“Let us look at the picture again,” she said abruptly. “I’d like to see it by nightlight.”
With a smile he complied, classing her with the other vain women who had sat to him. She wanted to look on her own beauty. He pulled forward the easel and took off the cloth.
It was one of the best bits of painting he had ever done. He had worked hard on it, and it had but slightly the faults that usually marred his work. He had put in careful, conscientious brush-work; and in combination with the arresting individuality of the sitter, the result was one of which he might justly be proud.
But as Claudia gazed on it, dissatisfaction stirred within her. The yellowish lights—the electric globes were of some daffodil tint—made her see it as she had never done before. The eyes were surely too ardent, the curve of the lips too sensual, the whole face had a curious voluptuousness that made her recoil from the picture. Did she give people that impression?
“Is it—exactly like me?” she asked.
“It’s as I see you,” he said complacently. “My beautiful Claudia! It is good, isn’t it? I think it will create a sensation when it is exhibited.”
Suddenly she knew that she hated it, that she did not want the world to see it, to stare at it, to comment on it. Yes, she was glad Colin had not seen it. He might have thought——
“I don’t like it.”
If she had suddenly held a pistol at his head he could not have been more surprised. He turned from his very self-satisfied contemplation of the picture and stared at the original. And it was not the woman of the portrait he saw, nor the flushed, hesitating woman of the dinner-table, but a woman whose eyes were wide open and startled, as though some new aspect of life had struck her; a woman who was fighting for self-mastery, calling to her aid that pride and moral fastidiousness that were innate in her, and which lately she had been trying to keep out of sight.
She was not the woman, she told herself, she never would be the woman of the picture. That was not a woman with true love and passion in her eyes, it was mere animal sensuality. Yet she was aware that she might become that woman if she crossed the threshold. Dare she take the risk? Did she want to take the risk?