Then for a long time he was silent, and both were lost in a dreamlike happiness—to be together, alone with his work, bound together in his delight as they used to be when he was a child before the invasion of their peace.
He went to the door in answer to a knock and found Morrison standing there with some flowers in her hands.
“Oh!” he said awkwardly, holding the door. “Won’t you come in? Please. I am painting my mother.”
Golda’s eyes lighted with pleasure on the fresh-looking girl and her flowers.
“She is like a flower herself,” she thought, and indeed the girl looked as though she were fresh from the country.
She held out her hand to Golda, who stood up on the throne and bobbed to her, then folded her hands on her stomach and waited patiently for the lady to break the awkwardness that had sprung up between the three of them. Mendel could do nothing. He looked from one to the other and felt, with a little tremor of horror, the gulf that separated the two.
At last Morrison said to Golda:—
“I am very glad to see you, though I feel I know you quite well from the drawings he has done of you.”
Golda broke into inarticulate expressions of the delight it was to her to see any of her son’s friends, and saying that she would have a special tea sent up, she edged towards the door and slipped out.
“Why didn’t you come before?” asked Mendel, when he had heard the door bang. “I sent you a telegram. I wanted to paint your portrait, and now I have begun something else.”