“And those lips, señor—see her beautiful red lips—are they not about to speak? The breath that trembles between them—is it not a little sigh she would breathe—a sigh to tell us she cannot understand this life that stirs within her?
“She would have music, señor—music to whisper those little woman secrets no man shall hear. See the lute she holds—her fingers have but brushed its strings, and she has laid it down.
“And that hand—there upon her breast. Closer, señor—bend closer. Can you not see veins upon that hand? Blue veins they are, but in them there is red blood flowing—red blood to feed the flesh of her body—blood to give her life and hold imprisoned there the soul. Can you not see it, señor? Human blood—the blood of life in a portrait.”
His voice rose sharp and shrill with triumph, and he ended again with his horrible senile laughter.
The jangling of a bell rang through the house. The little old man met my glance and hesitated. Then as the ring was repeated—I could hear it now; it was in the shop down-stairs—he muttered a Spanish oath softly to himself.
“Some one wants to see me,” he said. “A customer, perhaps—who knows. The señor will excuse me one little moment?”
“Yes,” I said; “I will wait for you here.”
“When the business calls, señor, it is not good for the pleasure to interfere.” He looked around the room uncertainly, and then started for the door through which we had entered.
“I leave the señor not alone”—he glanced significantly at the canvas—“and only for one little moment.”
When he had left the room I stood again before the canvas, partly enveloped in the great folds of the heavy window portieres. On the stairs outside I could hear the dragging footsteps of the old man as he tottered back to the shop below. I examined the canvas more closely now. There was upon it every color and combination of color, like the heaped-up pigments on a huge, untidy palette. But I noticed that brown seemed to predominate—a dirty, drab, faded brown, inexpressibly ugly, and somehow very sinister. It seemed a pigment color I had never seen before. I could see, too, that the paints were laid on very thick—it was done in oils—as though it had been worked over and over again, for months or even years.