He opened the chest and drew forth an armful of old silks and velvets, rare satins and brocades, spilling a riot of color into her arms—leaping, flashing swirls of sapphire, gold, and faded amethyst. She put them aside, and, with a cry of delight, seized something lying in the chest—a rose velvet with the faintest silver sheen, which brought back the pageantry of the Middle Ages.
“How wonderful!”
“You have a good instinct,” he said, nodding. “That’s Italian, thirteenth century, the rarest of all. What color, eh?”
She wrapped her arms in it and drew her cheek across the glorious velvet, which might have lain against the cheek of a storied princess, and as her breath drew deep, across the dark face there spread such a blush of pleasure that she seemed to absorb the rare tint into her own body. He took it from her and gazed at it hungrily, as though he were plunging his look into some gorgeous autumnal pool, drinking in its ecstasy with the mingled pain and pleasure of a lost love remembered.
“Color—color!” he said, held by it. “It thrills you like the first sight of your own country.”
All at once, with a smothered cry—the longing of his soul for the lost days of inspiration, perhaps—he struck the chest with the full force of his fist and turned away in rebellion.
“God!”
“Don’t.” She laid her hands quickly on his shoulders, straight and slim, as she stood gazing earnestly into his tormented eyes. “Mr. Dangerfield, that’ll come again.”
“Never; no, never,” he said gloomily, and his lips twitched as he glanced away.
Sassafras returned at this moment. Then they set to work again, but she had lost him for the day. The exuberance had departed. He gave his assent in monosyllables, and seemed to have so completely lost interest that she hastened the work, fearing that the whim would seize him to countermand it. The worst of it was that in such moods there was no arguing with him, as he seemed to go so completely from her as to have no sense of what he heard. With the coming of the night and the blazing-out of the lights, he began to get restless, wandering about the room as though each thing in it were raising a haunting memory before him. Once he objected, when Sassafras had started to unpack the easel and the paint-boxes.