“Miss June,” this amazing fellow went on, speaking for all the world as if she were a picture whose signature he was looking for, “when you came here, you brought the sun of beauty. Colour and harmony and grace, you brought those too. If only I knew how to paint,”—he sighed gently,—“I could never rest until I had put you on canvas just as you stand at this moment.”
It was clear that he had forgotten completely that this was the niece of his employer. She also forgot that no young man had ventured yet to speak to her like that. This was William the wonderful who was addressing her, and his voice was music, his eyes slow fire, his whole being a golden web of poetry and romance.
“You oughtn’t to give away such a thing,” she persisted, but with none of her usual force. “It’s valuable; and I oughtn’t to take it.” The sound of her voice, she knew only too well, was thin and strange.
“Please, please take it, Miss June,” he quaintly entreated her. “It will give me more pleasure to know that you are caring for it, and that its beauty speaks to you than if I kept it all to myself. I love it, but you love it, too. If you’ll share the happiness it brings me, then I shall love it even more.”
Shadows of the evening were now in the room. His face was half hidden, and the wildness of her heart scarcely allowed his voice to be heard. She thought no longer of the worth of the gift, nor was she now concerned with the propriety of its acceptance. Her mind was in the grip of other things. Was it to herself he was speaking? Or was he speaking merely to a fellow worshipper of beauty? To such questions there could be no answer; she trembled at the daring which gave them birth.
His mere presence was a lure. She longed to touch his hand very gently, and would perhaps have done so, had she not been cruelly aware that even the hem of her sleeve would defile it. She was cheating him, she was cheating him outrageously. The only excuse she had was that it was all for his own good; such, at least, must now be her prayer, her hope, her faith.
X
The next morning Foxy Face, true to the appointment he had made with S. Gedge Antiques, came at ten o’clock with a friend. A quarter before that hour William had been sent to the King’s Road, Chelsea, in quest of a Jacobean carving-table for which his master had a customer.
June, in anticipation of the event, took care to be busy in a distant corner of the shop when these gentlemen arrived. As on the occasion of Louis Quinze-legs’ previous visit, Uncle Si lost no time in going himself to fetch the picture, but his prompt return was fraught for June with bitter disappointment. By sheer ill luck, as it seemed, his stern eye fell on her at the very moment he gave the picture to Mr. Thornton’s friend, a morose-looking man in a seedy frock coat and a furry topper.
“Niece,” sharply called S. Gedge Antiques, “go and do your dusting somewhere else.”