As for Danaë herself, she was highly flattered by the request, having long admired in secret the large painting of Zoe which the artist had presented to her and her husband as his wedding-gift. Her ideas on the subject were not exactly in accord with Armitage’s, however, as was made evident when she presented herself for the first sitting robed in Linton’s best black gown and a stiffly starched white apron, with her hair strained back from her face and piled into a kind of helmet on her head, in distant imitation of Zoe’s coils. Zoe and Armitage gazed at her in speechless horror as she displayed herself with much pride, and were devoutly thankful for the sudden irruption of Linton, who had discovered the unauthorised use made of her Sunday gown, and lost no time in proceeding to recover it. Zoe herself presided over the transformation of the European into the everyday Kalliopé, a change which had to be effected almost by force, for the girl was sulking furiously. She resented particularly the restoration of her hair to its usual massive plaits, for the uncouth pile secured with stolen hairpins had been a special triumph. The Lady Zoe was obliged to do her hair loosely and fluff it out to make it look at all well, whereas she, Danaë, had so much that she could hardly get it all up even when it was twisted as tightly as possible! Her face was like a thundercloud when Zoe led her back at last, and Armitage, welcoming the gay dress and long plaits in place of the grotesque array which had affronted his horrified vision, had no chance of doing more that first day than obtain an excellent attitude for an embodiment of disgust.
Things improved afterwards, though it was several days before Danaë could be induced to appear save with an expression of restrained protest, and Armitage made one sketch after another, trying to find the best attitude for bringing out the points of the beautiful face and form. Danaë was in no wise shy. To her mind the Christodoridi were the equals of any of the royal houses of Europe, and the conviction lent a stately assurance to her manner that puzzled Zoe and roused Armitage to fresh admiration. Pursuing her plan of training her handmaid for a loftier future, Zoe gave herself some trouble in the matter of choosing subjects for conversation during these mornings. She had thrown herself of late so completely into the actual life that surrounded her that Armitage was rather surprised to find how keen her interest in literary and artistic matters still remained. But he was fresh from London and the circles in which she had shone before her marriage, and he found it quite easy to believe that a brilliant woman of her achievements might find the society of Emathian country ladies, and the duty of leading them in the way that they should go, pall at times. Therefore he talked of books and pictures and historical events, following her lead, and Zoe watched Danaë’s face to see how it affected her, and tried to draw her into the discussion by asking her the right word in Greek for such and such a thing. But the result was disappointing. The girl had no foundation of general knowledge on which to build. Names which would have brought a glow of enthusiasm to the cheek of most of her countrywomen had no meaning for her, and history was represented to her mind by the rude chronicles of the sordid and bloodthirsty squabbles of her Christodoridi ancestors with the other island chiefs. When she could be induced to recite one of these metrical romances, then, indeed, her eye kindled and her voice became almost inspired, but to her hearers the matter was hopelessly inadequate to the emotions it evoked. They could not tell that she felt she had justified her descent from these rather unheroic heroes, and that the barbaric crimes and virtues which they supposed her to admire in her rulers were honoured family characteristics to her.
After the sittings had lasted for a week, Zoe came upon Armitage turning over his portfolio with a perplexed face. It was full of sketches of Danaë of all sorts and sizes—whole-length, half-length, three-quarters, full face, profile, face turned away, some worked up almost into pictures, others the merest record of a moment’s pose.
“Not satisfied yet?” she asked him, smiling.
“How can I be?” he demanded, viewing with frowning brow a pencil drawing of Danaë recounting with immense gusto the tale of a particularly black piece of treachery practised against an enemy by Prince Christodoridi’s father. “There’s no soul in anyone of them, and it seems a kind of desecration to paint that face without it.”
“How can there be?” demanded Zoe in return. “She hasn’t got one—at least, that’s what I am beginning to think.”
“She has, she has!” cried Armitage stoutly. “I have caught glimpses of it—the merest glimpses—and it was gone again.”
“They must have been the very merest glimpses, for I have been watching most eagerly, and have never seen a sign,” said Zoe. “Why, even in this—” she took up a sketch of Danaë looking down on Janni and Harold playing at her feet—“in which she looks really sweet, there is not a hint of anything more than a kind of wild affection. She would go through right and wrong without a qualm to get Janni anything he cried for.”
“Or Harold either. She has a very real liking for you and Harold both, I believe, though in your case it is mixed with a good deal of—of lack of comprehension.”
“Why don’t you say contempt at once? That is what she feels, I know perfectly well. And no doubt we are all of us miserable failures according to her savage code—and Maurice, as the best of us, the worst failure.”