She stood, not angry, but a trifle bewildered, a trifle proud in her attitude of uptilted chin. In all her little autocratic world, her gracious friendliness had never before met anything so like rebuff.
Then, having resolved, the man felt an almost boyish reaction to light-hearted gayety. It was much the same gay abandonment that comes to a man who, having faced ruin until his heart and brain are sick, suddenly decides to squander in extravagant and riotous pleasure the few dollars left in his pocket.
“Of course, George should have told me,” he declared. “Why, Miss Filson, I come from the world where things are commonplace, and here it all seems a sequence of wonders: this glorious country, the miracle of meeting you again—after—” he paused, then smilingly added—“after Babylon and Macedonia.”
“From the way you greeted me,” she naïvely observed, “one might have fancied that you’d been running away ever since we parted in Babylon and Macedon. You must be very tired.”
“I am afraid of you,” he avowed.
She laughed.
“I know you are a woman-hater. But I was a boy myself until I was seventeen. I’ve never quite got used to being a woman, so you needn’t mind.”
“Miss Filson,” he hazarded gravely, “when I saw you yesterday, I wanted to be friends with you so much that—that I ran away. Some day, I’ll tell you why.”
For a moment, she looked at him with a puzzled interest. The light of a smile dies slowly from most faces. It went out of his eyes as suddenly as an electric bulb switched off, leaving the features those of a much older man. She caught the look, and in her wisdom said nothing—but wondered what he meant.
Her eyes fell on the empty canvas. “How did you happen to begin art?” she inquired. “Did you always feel it calling you?”