XLVIII
The first boisterous winds of Autumn had come to end the stagnation of summer when one day in the full midst of the afternoon’s work Inga came into the studio where Dangerfield was singing gorgeously to himself in the boyish zest of his work.
“Hello,” he said, looking up, surprised at this early entrance. “Nothing doing this afternoon?”
“I finished sooner than I expected,” she said evasively, “and it was very bad. I want to watch you.”
“All righty, I’ll try to perform.”
But something in the gravity of her look made him turn abruptly and study her with a sudden presentiment. She seemed unconscious of his scrutiny even when from time to time he turned in her direction with rising wonder. She sat just behind him so as to command both the model and the canvas, her chin on the back of her hands, her body sunk in the depths of an armchair, her glance set in revery before her.
A vague sense of uneasiness crept over him, something which sent to flight all the playfulness and the joy which had been in his heart. He could not quite account for this sudden shadow which seemed to obsess the room. He had seen her often in such profound moods and yet there was something indefinable in the solemnity of her pose, in the set purpose of her eyes which warned him.
He started to whistle and stopped. He tried to return into the flowing impulse of the moment before, and felt a sudden unutterable distaste, a resentment against himself and the thing he was creating. The brushes in his hand were heavy, his arm itself weighted down by some unseen load. Something began to race in his heart and to quicken every nerve.
“That will do for to-day,” he said, dropping his brushes suddenly. “I’ll let you know when I want you. Take your things and go.”
The moments until they were alone seemed interminably long and cruel. He jerked the canvas from its easel and set it in the corner without a second look, stripped off his blouse and went hurriedly to the wash-stand to plunge into soap and water. When he came back, drying his arms, the little model, a waif from the West side, was ready, waiting for the day’s pay. He paid him twice over, with that instinct of weakness before destiny which is inherent in the superstition of man, silenced his thanks and sent him out.