She still looked at him with a sort of shining of anger in her eyes.
“I saw from the room of the Hermes. The doorway of the Museum is the frame for such a picture of Elis! It’s almost, in its way, as dream-like and lovely as the distant country one sees through the temple door in Raphael’s ‘Marriage of the Virgin’ in Milan. And hanging partly across it was that branch of wild olive. I was looking at it and loving it in the room of the Hermes when a man’s arm, your arm, was thrust into the picture, and the poor branch was torn away.”
She had spoken quite excitedly, still evidently under the impulse of something like anger. Now she suddenly pulled herself up with a little forced laugh.
“Of course you didn’t know; you couldn’t. I suppose I was dreaming, and it—it looked like a sort of murder. But still I don’t see why you should tear the branch off, and all the leaves too.”
“I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, Rosamund. It was idiotic. Of course I hadn’t an idea what you were doing, I mean, that you were looking at it. One does senseless little things sometimes.”
“It looked so angry.”
“What did?”
“Your hand, your arm. You can have no idea how——”
She broke off again.
“Let me come in with you. Let’s go to the Hermes.”