Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/293



HILE Marthe Ludérac and Jill were in the woods, Graham was painting in the valley road. He had gone out at eight, walking a long way up the valley and finding no subject that could chain his thought. Then he returned, and not far from Buissac set down his easel and began to paint the turn of river that happened to be before him, framed on the right by the distant jut of the promontory. As the hour of eleven approached, a temptation, daily renewed, daily beaten off, assailed him; and this morning he yielded to it. He left his painting materials at the Ecu d'Or and walked up to the Manoir. If he arrived thus, after the reading had begun, she could not escape him. Even if she left the room directly, he would have seen her. He felt now that he could not go on living unless he saw her.

With a sense of the inevitable that was like an hallucination, he entered the pale drawing-room and saw the two women before him; and he fixed his bright, fierce gaze upon them, challenging their right to question his presence. Madame de Lamouderie sat in her chair on one side of the fire and near her, between her and the window, sat Mademoiselle Ludérac, with her book.