Part 59 (2/2)

”Your wife,” he cried, ”Mary ... dead ... dead?”

”Yes. Why do you exclaim like that?”

”Not Mary Faversham?”

”Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. Did you know her?”

With a supreme effort Antony controlled himself. His voice suffocated him.

Dead! He felt again the touch of her lips; he heard again her voice; he felt her arms around him as she held him in Windsor--”Tony, darling, go!

It is too late.”

Oh! the Open Door!

Cedersholm, in the agitation that his own words had produced in himself, and in his grief, did not notice that Fairfax murmured he had known Mrs.

Cedersholm in Paris.

”My wife was very delicate,” he said. ”We travelled everywhere. She faded and my life stopped when she died. To-day, when I saw the 'Open Door,' it had a message for me that brought me the first solace.” Again his hands sought Fairfax's. ”Thank you, brother artist,” he murmured; ”you have suffered as I have. You understand.”

From where he sat, Fairfax struck a match and lit the candle. Its pale light flickered up in the big dark room like a lily s.h.i.+ning in a tomb.

He said, with a great effort--

”I made a little bas-relief of Mrs. Cedersholm. Did she never speak of me?”

”Never,” said Cedersholm thoughtfully. ”She met so many people in France; she was so surrounded. She admired greatly the little figure I bought at the Exposition; it was always in our salon. We spoke of you as a coming power, but I do not recall that she ever mentioned having known you.”

To Antony this was the greatest proof she could have given him of her love for him. That careful silence, the long silence, not once speaking his name. He had triumphed over Cedersholm. She had loved him.

Cedersholm murmured--

”And you did that bas-relief--a head silhouetted against a lattice? It never left her room, but she never mentioned it to me although I greatly admired it. It Was a perfect likeness.” Fairfax saw Cedersholm peer at him through the candle light. ”Curious,” he continued, ”curious.”

And Antony knew that Cedersholm would never forget his cry of ”Mary--Mary dead!” And her silence regarding his existence and his name, and that silence and that cry would go together in the husband's memory.

The door of the studio was opened by Dearborn, who came in calling--

”Tony, Tony, old man.”

Cedersholm rose, and Antony rose as well, putting out his hand, saying--

”I will undertake the work you speak of, if your committee will write me confirming your suggestion. And I leave the price to you, you know; you understand what such work is worth. I place myself in your hands.”

Dearborn had come up to them. ”Tony,” said Dearborn, ”what are you plotting in the dark with a single candle?”

Fairfax presented him. ”Mr. Cedersholm, Robert Dearborn, the playwright, the author of 'All Roads Meet.'”

Dearborn shook the sculptor's hand lightly. He wondered how this must have been for his friend. He looked curiously from one to the other.

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