Part 19 (1/2)
”How are your pictures coming on?”
”The portrait?” he asked absently.
”Portrait? I thought all the very grand ladies you paint had left town.
Whose portrait are you painting?”
Before he answered, before he even hesitated, she knew.
”Rosalie Dysart's,” he said, gazing absently at the lilac-bush in flower as the wind-blown curtain revealed it for a moment.
She lifted her dark eyes curiously. He began to stir the ice in his gla.s.s with a silver paper-cutter.
”She is wonderfully beautiful, isn't she?” said the girl.
”Overwhelmingly.”
Geraldine shrugged and gazed into s.p.a.ce. She didn't exactly know why she had given that little hitch to her shoulders.
”I'd like to paint Kathleen,” he observed.
A flush tinted the girl's cheeks. She said nervously:
”Why don't you ask her?”
”I've meant to. Somehow, one doesn't ask things lightly of Kathleen.”
”One doesn't ask things of some women at all,” she remarked.
He looked up; she was examining her empty teacup with fixed interest.
”Ask what sort of thing?” he inquired, walking over to the table and resting his gla.s.s on it.
”Oh, I don't know what I meant. Nothing. What is that in your gla.s.s? Let me taste it.... Ugh! It's Scotch!”
She set back the gla.s.s with a shudder. After a few moments she picked it up again and tasted it disdainfully.
”Do you like this?” she demanded with youthful contempt.
”Pretty well,” he admitted.
”It tastes something like brandied peaches, doesn't it?”
”I never noticed that it did.”
And as he remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty gla.s.s and watched him where he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the loop of his riding-crop.
”I'd like to see a typical studio,” she said reflectively.
”I've asked you to mine often enough.”