Part 72 (2/2)

She nodded seriously.

”When there is a better light I should like to show you some of my studies,” she ventured. ”No, not now. I am too vain to risk anything except the kindest of morning lights. Because I do hope for your approval----”

”I know they're good,” he said. And, half laughingly: ”I'm beginning to find out that you're a rather wonderful and formidable and overpowering girl, Ruhannah.”

”You don't think so!” she exclaimed, enchanted. ”_Do_ you? Oh, dear!

Then I feel that I ought to show you my pictures and set you right immediately----” She sprang to her feet. ”I'll get them; I'll be only a moment----”

She was gone before he discovered anything to say, leaving him to walk up and down the deserted room and think about her as clearly as his somewhat dislocated thoughts permitted, until she returned with both arms full of portfolios, boards, and panels.

”Now,” she said with a breathless smile, ”you may mortify my pride and rebuke my vanity. I deserve it; I need it; but Oh!--don't be too severe----”

”Are you serious?” he asked, looking up in astonishment from the first astonis.h.i.+ng drawing in colour which he held between his hands.

”Serious? Of course----” She met his eyes anxiously, then her own became incredulous and the swift colour dyed her face.

”Do you _like_ my work?” she asked in a fainter voice.

”_Like_ it!” He continued to stare at the bewildering grace and colour of the work, turned to another and lifted it to the light:

”What's this?” he demanded.

”A monotype.”

”_You_ did it?”

”Y-yes.”

He seemed unable to take his eyes from it--from the exquisite figures there in the sun on the bank of the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river under an iris-tinted April sky.

”What do you call it, Rue?”

”Baroque.”

He continued to scrutinise it in silence, then drew another carton prepared for oil from the sheaf on the sofa.

Over autumn woods, in a windy sky, high-flying crows were buffeted and blown about. From the stark trees a few phantom leaves clung, fluttering; and the whole scene was possessed by sinuous, whirling forms--mere glimpses of supple, exquisite shapes tossing, curling, flowing through the naked woodland. A delicate finger caught at a dead leaf here; there frail arms clutched at a bending, wind-tossed bough; grey sky and ghostly forest were obsessed, bewitched by the winnowing, driving torrent of airy, half seen spirits.

”The Winds,” he said mechanically.

He looked at another--a sketch of the Princess Naa. And somehow it made him think of vast skies and endless plains and the tumult of surging men and rattling lances.

”A Cossack,” he said, half to himself. ”I never before realised it.”

And he laid it aside and turned to the next.

”I haven't brought any life studies or school drawings,” she said. ”I thought I'd just show you the--the results of them and of--of whatever is in me.”

”I'm just beginning to understand what is in you,” he said.

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