He did not go home that day.

Towards late evening he sat in the twilight, his head in his hands, a pile of smoked cigarettes and Bella's Prayer-book on the table before him.... In the wretched afternoon he had read, one after another, the services: Marriage ... for better or for worse, till death do us part.... The Baptismal service, and the Burial for the Dead.

At six he rose with a sigh, and, though it was growing dark, he began to draw aimlessly, and Rainsford, when he came in, found Tony sketching, and the young man said—

"You don't give a fellow much of your company these days, Peter. Have a cigarette? I've smoked a whole box myself."

"I'm glad to see you working, Fairfax."

"You don't know how glad I am," Fairfax exclaimed; "but the light's bad."

Putting aside his drawing-board, he turned to his friend, and, with an ardour such as he had not displayed since the old days at the Delavan, began to tell of his conception.

"I have given up my idea of a single figure. I shall make a bas-relief, a great circular tablet, if you understand, a wall with curving sides, and emblematic figures in high relief. It will be a mighty fine piece of work, Rainsford, if it's ever done."

"What will your figures be, Tony?"

"Ah, they won't let me see their forms or faces yet." He changed the subject. "What have you done with your Sunday, old man? Slept all day?"

"No, I've been sitting for an hour or two with Mrs. Fairfax."

Molly's husband murmured, "I'm a brute, and no one knows it better than I do."

Rainsford made no refutation of his friend's accusation of himself, but suggested—

"She might bring her sewing in the afternoons, Tony; it would be less lonely for her?"

Fairfax noticed the flush that rose along the agent's thin cheek.

"By Jove!" Fairfax reflected. "I wonder if old Rainsford is in love with Molly?" The supposition did not make him jealous.

The two men went home together, and Rainsford stayed to supper as he had taken a habit of doing, for Fairfax did not wish to be alone. But when at ten o'clock the guest had gone and the engineer and his wife were alone together in their homely room, Fairfax said—

"Don't judge me too harshly, Molly."

Judge him? Did he think she did?

"You might well, my dear."

He took the hand that did all the work for his life and home and which she tried to keep as "ladylike" as she knew, and said, his eyes full on her—

"I do the best I can. I'm an artist, that's the truth of it! There's something in me that's stronger than anything else in the world. I reckon it's talent. I don't know how good it is or how ignoble; but it's brutal, and I've got to satisfy it, Molly."

Didn't she know it, didn't Mr. Rainsford tell her? Didn't she want to leave him free?

"You're the best girl in the world!" he cried contritely, and checked the words, "You should never have married me."

She couldn't see the struggle in him, but she could observe how pale he was. She never caressed him. She had long since learned that it was not what he wanted; but she laid her hand on his head, for he was sitting on the bed, and it might have been his mother who spoke—

"You're clear tired out," she said gently. "Will I fix up a bed for you in the kitchen to-night? You'll lie better."

He accepted gratefully. To-morrow, being Monday, was the longest day in the week for him.

He could not permit himself to go to church again, but during the next few days he half expected to hear a knock at the door which should announce Bella. But she did not come, and he was glad that she did not, and more than once, in the evening, he walked around the school building, up —— Street, looking at the lighted windows of the house where the doves were safely coted, and thought of the schoolgirl, with her books and her companions.

"... Not any more perfectly straight lines, Cousin Antony ..."

And the leaves fell, piles of them, red and yellow, and were swept and burned in fires whose incense was sweet to him, and the trees in the school garden grew bare.

In the first days of his Albany life, his Visions had used to meet him in those streets; now there seemed to be no inspiration for him anywhere, and he wondered if it were his marriage that had levelled all pinnacles for him or his daily mechanical work? His associations with Tito Falutini? Or if it were only that he was no sculptor at all, not equal to his dreams!

In the leaf-strewn street, near the Canon's School, he called on the Images to return, and, half halting in his walk, he looked up at one lighted window as if he expected to see a girlish figure there and catch sight of a friendly little hand that waved to him; but there was no such greeting.

That afternoon, as he went into his studio, some one rose from the sofa, and his wife's voice called to him—

"Don't be startled, Tony. I just came for awhile to sit with you."

He was amazed. Molly had never crossed the threshold of the workroom before, not having been invited. She had brought her sewing. It was so lonely in the little rooms, she wondered if it wasn't lonesome in the studio as well?

Smoking and walking to and fro, his hands in his pockets, Fairfax glanced at his wife as she took up the little garments on which she was at work. Her skin was stainless as a lily save here and there where the golden fleck of a freckle marred its whiteness. Her reddish hair, braided in strands, was wound flatly around her head. There was a purity in her face, a Mystery that was holy to him. He crossed over to her side and lit the lamp for her.

"Who suggested your coming? Rainsford?"

"Nobody. I wanted to come, just."

He threw himself down on the sofa near her. "I can't work!" he exclaimed. "I've not been able to do anything for weeks. I reckon I'm no good. I'm going to let the whole thing go."

Molly folded her sewing and laid it on the table. "Would you show me what you've been workin' at, Tony?"

The softness of her brogue had not gone, but she had been a rapid pupil unconsciously taught, and her speech had improved.

"I've destroyed most of my work," he said, hopelessly; "but this is something of the new scheme I've planned."

He went over to the other part of the studio and uncovered the clay in which he had begun to work, and mused before it. He took some clay from the barrel, mixed it and began to model. Molly watched him.

"I get an idea," he murmured; "but when I go to fix it it escapes and eludes me. It has no form. I want a group of figures in the foreground and the idea of distance and far-away on the other side."

"It will be lovely, Tony," she encouraged him. "I mind the day we walked in the cemetery for the first time and you looked at the angel so long."

"Yes." He was kneeling, bending forward, putting the clay on with his thumb.

"Ever since then"—Molly's tone was meditative—"that angel seems like a friend to me. Many's the time when there's a hard thing to do he seems to open the door and I go through, and it's not so hard."

She was imaginative, Fairfax knew it. She was superstitious, like the people of her country. The things she said were often full of fancy, like the legends and stories of the Celts; but now he hardly heard her, for he was working, and she went back to her task by the lamp, and, under the quiet of her presence and its companionship, his modelling grew. He heard her finally stir, and the clock struck seven, and they had had no supper. Until she crossed the floor, he did not speak. Then he turned—

"I'll work on a little longer. I want to finish this hand."

"Take your time, Tony. I'll be going home slowly, anyway."

She was at the door, stood in it, held it half-open, her arm out along 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.