She obeyed.
“Now take it up—slowly—and stop the instant I tell you.”
She bent her strong and supple figure a little, and began lifting the vase.
“Stop there!” he called out, “and look up at me. Look as pretty as you can. Think that I am some giovanotto who is going, perhaps, to ask you of your mother.”
Half shy, half saucy, she looked
up as commanded, gratified vanity and friendly regard uniting to give her face as much expression as it was capable of.
Carlin seized his pencil and began sketching rapidly.
“He hasn’t a particle of imagination,” the Signora said in a low tone, “but he has excellent eyes and much humor. I sometimes think that humor and imagination never go together. Indeed, I don’t believe they ever do in any superlative degree.”
A little bell sounded timidly at her side, pulled by a cord that she perceived now by its vibration coming in at the window, the bell itself being quite hidden by the vine-leaves, where it was held between two large nails driven into the window-frame.
“Would—you—be so very kind—as to throw—that—loaf of bread out of the window, Signora?” the artist asked, abstractedly dropping one word at a time between the strokes of his pencil and glances at his model, whose fire was beginning to fade. “I can’t stop.”