“It’s just as well as it is, perhaps,” St. John rejoined with conviction. “Success would make you a horrid little prig, Jill; very few people can stand it.”
“If Mr Markham were not here,” Jill returned, “I would tell you what I think of you.”
Chapter Sixteen.
Jill had got her canvas and everything in readiness, and was waiting for her model. She had been waiting for about ten minutes, and was growing slightly impatient; she hated wasting her time. St. John was busy in the studio, unusually busy, so that he could not possibly get away even for a few minutes. He wanted her badly, she knew; he always wanted a mate, and she felt rather as if she were shirking. She looked at the canvas in a dissatisfied kind of way, and then out of the window at the people in the street.
“I believe,” she mused, thinking of the absent Markham, “that I could draw his face from memory.”
Fetching a piece of paper she seated herself at the table and made a rough sketch in pencil as she had once done of St. John, only in St. John’s case she had not trusted to memory. Markham arrived while she was thus employed, and he stood by the table watching her, as she put in the finishing strokes. He smiled while he watched as though he were amused. Jill was grave and very much absorbed.
“What a wonderful little head it is,” he said.
“Do you think so?” she asked, lifting the head he alluded to the better to regard the one on paper which he was not even looking at. “I don’t call it wonderful, but I had an idea that I could catch the likeness; some faces are quite easily remembered.”