He seemed unable to take his eyes from it—from the exquisite figures there in the sun on the bank of the brimming river under an iris-tinted April sky.
“What do you call it, Rue?”
“Baroque.”
He continued to scrutinise it in silence, then drew another carton prepared for oil from the sheaf on the sofa.
Over autumn woods, in a windy sky, high-flying crows were buffeted and blown about. From the stark trees a few phantom leaves clung, fluttering; and the whole scene was possessed by sinuous, whirling forms—mere glimpses of supple, exquisite shapes tossing, curling, flowing through the naked woodland. A delicate finger caught at a dead leaf here; there frail arms clutched at a bending, wind-tossed bough; grey sky and ghostly forest were obsessed, bewitched by the winnowing, driving torrent of airy, half seen spirits.
“The Winds,” he said mechanically.
He looked at another—a sketch of the Princess Naïa. And somehow it made him think of vast skies and endless plains and the tumult of surging men and rattling lances.
“A Cossack,” he said, half to himself. “I never before realised it.” And he laid it aside and turned to the next.
“I haven’t brought any life studies or school 321 drawings,” she said. “I thought I’d just show you the—the results of them and of—of whatever is in me.”
“I’m just beginning to understand what is in you,” he said.