She turned up a dark, smiling face to him, with languishing, inscrutable eyes, and he recognized the artist at last, full and clear.
“I see you like my bracelet, don’t you?”
“It’s beautiful,” she replied, looking down and surveying it dreamily. “I don’t always wear it. I carry it in my muff. I’ve just put it on for a little while. I carry them all with me always. I love them so. I like to feel them.”
She opened a small chamois bag beside her—lying with her handkerchief and a sketch-book which she always carried—and took out the ear-rings and brooch.
Cowperwood glowed with a strange feeling of approval and enthusiasm at this manifestation of real interest. He liked jade himself very much, but more than that the feeling that prompted this expression in another. Roughly speaking, it might have been said of him that youth and hope in women—particularly youth when combined with beauty and ambition in a girl—touched him. He responded keenly to her impulse to do or be something in this world, whatever it might be, and he looked on the smart, egoistic vanity of so many with a kindly, tolerant, almost parental eye. Poor little organisms growing on the tree of life—they would burn out and fade soon enough. He did not know the ballad of the roses of yesteryear, but if he had it would have appealed to him. He did not care to rifle them, willy-nilly; but should their temperaments or tastes incline them in his direction, they would not suffer vastly in their lives because of him. The fact was, the man was essentially generous where women were concerned.
“How nice of you!” he commented, smiling. “I like that.” And then, seeing a note-book and pencil beside her, he asked, “What are you doing?”
“Just sketching.”
“Let me see?”
“It’s nothing much,” she replied, deprecatingly. “I don’t draw very well.”
“Gifted girl!” he replied, picking it up. “Paints, draws, carves on wood, plays, sings, acts.”