It was nothing to him, of course. This woman—lady perhaps, for her words bespoke refinement—would answer his purpose till the picture was finished. She was paid for her services, and when she was no longer required, there was an end of the visits to his studio.
He told himself all this as he sat before his great canvas, working patiently, filling up portions, and preparing for his model’s coming. And as he worked on, with the figure as strongly marked as the model, the softly rounded contour of the graceful form began to glow in imagination with life, and at last Dale sprang from his seat, threw down palette and brushes, and shook his head as if to clear it from some strange confusion of intellect.
“How absurd!” he said aloud, and trying to turn the current of his thoughts, they drifted back at once to his model, and he gazed at his work, wondering which of his ideas was correct about her persistently keeping her face covered.
“She cannot be disfigured,” he muttered. “It must be for reasons of her own.—She is, as I thought, forced to undertake a task that must be hateful to her.—I wonder whether her face is beautiful too?”
“Bah! what is it to me?” he muttered angrily. “I do not want to paint her face, and yet she must be very beautiful.”
He sat down again before his canvas, thoughtful and dreamy, picturing to himself what her face might be, and the next minute he had seized a drawing-board upon which grey paper was already stretched, picked up a crayon, and with great rapidity sketched in memories of dark aquiline faces that he had studied in Home and Paris, with one of later time—one of the women of the Italian colony which lives by the patronage of artists.
These soon covered the paper, and he sat gazing at them, wondering which would be suited to the figure he was painting.
Then, throwing the board aside, he began to pace the studio impatiently.
“What nonsense!” he muttered. “What craze is this! Her face is nothing to me. I’m overwrought. Worry and work are having their effect. I have had no exercise either lately. Yes: that’s it: I’m overdone.”
He stood hesitating for a few moments, and then thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out five shillings.