“You see!” she said, accusing herself discontentedly; “you don’t dare look human. Why? Because you’ve had it so drummed
into you that you can never, never again do anything natural. Why? Oh, because they all begin to talk about mysterious dangers when you say you wish to be natural.... I’ve made up my mind to look interested the next time he turns.... Why shouldn’t he see that I’m quite willing to talk to him?... And I’m so tired of looking out of the window.... Before I came to this curious city I was never afraid to speak to anybody who attracted me.... And I’m not now.... So if he does look at me——”
He did.
The faintest glimmer of a smile troubled her lips. She thought: “I do wish he’d speak!”
There was a very becoming color in his face, partly because he was experienced enough not to mistake her; partly from a sudden and complete realization of her beauty.
“It’s so odd,” thought Aphrodite, “that attractive people consider it dangerous to speak to one another. I don’t see any danger.... I wonder what he has in that square box beside him? It can’t be a camera.... It can’t be a folding easel! It simply can’t be that he is an artist! a man like that——”
“Are you?” she asked quite involuntarily.
“What?” he replied, astonished, wheeling around.
“An—an artist. I can’t believe it, and I don’t wish to! You don’t look it, you know!”
For a moment he could scarcely realize that she had spoken; his keen gaze dissected the face before him, the unembarrassed eyes, the oval contour, the smooth, flawless loveliness of a child.