After all, Maurice did not look down on her. He did not patronize her. He loved her. She loved him. With that thought flooding her imagination, Jenny fell asleep and lay buried in her deep white pillow like a rosebud in a snowdrift.
Chapter XVII: Columbine Asleep
COLUMBINE lay sleeping on her heart. The long white hands were clasped beneath those cheeks round which tumbled the golden curls. The coverlet, thrown back in a restless dream, revealed her bent arms bare to the elbow. The nightgown allowed a dim outline of her shoulder to appear faintly, and where a pale blue bow had come untied, the dimple in her throat was visible. The gay, deep eyes were closed beneath azure lids, but the pencilled eyebrows still slanted mockingly, and round her red lips was the curve of laughter. Awake, her complexion had the fragility of rosy porcelain: in sleep the color fled, leaving it dead white as new ivory.
Columbine lay sleeping, a miniature stolen from the world's collection. The night wore on. The wind shook the old house. Dawn broke tempestuously.
Now should Harlequin have hurried down the unreal street and, creeping in magically, have kissed her a welcome to the sweet and careless "twenties" that would contain the best of his Columbine's life.
Chapter XVIII: Sweet and Twenty
THE studio, looking very cheerful for Jenny's birthday, had achieved a Sabbath tidiness. It was, to be sure, a tidiness more apparent than real, inasmuch as it consisted of pushing every disorderly object into a corner and covering the accumulation with an old Spanish cope. Beneath this semicircle of faded velvet lay onions and sealing-wax, palette, brushes, bits of cardboard, a mixture of knives and forks, a tin of pineapple still undefeated, many unanswered letters, a tweed overcoat, and other things that gave more to utility than beauty.
The fire blazed in the big fireplace and rippled in reflection about the sloping ceiling. Chairs were set in a comfortable crescent round the tea-table, and looked as invitingly empty as the Venetian mirror. The teacups, where each one held the fire's image, showed an opal in the smooth porcelain. Anticipation brooded upon the apartment, accentuated by the bell of a neighboring church that rang in a quick monotone. In the high deal ingle sat three young men smoking long clay pipes; and by the window facing the river Maurice stood breathing upon the glass in order to record his love's name in evanescent charactery upon the misted surface.
At last the monotonous bell ceased its jangling. Big Ben thundered the hour of four, and the host, throwing up the window, leaned out to a gray, foggy afternoon.
"Here's Jenny," he cried, drawing back so quickly into the studio that he banged his head against the frame of the window. The three young men in the ingle rose and, knocking out their pipes, stood with their backs to the fire in an attitude of easy expectation. Maurice by this time was dashing out into the street to welcome Jenny, who was accompanied by Irene.