She had--what shall I
say?--a veiled manner; as though she had dropped a fine gauze between us.
I waited for her to speak.
She glanced about the room, admiring a hawthorn vase I had picked up at
auction. Then, after a pause, she said:
"You haven't finished the picture?"
"Not quite," I said.
She asked to see it, and I wheeled out the easel and threw the drapery
back.
"Oh," she murmured, "you haven't gone on with the face?"
I shook my head.
She looked down on her clasped hands and up at the picture; not once at
me.
"You--you're going to finish it?"
"Of course," I cried, throwing the revived purpose into my voice. By God,
I would finish it!
The merest tinge of relief stole over her face, faint as the first thin
chirp before daylight.
"Is it so very difficult?" she asked tentatively.
"Not insuperably, I hope."
She sat silent, her eyes on the picture. At length, with an effort, she
brought out: "Shall you want more sittings?"
For a second I blundered between two conflicting conjectures; then the
truth came to me with a leap, and I cried out, "No, no more sittings!"
She looked up at me then for the first time; looked too soon, poor child;
for in the spreading light of reassurance that made her eyes like a rainy
dawn, I saw, with terrible distinctness, the rout of her disbanded hopes.
I knew that she knew ...
I finished the picture and sent it home within a week. I tried to make it
--what you see.
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