“Please stay where you are, Miss Dunnock,” he repeated. “You are exactly what I want in my picture; I knew there was something needed;—now I see that it is a figure.”
But Anne jumped up before the sentence was finished, and Richard Sotheby climbed out of the ruin with his palette in his hand and a frown on his face, repeating, “Please stay there....”
He was insistent, and Anne had to agree to sit for a few minutes while he made a charcoal drawing.
“When I have finished you shall have tea,” he said as though he were speaking to a child. Anne sat, looking up at the sky with her hands to her hair and her elbows up, as he had posed her, saying to herself that she had never met anyone with such bad manners.
She was hot with annoyance, but soon the blush left her cheek, and while she listened to the pigeons her resentment faded away.
“May I see your picture?” she asked five minutes later, and when the artist refused, shaking his head and laughing, she felt no irritation. It seemed natural to her that he should say: “Not till it is finished.”
“When will that be?” she asked, remembering her own departure.
“It will take me a week to put in that figure; I don’t know how I shall do it unless you sit for me. Come, let us have tea.”
“I am afraid I cannot sit, Mr. Sotheby,” said Anne. “I have come to-day to say good-bye.”
The young man opened his eyes at this; his curiosity had to be satisfied, and soon Anne was telling him that her life was being wasted at the vicarage, and that she was determined to leave her father.