She could see the broad thumb of Monsieur plastering an imaginary canvas with unctuous blobs and quorls, and the pretty pastel ardour of Elisabeth, and the despair of the water-colourists: she heard again the rumorous voice of the classe, the depths and shallows of appreciation, the shared delight in vision of those who have learned, who are learning to see: and then, mingling with those familiar voices, a voice yet more familiar, uplifted in the immemorial opening—
“Pretty good, isn’t it?”
“Justin!”
She wheeled. Beauty was forgotten, was a nothing, a phrase, a dead leaf. The high hills were cardboard, the sky a back-cloth and no more, for the well-to-do tweed figure, the one figure of Henry Justin Cloud.
And thus we teach Nature her place!
“Justin! Oh, how lovely! But you’re not due till four! Where’s Mrs. Cloud? I was just off to see the Lion. I thought there was time. You said four. Oh, I am disappointed. I meant to meet you properly, on the platform. You did say four!” She was comically unwilling to give up the picture in her mind, of herself on the platform and the train dashing in, and the faces at the carriage window.
He explained as they shook hands and beamed at each other—
“We changed our minds—started a day sooner to break the journey for Mother. She’s at the hotel. We could nip up and see the Lion still if you liked, while she has her nap. There’s loads of time.”
Laura was all eagerness and acquiescence, and they crossed the bridge and swung off at Justin’s pace up the sweep of the road. Not that she wanted to see the Lion qua Lion any more, though five minutes ago she had been as earnest a sightseer as ever read an illustrated Life of Thorwaldsen and What the Moon Saw. But as a mediary between her shyness and this stranger who was Justin, who had caught her before she had powdered her nose and put her thoughts in order, the Lion was invaluable. Justin, with a little help, would talk contentedly about him, and that would give her time.... Time for what? But that she could not have told you.
The truth was, of course, that the excitement that had sustained her for weeks was over, and its effect, like that of any other drug, wearing off. But she only knew that she was suddenly limp and shy. She smiled and talked with her mouth, but her eyes were quite grave as she watched Justin. She felt a forgotten, uneasily familiar sensation creeping over and through her, as a mist or a ghost goes through locked doors, a ghost that spoke with her own voice, whispering—“But—but this isn’t Justin? I had forgotten he was like this——”