“I’m going to try to get a picture of you,” he said.
She said she was busy but he waved that aside.
“Call your cats,” he said pompously, “I’ve got an idea.”
He ordered her to sit on the back steps, with Michael in her arms and the others one on each side.
“‘My Lady of the Cats,’ I’ll call it,” he said. And went on to tell her, not for the first time, of the artistic photographs he had had in various exhibitions. He told her that photography was quite as great an art as painting. She knew nothing to the contrary; she had not a drop of artist blood in her veins; who knows if perhaps she wouldn’t have admired extravagantly his shadowy ladies in kimonos with light gleaming on rippling hair. She had observed that his subjects were always women, and that he had a strong penchant for glowing glimpses of white breasts and arms, and a certain unrestraint of attitude which disturbed her. He went as far as he dared with her. He wanted to take her picture climbing a ladder with an apronful of peaches, but somehow she knew that the peaches were a subterfuge, and so discouraged his artistic fancy. Then he proposed “Day Dreams,” in which she was to be lying, very much stretched out, on the sofa. That too she rejected, uneasily.
This new idea, however, showed itself quite innocent from every side, and she willingly tried to help. It was an unruly group, though; it took a tremendous time to prepare it and even at that it didn’t entirely satisfy him. He looked at them through the lens, came over to Minnie and looked down at her critically.
“A little to this side,” he said, and, quite unnecessarily, put a hand under her chin and turned her head.
“You have a lovely neck,” he said, but though his tone was impersonal and professional, there was a repulsive look about his big, loose mouth.
He would have had a severe rebuke, boarder or no boarder, if Mr. Petersen had not saved him. But at the sight of his horse coming along the drive, she stifled her anger. She would not, in his presence, admit a failing in this boarder whom she had so brilliantly evoked. She was uneasy, though, very uneasy, wondering if Mr. Petersen had seen....
“I stopped at the post-office,” he said, “and fetched your mail.”