He brightened. "I'd always thought women don't like to look funny."
"They don't," said the lady incisively, "no more than men do."
"But you can laugh at yourself," he insisted.
"Can you?" She meditated a swift exposure of his own absurdity at their meetings in the valley, but forbore and spoke instead of his pictures.
"You must show me your work," she said.
For a moment it seemed that she had lost all she had gained with him. He patently meditated a flying leap through the door and an instant vanishing into the nearest thicket. She had an impulse to put out a hand and secure him by the coat. But he held his ground, though all his geniality was suddenly veiled, while he vibrated behind the curtain, scheming escape, like a child harried by invading grown people in its secret playhouse.
She looked cunningly away, examining a rip in her glove.
"I tried to paint a little myself once," she essayed craftily. Nothing came of it. He remained in ambush.
"But it wasn't in me," she continued, and was conscious that he at least took a breath.
"You see, I hadn't anything but the liking," she went on, "and so I had the sense to give it up. Still, I learned enough to help me see other people's work better—and to be interested in pictures."