"Why not?" she retorted. "Why should I not have the attributes of my sex? Yes, I am fond of diamonds. I am fond of everything that is beautiful and costly and rare. I remember once going to a ball at Florence."
He looked at her.
"Only to see it!" she exclaimed. "I was too young to be seen, and they took me in a gallery overlooking the great salon; and I watched the great ladies in their beautiful dresses and shining gems, and I thought that I would give all the world to be like one of them; and the thought spoiled my enjoyment. I remember coming away crying; you see it was so dark and solitary in the great gallery, and I felt so mean and insignificant." And she laughed.
He was listening with earnest interest. Every word she said had a charm for him; he had never met any girl—any woman—like her, so frank and open-minded. Listening to her was like looking into a crystal lake, in which everything is revealed and all is bright and pure.
"And are you wiser now?" he asked.
"Not one whit!" she replied. "I should like now, less than then, to be shut up in a dark gallery and look on at others enjoying themselves. Isn't that a confession of an envious and altogether wicked disposition?"
"Yes," he assented, with a strange smile barely escaping from under his tawny mustache. "I should be right in prophesying all sorts of bad endings to you."
As he spoke he opened the gate for her, driving the dogs back with a crack of his whip so that she might pass first—a small thing, but characteristic of him.
The painter looked up.
"Keep those dogs off my back, Leycester," he said. "Well, Stella, have you concocted your poison?"