"I'm afraid you've no further wish for me now that I'm no longer
useful," she sighed. "You're not going to discard me so easily.
Besides, we're not going to stay long—only a minute. I was hoping
Miss Challoner could see the portrait."
He glanced at Hermia almost resentfully, and fidgeted with his brushes.
"Yes—of course. It's the least I can do—isn't it? The portrait isn't finished. It's dried in, too—but—"
He laid his palette slowly down and wiped his brushes carefully on a piece of cheese-cloth, put a canvas in a frame upon the easel and shoved it forward into a better light.
Hermia followed his movements curiously, sure that he was the most inhospitable human being upon whom two pretty women had ever condescended to call, and stood uncomfortably, realizing that he has not even offered her a chair. But when the portrait was turned toward the light, she forgot everything but the canvas before her.
It was not the Olga Tcherny that people knew best—the gay, satirical mondaine, who exacted from a world which had denied her happiness her pound of flesh and called it pleasure. The Olga Tcherny which looked at Hermia from the canvas was the one that Hermia had glimpsed in the brief moments between bitterness and frivolity, a woman with a soul which in spite of her still dreamed of the things it had been denied.
It was a startling portrait, bold almost to the point of brutality, and even Hermia recognized its individuality, wondering at the capacity for analysis which had made the painter's delineation of character so remarkable, and his brush so unerring. She stole another—a more curious—glance at him. The hideous goggles and the rumpled hair could not disguise the strong lines of his face which she saw in profile—the heavy brows, the straight nose, the thin, rather sensitive lips and the strong, cleanly cut chin. Properly dressed and valeted this queer creature might have been made presentable. But his manners! No valeting or grooming could ever make such a man a gentleman.
If he was aware of her scrutiny he gave no sign of it and leaned forward intently, his gaze on the portrait—alone, to all appearances, with the fires of his genius. Hermia's eyes followed his, the superficial and rather frivolous comment which had been on her lips stilled for the moment by the dignity of his mental attitude, into which it seemed Olga Tcherny had also unconsciously fallen. But the silence irritated Hermia—the wrapt, absorbed attitudes of the man and the woman and the air of sacro-sanctity which pervaded the place. It was like a ceremonial in which this queer animal was being deified. She, at least, couldn't deify him.
"It's like you Olga, of course," she said flippantly, "but it's not at all pretty."
The words fell sharply and Markham and the Countess turned toward the Philistine who stood with her head cocked on one side, her arms a-kimbo. Markham's eyes peered forward somberly for a moment and he spoke with slow gravity.