"'Donovan.'"
"Oh!" was all I could find in comment. It did rather surprise me in a girl whose eyes were set in that most appreciative way and whose father, as a socialistic bookbinder, might have inculcated more advanced literary tastes. Still, she was very young; this fact seemed emphasized by the innocent white the back of her neck presented to me as she returned to her reading.
When I came to painting, I found that my good luck accompanied me, and that inspiring sense of mastery. Effort, yes; but achievement followed it with a sort of inevitableness. I tasted the joys of the arduous facility which is the fruition of years of toil.
The limpid grays seemed to me to equal Whistler's; the pinks—flaming in shadow, silvered in the light—suggested Velasquez to my happy young vanity; the warm whites, Chardin would have acknowledged; yet they were all my own, seen through my own eyes, not through the eyes of Chardin, Whistler, or Velasquez. The blacks sung emphatic or softened notes from the impertinent knot in the powdered hair to the bows on skirt and bodice. The rich empâtement was a triumph of supple brush-work. I can praise it impudently for it was my masterpiece, and—well, I will keep to the consecutive recital.
Miss Jones showed no particular fellow-feeling for my work, and as, after a fashion, she, too, was responsible for it and had a right to be proud of it, this lack of interest rather irritated me.
Now and then, poised delicately on high heels and in her rustling robes, she would step up to my canvas, give it a pleasant but impassive look, and then turn away, resuming her chair and the perusal of her romance.
It really irked me after a time. However little value I might set upon her artistic acumen, this silence in my rose of pride pricked like a thorn.
Miss Jones's taste in painting might be as philistine as in literature, but her reserve aroused conjecture, and I became really anxious for an expression of opinion.
At last, one day, my curiosity burst forth:
"How do you like it?" I asked, while she stood contemplating my chef-d'œuvre with a brightly indifferent gaze. Miss Jones turned upon me her agate eyes—the eyelashes curled up at the corners, and it was difficult not to believe the eyes, too, roguish.