He started towards a side door, turned, came back, and lifting her hand kissed it tenderly.
"You're a splendid thing!" he said very low. "I'm often a beast to you—but I love you—always."
He was gone. Sophy stood looking after him for some seconds, then she lowered her eyes to Amaldi's card, which she still held. She left the room thinking ... thinking....
VI
When Sophy entered the drawing-room, Amaldi was standing with his hands behind him, looking down at a drawing of herself that stood on a table near the fireplace. The drawing had been made when she was eighteen by a young Polish artist. It was done in yellow-and-brown chalks and had a curious glow—a look of golden light about it. Chesney disliked it. He pronounced it too "mystical." The truth was that it revealed a side of Sophy's nature which was forever inaccessible to him.
As she gave Amaldi her hand, she said: "You were looking at that old drawing. It's a strange thing, isn't it?"
"Yes. Like 'the shadow of a flame,'" he answered. Then as Sophy started and looked at him inquiringly, he added, smiling: "Varesca told me of your poems. I read them yesterday. I won't bore you by telling you how beautiful I thought them. And the title— I wondered so much how you came to think of that lovely title. That, in itself, is a poem."
Sophy blushed like a girl. She was very sensitive about that book of verse. Since she had known more of life, she had often wondered at her own naïveté which had allowed her to pour out from her heart, as from a cup, those inmost feelings, for any chance buyer to possess in common with her. The voice in that little volume was the voice of one crying in the wilderness of youth; now she was a woman, and she blushed for the passionate ignorance of the girl she had been.
Amaldi said quickly: