Arrived at the Manor, she found that Nicky had disappeared, after an annoying and rather alarming habit of his, and was not expected back, by those who knew his roving ways, till the evening. Ishmael informed her of this with rather a rueful smile.
"He's always had these wild fits ever since he's been big enough to go off on his own," he told her; "and he steals something out of the larder, or if he can't do that he just trusts to his eyes and tongue when he meets some kind good lady, and he scours the countryside till late. The worst of it is I shan't be able to do anything to him when he turns up this evening, because he'll pretend he ran away because he was so afraid of me after yesterday."
"Are you so terrifying?" said Georgie, peeping up at him from under her shady hat.
"Not at all. I am a very easily-led person."
Georgie considered this, her head on one side. Then she said briskly: "Then will you please help me take my sketching things somewhere, as I can't get on with the portrait? After all, it's a bit your fault, isn't it? You should have brought your son up better."
"Of course, I'll take them anywhere you like," said Ishmael; "where shall it be?"
Thus it came about that Killigrew and Judy, a couple of hours later, coming to the plateau, found Georgie there, busy over a sketch of Ishmael in profile, with his head telling dark against the grey sunlit cliff wall, because Georgie said it was easier to paint dark against light. She was really working in her vivid, effective way, and Killigrew found little to criticise.
Judy was no longer looking tired. Joe had met her perfectly, holding her away and looking into her eyes in the whimsical tender way he had as though he were saying: "It's absurd, isn't it, to make out what we did together is of any importance, and yet as long as we're human beings we can't help feeling it's wonderful …" and he had thanked her, hardly in words, for the hours of the night before, though there had been words too, as she had buried her head against him. With that and her usual careful aids to beauty Judy was glowing, and though there was never a shade of possessiveness in her manner towards Killigrew, yet this morning there was so much of confidence and possession of herself that it almost amounted to the same thing when she made her appearance by his side.
Georgie declared a rest when the two of them appeared, and Ishmael also came to look at what she had been doing. He was standing a little behind her and looking down, not so much at the painting as at the back of her bent neck, where the absurd little drake's tails curved against the skin, so white in the sunshine. One ear was rosy where the light shone through it, and behind it lay a soft blue crescent of shadow.
As he looked that odd something occurred to Ishmael which suddenly puts a person in a new light—the slipping of the plane, the freakish turn of the kaleidoscope which makes the new light strike at a fresh angle something seen before and makes it different. He fell in love with Georgie in that moment, staring at her bent neck and the curve of her ear.