“He was a strange piteous-looking man, that prisoner. Do you know anything more of him?”
“No more: I showed him the way to the hospital, that’s all. See, now, the face of Oedipus is pretty nearly finished; tell me what you think of it.”
Romola now gave her whole attention to her father’s portrait, standing in long silence before it.
“Ah,” she said at last, “you have done what I wanted. You have given it more of the listening look. My good Piero,”—she turned towards him with bright moist eyes—“I am very grateful to you.”
“Now that’s what I can’t bear in you women,” said Piero, turning impatiently, and kicking aside the objects that littered the floor—“you are always pouring out feelings where there’s no call for them. Why should you be grateful to me for a picture you pay me for, especially when I make you wait for it? And if I paint a picture, I suppose it’s for my own pleasure and credit to paint it well, eh? Are you to thank a man for not being a rogue or a noodle? It’s enough if he himself thanks Messer Domeneddio, who has made him neither the one nor the other. But women think walls are held together with honey.”
“You crusty Piero! I forgot how snappish you are. Here, put this nice sweetmeat in your mouth,” said Romola, smiling through her tears, and taking something very crisp and sweet from the little basket.
Piero accepted it very much as that proverbial bear that dreams of pears might accept an exceedingly mellow “swan-egg”—really liking the gift, but accustomed to have his pleasures and pains concealed under a shaggy coat.
“It’s good, Madonna Antigone,” said Piero, putting his fingers in the basket for another. He had eaten nothing but hard eggs for a fortnight. Romola stood opposite him, feeling her new anxiety suspended for a little while by the sight of this naïve enjoyment.
“Good-bye, Piero,” she said, presently, setting down the basket. “I promise not to thank you if you finish the portrait soon and well I will tell you, you were bound to do it for your own credit.”
“Good,” said Piero, curtly, helping her with much deftness to fold her mantle and veil round her.