“Has he changed much since you first knew him?”
“No, I don’t think so. He was always much the same.”
“He seems to me to have changed a lot since—we were married. Or perhaps I knew nothing of him then—and am only getting to know him now. I suppose everybody knows all about me the minute they meet me. I know you won’t want to answer—but isn’t that so?”
“It’s a common mistake to think that one can know much about anyone until one has known them intimately a long time—and then the much—isn’t much. I’ve sometimes thought—at least I used to do so—that I had put all a sitter’s character upon my canvas, but now I know better. The face tells everything, if only one can read all its lines.”
“I wonder what you read in my face?”
“What I think I see there, I shall try to paint—and then, why, then, no one may be able to see in my painting what I have tried to put there.”
“Not even I?”
“Probably you least of all.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I do fancy I don’t know much about myself. I used to think everybody liked me—” she hesitated and then turned toward the window, keeping silent for a time.
“I suppose you look at people’s faces in quite a different way to what other people do, Mr. Maddison?” she said after a while.