The Duchessa looked at Paul.
“I don’t think Mr. Treherne will refuse to paint my portrait. At least I hope not.”
“I shall be honoured to paint it,” Paul replied.
The words were conventional. Since he intended to accept the commission it was very nearly the only phrase he could have used, yet there was something in his utterance of the words that seemed just to lift them from the commonplace. Perhaps it was the direct way in which he spoke them. Paul had generally a very direct manner of speech.
Anyhow, Sara glanced at him, and an indefinable something in his eyes caused an odd little movement in her heart. The room in which they were sitting seemed suddenly brighter, the chrysanthemums a more beautiful colour, the logs on the fire more than usually crackly and pleasant. For so it is that two people who are complete strangers to each other sometimes meet and in some subtle way, and without realizing it at the time, the whole world has altered for them. And the invisible gods laughed softly, and the grim old fates smiled, and drew two threads of their weaving, which had hitherto had nothing to do with each other, a little closer together.
Before Paul left the house on the Embankment it was arranged that the Duchessa should come to his studio the following morning at eleven o’clock for her first sitting.
CHAPTER XII
PRINCESS PIPPA AWAKES
MISS Mason threw a large shovelful of coal on to the fire, then turned to Barnabas, who was sitting astride on a chair, his arms resting on its back, and looking at her with a slight twinkle of amusement in his eyes.
“It’s all very well for you to smile, Barnabas,” she said energetically, “but if my model hadn’t failed me, do you suppose for one moment that I should allow you to be sitting there wasting my morning, and incidentally wasting your own?”