“Women always are. But you are not a woman; you are an angel.”
He looked at her closely. The strong north light showed her smooth skin flawless.
“The white and rose is charming,” he said. “And I adore freckles. But your eyes are too deep; one can see that you have suffered. There is too much in them for the innocent baa-lamb picture I must paint.”
Her face fell. “I shan’t do then?”
“Dear child, you will,” he reassured her. “I shall paint your lashes and not your eyes. Your lashes and a curve of pink cheek. Now go behind that screen and put on the sprigged cotton frock you will find there, with a muslin fichu and a mob cap. I have a basket of wools here and a piece of tapestry. The sort of woman I have never painted is always doing needlework.”
Camille spent half the morning in the arrangement of the accessories that were, as he said, to suggest virtuous domesticity; then he settled the folds of the girl’s skirt, the turn of her head, her hands. At last, when he was satisfied, he went to his easel and began to work. Olive had never before realised how hard it is to keep quite still. The muscles of her neck ached and her face seemed to grow stiff and set; she felt her hands quivering.
Hours seemed to pass before his voice broke the silence. “I have drawn it in,” he announced. “You can rest now. Come down and see some of my pictures.”
He showed her his “Salome,” a Hebrew mænad, whose scarlet, parted lips ached for the desert dreamer’s death; “Lucrezia Borgia,” slow-smiling, crowned with golden hair; and a rough charcoal study for Queen Eleanor.
“I seem to see you as Henry’s Rosamund,” he said. “I wonder—the haunting shadow of coming sorrow in blue eyes. You have suffered.”
“I am hungry,” she answered.