Magda glanced from the divan covered with a huge tiger-skin to Michael, wheeling his easel into place. A week’s hard work on the part of the artist had witnessed the completion of Lady Arabella’s portrait, and to-day he proposed to make some preliminary sketches for “Circe.”
Magda felt oddly nervous and unsure of herself. This last fortnight passed in daily companionship with Quarrington had proved a considerable strain. Not withstanding that she had consented to sit for his picture of Circe, he had not deviated from the attitude which he had apparently determined upon from the first moment of her arrival at the Hermitage—an attitude of aloof indifference to which was added a bitterness of speech that continually thrust at her with its trenchant cynicism. It was as though he had erected a high wall between them which Magda found no effort of hers could break down, and she was beginning to ask herself whether he could ever really have cared for her at all. Surely no man who had once cared could be so hard—so implacably hard!
And now, alone with him in the big room which had been converted into a temporary studio, she found herself overwhelmed by a feeling of intense self-consciousness. She felt it would be impossible to bear the coolly neutral gaze of those grey eyes for hours at a time. She wished fervently that she had never consented to sit for the picture at all.
“How do you want me to pose?” she inquired at last, endeavouring to speak with her usual detachment and conscious that she was failing miserably. “You haven’t told me yet.”
He laughed a little.
“I haven’t the least intention of telling you,” he replied. “‘The Wielitzska’ doesn’t need advice as to how to pose.”
Magda looked at him uncertainly.
“But you’ve given me no idea of what you want,” she protested. “I must have some idea to start from!”
“I want a recumbent Circe,” he vouchsafed at last. “Hence the divan. Here is the goblet”—he held it out—“supposed to contain the fatal potion which transformed men into swine. I leave the rest to you. You posed very successfully for me some years ago—without my issuing any stage directions. Afterwards you played the part of a youthful Circe, I remember. You should be more experienced now.”
She flushed under the cool, satirical tone. It seemed as though he neglected no opportunity of impressing on her the poor estimation in which he held her. Her thoughts flew back to a sunlit glade in a wood and to the grey-eyed, boyish-looking painter who had kissed her and called her “Witch-child!”