She did not actually drowse. She was aware of the discomfort of her hard seat, of herself perched stiffly upon it, and of the eternal, far-away confusion of footsteps that ticked and tapped and clattered as if the great building were the home of all the timepieces in the world; but she was indifferent, bound by that pleasant, trancelike numbness that will overtake you sometimes in church, or in the corner seat of an express. Not an inch of her wanted to stir again: she would murder any one who disturbed her in the next hundred years, if murder were not so energetic a business. Her mind dwelt with infinite contentment on a memory it had preserved of a donor’s robe that had caught her eye, shining out of some dreary acre of canvas like a geranium in a slum window. The colour made her purr as she thought of it. The sun, who never waited for the blinds’-man to finish his lunch, had arrived at the unprotected window behind her, and was kissing the back of her neck. She was as contented as a cat, and it was unforgivable of some one, some brawler at the other end of the world, to knock over a paint-box and scrape back a stool and come tearing past her like a wind, shouting—
“Here! Hi! Here, I say! Cloud! Justin, old man! Well now, isn’t this jolly?”
She opened her eyes and rubbed them crossly, as a child does when you rouse it too suddenly from sleep. What was the fuss now? Oh, there were the Clouds at last ... and the man—her eyes sulked up the room to where the painter had been standing—then the man was Oliver....
What an unnecessary noise he was making!... And that was the third time he had shaken hands with Justin ... both hands.... So affected.... His hair was too thin to wear fluffed out, just like all the little students.... Now he was shaking hands again!... She wondered that Justin stood it. But Justin was looking so pleased....
She did not go up to them. She sat still on her stool and watched with a disapproval that grew like a beanstalk. He, Oliver, was handsome, she supposed, if you admired the type that cried out for gold ear-rings and a razor.... She didn’t.... The man wasn’t still a moment.... He talked with his whole body.... She could hear scraps: “My dearest fellow——Well, I was going on, but now you’ve come——Piece of luck——Tell you what old man——Oh, my dear soul——” One of these Italianate, epithetical people.... She knew she shouldn’t get on with him.... She wondered how much longer Justin would be content to stand there, beaming and button-holed.
And then Mrs. Cloud caught sight of her, and this Oliver person had given her a quick amused look and said something to Justin as they all moved up the gallery towards her and she came down to them.
There were introductions. Oliver gave her the prolonged and peculiarly earnest handshake which implied that his whole eager nature leaped to welcome the friend of his friend, and turning back to Justin instantly forgot all about her. He exhibited his copy to them, and told them how good it was, and what a great many people whom they did not know had said about it. His vanity was so fresh and real, so unadulterated by false modesty, that Laura should have humoured him. But she was too young, I suppose, to find it charming. It is curious how intolerant youth always remains of that youthfullest of sins. She listened, however, with merciless attention, as he talked them out of the gallery and down the staircase and along the street to a restaurant. When they all sat down together to lunch he was still talking, and Mrs. Cloud had said but half-a-dozen words and Laura not one.
It was not until the meal was nearly over that he became aware, with the uncanny sensitiveness of the egoist, that his circle was incomplete, that some one, somewhere, was not fully appreciating him. It could not be Mrs. Cloud ... because he openly adored Mrs. Cloud, and had always been grievous that she would not let him paint her.... (How should he dream, when admiringly he had tried to tease her into consent, that the pretty faint colour in her cheek was not a flush of pleasure, that Mrs. Cloud was one of those rare women who honestly believe themselves to be plain.) He did not quite understand her, he admitted; but he knew he was a favourite, because she always welcomed him so kindly.... It could not be Mrs. Cloud who was obstructing him.... Remained the girl with the red hair, and, as she lifted them, the eyes....
At once he turned to her with that intimate abruptness, that serene assumption of her interest in him that was, Laura began to understand, his chief charm for Justin, who always needed helping over his preliminaries. Justin, she observed through her lashes, waited, smiling, for her answer, sure that she, too, must be finding this Oliver irresistible. It would certainly have soothed her to realize that he was anticipating with equal satisfaction her own effect upon Oliver; but she never dreamed that he was proud of her. How should she, when he did not know it himself? Yet he must have been, for he found himself distinctly irritated when he heard Laura tell Oliver that she thought Florence was very nice. He felt that she was not doing herself justice.
“Nice!!” Oliver rose like a trout to that fly.