I felt the injustice of this and shut my lips tight. I did not want to quarrel with Reggie, but I was burning with indignation and I was hurt through and through by his attitude.
In silence we left the train and in silence went to my home. At the door Reggie said:
“We had a pleasant day. Why do you always spoil things so? Good-night.”
I could not speak. I had done nothing and he made me feel as if I had committed a crime. The tears ran down my face and I tried to open the door. Reggie’s arms came around me from behind, and, tilting back my face, he kissed me.
“There, there, old girl,” he said, “I’ll forgive you this time, but don’t let it happen again.”
XVIII
I HAD finished the work for the Château de Ramezay, but the Count said I could stay on there, and that he would try to help me get outside work. He did get me quite a few orders for work of a kind he himself would not do.
One woman gave me an order to paint pink roses on a green plush piano cover. She said her room was all in green and pink. When I had finished the cover, she ordered a picture “of the same colors.” She wished me to copy a scene of meadows and sheep. So I painted the sunset pink, the meadows green and the sheep pink. She was delighted and said it was a perfect match to her carpets.
The Count nearly exploded with delight about it. My orders seemed to give him exquisite joy and he sometimes said, to see me at work compensated for much and made life worth while. He used to hover about me, rubbing his hands and chuckling to himself and muttering: “Ya, ya!”
I did a lot of decorating of boxes for a manufacturer and painted dozens of sofa pillows. Also I put “real hand-painted” roses on a woman’s ball dress, and she told me it was the envy of every one at the big dance at which she wore it.