He encouraged her very much. She sat at the little table working patiently all the afternoon. They hardly spoke. He was at work on his own canvas, but he took time now and then to go over to Rosaleen and make a suggestion or a correction. She had never worked so well before; the finished figures delighted her.
When the light began to fail, he pushed the easel into a corner and stretched.
“Now, nice Rosaleen, make tea!” he said.
She did her best, but tea-making was an exotic art for her; she understood nothing of its possibilities.
“Dear creature!” he cried. “I don’t want a concentrated essence of tea!”
He took the charge from her, and began very deftly to do it himself. Then he handed her a cup of delicate, fragrant, clear amber liquid (which she privately considered much too weak). She drank it dutifully, disappointed that there wasn’t so much as a cracker or a piece of bread to go with it.
“Shall I wash the tea things for you?” she asked, when they had finished.
“I have a person for that, thank you. No; let’s talk instead. We’ve never had a talk alone.... Won’t you tell me something about yourself?”
With her release from the Humbertian atmosphere, Rosaleen had lost her former humility. None of these people would care in the least who her mother was. She wasn’t ashamed now. She was rather glad of a chance to place herself, to explain that she wasn’t “Miss Humbert.” She told him candidly, and he seemed to hang on her words. Indeed, his interest became embarrassing, for after she had ceased to speak, he still continued to stare at her with a curious intensity. Somehow his face looked different.... She stirred uneasily.