of each other as
human beings, unknown, unexplained, unformulated. There was a tremendous
sympathy, and neither the man nor the woman knew how real it was. And
although there was her life--she was five years his senior--and his life
with its tragedies, its depths and its ascensions, although there was
all this unread and unspoken between them, neither of them, when they
were together, was conscious of any past. A word, a touch, a look, a
hazard chance would have revealed to them how near they stood.

As he went on modelling, he found that he was beginning to think of her
as he had not let himself do during the weeks when she had sat for him.
He found that he could not go on with his work now and think of her. He
had voluntarily denied himself this day at Versailles where he might
have enjoyed her for hours. When she had told him that she had written
to Cedersholm about him he had smiled.

"He will not recall my name. I was an obscu