“By the enormous amount some men know as compared with what they can do. I believe that’s what I meant to say. It wasn’t particularly worth saying, after all. There—that’s better! Just one moment more, please. I know I’m tiring you to death, but I’m so interested—”
Again he executed a very fine detail.
“There!” he exclaimed. “Now we can talk. Don’t you want to move about a little? I don’t ask you to look at the thing—it’s a mere beginning of a sketch—it isn’t the picture, of course.”
“But I want to see it,” said Katharine.
“Oh, of course. But you won’t like it so much now as you did at first.”
Katharine saw at once that he was right, and that the painting was not in a stage to bear examination, but she looked at it, nevertheless, with a vague idea of learning something about the art by observing its processes. Crowdie stood at a little distance behind her, his palette and brushes still in his hand. Indeed, there was no place but the floor where he could have laid them down. She knew that he was there, and she was certain that he was looking at her. The strange nervousness and sense of repulsion came over her at once, but in her determination not to yield to anything which seemed so foolish, she continued to scrutinize the rough sketch on the easel. Crowdie, on his part, said nothing, as though fearing lest the sound of his voice should disturb the graceful lines of her figure as she stood there.
At last she moved and turned away, but not towards him. Suddenly, from feeling that he was looking at her, she felt that she could not meet his eyes. She knew just what they would be like, long, languishing and womanish, with their sweeping lashes, and they attracted her, though she did not wish to see them. She walked a few steps down the length of the great room, and she was sure that those eyes were following her. An intense and quite unaccustomed consciousness overcame her, though she was never what is called shy.
She was positively certain that his eyes were fixed on the back of her head, willing her to turn and look at him; but she would not. Then she saw that she was reaching the end of the room, and that, unless she stood there staring at the tapestries and embroideries, she must face him. She felt the blood rush suddenly to her throat and just under her ears, and she knew that she who rarely blushed at all was blushing violently. She either did not know or she forgot that a blush is as beautiful in most dark women as it is unbecoming and even painful to see in fair ones. She was only conscious that she had never, in all her many recollections, felt so utterly foolish, and angry with herself, and disgusted with the light, as she did at that moment. Just as she reached the wall, she heard his footstep, and supposing that he had changed his position, she turned at once with a deep sense of relief.
Crowdie was standing before his easel again, studying what he had done, as unconcernedly as though he had not noticed her odd behaviour.
“I feel flushed,” she said. “It must be very warm here.”