"Very well!" she said—"But suppose—"
"Suppose what?"
"Suppose it ever came to that?"—and she sighed as she spoke—"Then the last petal must fall!"
"Do you think it ever will or can come to that?" he asked, pressing a kiss on the sweet upturned lips—"Does it seem like it?"
She was too happy to answer him, and he was too amorous just then to think of anything but her soft eyes, dewy with tenderness—her white, ivory-smooth skin—her small caressing hands, and the fine bright tendrils of her waving hair—all these were his to play with as a child plays with beautiful toys unconscious of or indifferent to their value.
Many such passages of love occupied their time—though he managed to make a good show of progressive work after the first rough outline drawing of the picture was completed. He was undeniably a genius in his way, uncertain and erratic of impulse, but his art was strong because its effects were broad and simple. He had begun Innocent's portrait out of the mere desire to have her with him constantly,—but as day after day went on and the subject developed under his skilled hand and brush he realised that it would probably be "the" picture of the Salon in the following year. As this conviction dawned upon him, he took greater pains, and worked more carefully and conscientiously with the happiest results, feeling a thrill of true artistic satisfaction as the picture began to live and smile in response to his masterly touch and treatment. Its composition was simple—he had drawn the girl as though she were slowly advancing towards the spectator, giving her figure all the aerial grace habitual to it by nature,—one little daintily shaped hand held a dove lightly against her breast, as though the bird had just flown there for protection from its own alarm,—her face was slightly uplifted,—the lips smiled, and the eyes looked straight out at the world with a beautiful, clear candour which was all their own. Yet despite the charm and sweetness of the likeness there was a strange pathos about it,—a sadness which Jocelyn had never set there by his own will or intention.
"You are a puzzling subject," he said to her one day—"I wanted to give you a happy expression—and yet your portrait is actually growing sad!—almost reproachful! … do you look at me like that?"
She opened her pretty eyes wonderingly.
"Amadis! Surely not! I could not look sad when I am with you!—that is impossible!"
He paused, palette in hand.