“Thank you,” he answered, proceeding to move her hair, touching it very delicately with his pointed white fingers. “It was stupid of me, but most people don’t mind. There—if you only knew what a difference it makes. Just a little bit more, if you’ll let me—on the other side. Now let me look at you, please—yes—that’s just it.”
Katharine suffered intensely during those few moments. Something within her, of which she had never been conscious before, but which was most certainly a part of herself, seemed to rise up in fury, outraged and insulted, against something in the man beside her, which filled her with a vague terror and a positive disgust. While his soft and womanish fingers touched her hair, she clasped her hands together till they hurt, and repeated to herself with set lips that she was foolish and nervous and unstrung. She could not help the sigh of relief which escaped her lips when he had finished and went back to his easel. Perhaps he noticed it. At all events he became intent on his work and said nothing for fully five minutes.
During that time she looked at him and tried to solve the mystery of her unaccountable sensations. She thought of what her mother had said—that Crowdie was like a poisonous flower. He was so white and red and soft, and the place was so still and warm, with its masses of rich drapery that shut off every sound of life from without. And she thought of what Miner had said—oddly enough, in exactly the same strain, that he was like some strange tropical fruit—gone bad at the core. Fruit or flower, or both, she thought. Either was apt enough.
The air was perfectly pure. It was only warm and still. Possibly there was the slightest smell of turpentine, which is a clean smell and a wholesome one. Whatever the perfumes might be which he occasionally burned, they left no trace behind. And yet Katharine fancied they were there—unholy, sweet, heavy, disquieting, offending that something which in the young girl had never been offended before. The stillness seemed too warm—the warmth too still—his face too white—his mouth was as scarlet and as heavy as the blossom of the bright red calla lily. There was something repulsively fascinating about it, as there is in a wound.
“You’re getting tired,” he said at last. “I’m not surprised. It must be much harder to sit than to paint.”
“How did you know I was tired?” asked Katharine, moving from her position, and looking at a piece of Persian embroidery on the opposite wall.
“Your expression had changed when I spoke,” he said. “But it’s not at all necessary to sit absolutely motionless as though you were being photographed. It’s better to talk. The expression is like—” He stopped.
“Like what?” she asked, curious to hear a definition of what is said too often to be undefinable.
“Well—I don’t know. Language isn’t my strong point, if I have any strong point at all.”
“That’s an affectation, at all events!” laughed Katharine, becoming herself again when not obliged to look at him fixedly.