'I shall only make a fool of myself,' he said, taking up his brushes again.
'Not at all. And I praise humbug?—and call it manners?'
He paused, then blurted out—'I wouldn't say anything rude to you for the world!'
She smiled—a smile that turned all the delicate severity of her face to sweetness. 'That's very nice of you. But if you knew Mr. Welby better, you'd never want to say anything rude to him either!'
Fenwick was silent. Madame de Pastourelles, feeling that for the moment she also had come to the end of her tether, fell into a reverie, from which she was presently roused by finding Fenwick standing before her, palette in hand.
'I don't want you to think me an envious brute,' he said, stammering.
'Of course, I know the "Polyxena" is a fine thing—a very fine thing.'
She looked a little surprised—as though he offered her moods to which she had no key. 'Shall I show you something I like much better?' she said, with quick resource. And drawing towards her a small portfolio she had brought with her, she took out a drawing and handed it to him. 'I am taking it to be framed. Isn't it beautiful?'
It was a drawing, in silver-point, of an orange-tree in mingled fruit and bloom—an exquisite piece of work, of a Japanese truth, intricacy, and perfection. Fenwick looked at it in silence. These silver-point drawings of Welby's were already famous. In the preceding May there had been an exhibition of them at an artistic club. At the top of the drawing was an inscription in a minute handwriting—'Sorrento: Christmas Day,' with the monogram 'A.W.' and a date three years old.
As Madame de Pastourelles perceived that his eyes had caught the inscription, she rather hastily withdrew the sketch and returned it to the portfolio.
'I watched him draw it,' she explained—'in a Sorrento garden. My father and I were there for the winter. Mr. Welby was in a villa near ours, and I used to watch him at work.'