About the snow and how it came Jimmie Boy had been inventing stories. It was the angels’ washing day up there and some of their wings had blown off the clothes line. No, wa it wasn’t. This was how the snow really happened. The impatient little children who were waiting to be born had had a pillow-fight, and had burst their pillows.
But his father hadn’t spoken for a long time. The fire was going out. Vashti might arrive at almost any moment And, alas, Teddy was naked. He was posing for the figure of Love, peering in forlornly through the fast-locked gate. He hadn’t wanted to do it; even now he was filled with shame. But Jimmie Boy had offered him money—and he needed money; and Dearie had begged him not to leave Jimmie Boy for a single second. When he had crept up to her room to visit her, she had seized his hands and whispered reproachfully, “Go back to him. Go back.” The best way to be always with his father had been to pose for him.
And there was another reason: by making himself necessary to the picture he had been able to see Vashti. Day after day he had sat in the studio, mouse-quiet, watching her. At night he had made haste to go to sleep that the next day might come more quickly. In the morning, when he had wakened, his first thoughts had been of her; as he dressed, he had told himself, “I shall see her in three hours.” Vashti hadn’t seen her portrait yet; she had been promised that this time she should see it—that this time it should be done. The promise had been made before, but now it was to be kept. So to-day was the last day.
“Please, mayn’t I move?”
“Not yet That’s the sixth time you’ve asked me. I’d have finished if you’d kept quiet.”
“But—but I’m all aches and shivers.”
“Nonsense! You can’t be cold with that great fire.” His father was too absorbed; he hadn’t noticed that the fire had gone out “I know what’s the matter with you, Teddy: you’re afraid she’ll be here before you’re dressed. Pooh! What of it? Now stop just as you are for ten minutes, and then——”
He left his sentence unended and fell to work again with concentrated energy. His mind was aflame with the fury of his imagination. He was far away from reality. It wasn’t Teddy he was painting; it was Love, famished by indifference and tantalized by yearning—Love, bruising his face against the bars which forever shut him out. This wasn’t a London studio, ignobly contrived above a stable; it was a spice-fragrant garden of the East, stared at by the ravishing eye of the sun, where a lady of dreams stooped feeding among tall lilies.
“When am I to see it?” Teddy questioned.
“When she sees it.”