Matt’s conscience checked conventional response. He faltered, slowly: “I guess you’re real good to me.”
A moment later the door opened. Priscilla sprang up hurriedly, and, to be doing something, noisily pulled down the roller-blind.
“That you, Cynthia?” she said, carelessly.
“Yes, it’s me,” grumbled the old woman. “You’re wanted down-stairs.”
“In a jiffy. I’m just lighting Mr. Strang’s candles,” she said, fumbling about for them in the darkness she had herself produced.
“Rayther early,” croaked Cynthia.
“Yes, Mr. Strang wants to paint; there ain’t enough light to see by,” replied Priscilla, glibly, while Matt felt his cheeks must surely be visible by the light of their own glow.
The candles were lit, and Priscilla, ostentatiously running into the next room, returned with a sheet of white paper. “There you are, Mr. Strang!” she cried, cheerfully, adding in a whisper, “I’ll be back presently. You won’t go to-night, will you?” And her eyes pleaded amorously.
No sooner had Priscilla disappeared than Matt’s perception of romance in the position began to return; but it was an impersonal, artistic perception; he was but a spectator of the situation. He could not understand his own apathetic aloofness.
He walked restlessly about the room, trying to pump up Byronic emotion, but finding the well of sentiment strangely dry. His eye wandered to the blind, and became censoriously absorbed in the crude flowers and figures stamped upon the arsenic-green background; he studied the effects of the candle-light on the glaring coloration, noting how the yellow roses had turned pink. Then Priscilla’s face flew up amid the flare of flowers, and Matt, seizing the sheet of paper and pulling out his paint-box, forgot everything else, even the artificial light, in the task of expressing Priscilla in water-color.