Keller, holding the picture in both hands, gave her a side look, which he tried, as far as he could, to conceal. In the midst of this scrutiny, he said: “To you, I expect, one picture is very much the same as another?”
“I know what I like,” June was able to answer, perhaps for no better reason than that by now she understood only too well that it hardly mattered what she answered.
“Well, anyhow, that’s something,” said Keller, with a forced laugh. “Great thing to know your mind in these little matters. Nice of your best boy—was your best boy, wasn’t it?—to give you this. Not that it’s worth much to the ordinary buyer. Pictures are like lovers, you know. Their beauty, sometimes, is in the eye of the beholder.”
It sickened her to hear him lie in this way. The deadly sensation of falling, falling, falling came over her again. But she let him run on. For one thing she lacked the power to check him; and even had the power been hers it would have been worse than futile to try to do so.
XL
“Look here,” said Adolph Keller, in the midst of his prattle. “I’ve taken rather a fancy to this bit of a thing. Suppose you let me have it. I’ll give you a landscape in exchange; I’ve one or two that are not so bad, and you shall have your pick. Moreover,” and he fixed June with a steady eye, “you shall have your sovereign as well.”
She shook her head tensely. Inclination now wished to tell him the fabulous worth of the picture; but prudence said no. The calculated way in which he had lied was proof enough that he knew its value already. She held out her hand. In a voice dry and choking she said: “Please give it to me. I ought to be going.”
He gazed at her with the eye of a condor. “Much better take what you can get for it, hadn’t you? It’ll be a difficult thing to sell, you know. This is quite a fair offer.”
“Give it me, please,” June gasped miserably.
“Don’t be a little fool.”