A Life Line

And when at length she finally succeeded in reconquering
self-possession, she had already stammered out answers to his gently
persuasive questions--had told him enough to start the fuller
confession to which he listened in utter silence.

And now she had told him everything, as far as she understood the
situation. She lay sideways, deep in the armchair, tired, yet vaguely
conscious that she was resting mind and body, and that calm was
gradually possessing the one, and the nerves of the other were growing
quiet.

Listlessly her grey eyes wandered around the big studio where shadowy
and strangely beautiful but incomprehensible things met her gaze, like
iridescent, indefinite objects seen in dreams.

These radiantly unreal splendours were only Neeland's rejected Academy
pictures and studies; a few cheap Japanese hangings, cheaper Nippon
porcelains, and several shaky, broken-down antiques picked up for a
song here and there. All the trash and truck and dust and junk
characteristic of the conventional artist's habitation were there.

But to Ruhannah this studio embodied all the wonders and beauties of
that magic temple to which, from her earliest memory, her very soul
had aspired--the temple of the unknown God of Art.

Vaguely she endeavoured to realise that she was now inside one of its
myriad sanctuaries; that here under her very tired and youthful eyes
stood one of its countless altars; that here, also, near by, sat one
of those blessed acolytes who aided in the mysteries of its wondrous
service.