A small empty scent-bottle stood on the shabby
looking-glass.
"Have you found new lodgings?"
The little model edged closer to the window. A stealthy watchfulness was
creeping into her shrinking, dazed face.
She shook her head.
"I don't know where I'm going."
Obeying a sudden impulse to see more clearly, Bianca lifted her veil. "I
came to tell you," she said, "that I shall always be ready to help you."
The girl did not answer, but suddenly through her black lashes she stole
a look upward at her visitor. 'Can you,' it seemed to say, 'you--help
me? Oh no; I think not!' And, as though she had been stung by that
glance, Bianca said with deadly slowness:
"It is my business, of course, entirely, now that Mr. Dallison has gone
abroad."
The little model received this saying with a quivering jerk. It might
have been an arrow transfixing her white throat. For a moment she seemed
almost about to fall, but, gripping the window-sill, held herself erect.
Her eyes, like an animal's in pain, darted here, there, everywhere,
then rested on her visitor's breast, quite motionless. This stare,
which seemed to see nothing, but to be doing, as it were, some fateful
calculation, was uncanny. Colour came gradually back into her lips and
eyes and cheeks; she seemed to have succeeded in her calculation, to be
reviving from that stab.
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