If Joan had looked at Hugh then! But she didn’t.
After a while, “Am I meant to take any of that seriously, Joan?” he asked. “Schwankovsky is sixty-two, you told me. Ariel’s twenty. I don’t like Schwankovsky. Why should I? He despises me and takes no pains to hide it. But he’s being very kind to Ariel. I haven’t liked to see the way he paws her, naturally. But I thought it was just his Bohemian habit. The artistic temperament. And Ariel doesn’t seem to mind. I trusted her instinct: thought he must be all right, do you see, since she wasn’t revolted, no matter what I felt. But if he’s the sort you suggest, then she’s never to so much as shake hands with him again. I’ll attend to it.... But it isn’t so. You were—teasing?”
“Teasing! Why should I? But perhaps you misunderstood. The gentleman’s intentions if he has any, of which I’m not after all certain, are honorable. And if that’s so, what’s bothering you? Wouldn’t it be rather a wonderful marriage for such a girl as Ariel? The murder—well, that’ll probably turn into a divorce. Dear old Michael wouldn’t hurt a fly, you know, much less a tender young mädchen. It seems to me that Ariel has all to gain.”
“Please don’t. It isn’t funny. And I shall see that they don’t go on meeting. It’s horrible.”
“And the exhibition?” Joan asked.
Hugh consigned the exhibition to perdition with a breath. “I’ll take that over,” he said, “and do my best with it.”
“You!” Joan laughed. “You’d make a funny art patron, Hugh! Besides, I’m afraid that this particular exhibition needs more money as well as more authority than you happen to be able to bring to it. But if you are as earnest as you sound, or even half as earnest, I might take sides with you, push Michael into giving up the exhibition, and separate spring and winter. How about it? Do you want my help?”
Hugh, half in hope half in distrust, just glanced at his companion’s cameo-like profile, and surprised on it a gleam which stirred an old and until now forgotten memory. They were a boy and a girl just come on their skis to the top of Sparrow Hill in the snow, up above Wild Acres. Joan was insisting on trying a dangerously steep and tricky slide to regain her tam-o’-shanter which had blown over and down. Hugh dragged her back just in time, as he thought, and holding out his arms against her, shot past and down himself. He saw no surer way to convince Joan of the absurdity of her intention than to break his own neck in demonstration. As he went down he carried with him the memory of her profile. To-day’s very gleam was on it then. A gleam of elated malice. Going down the slide he took the gleam with him, and then with the snapping of his ankle, for he broke it at the bottom, he forgot it ... until this instant. And now memory’s revival saved him. He smiled to himself.
“I’m dull not to know when you’re joking, Joan,—after all these years,” he said. “Of course, we both know that a man doesn’t love beautiful things and give his fortune and his time generously to them if he’s nothing more than a sensualist at heart. Schwankovsky’s devotion to Ariel is disinterested. He’s fascinated by everything that concerns the Clare pictures, that’s all. And who can wonder! They are so wonderful!”
“But dear Hugh! If you are so sure that the pictures are wonderful why did you keep ‘Noon’ in the attic all these years?”