She took the position he directed, while he sat down on a stool at a little distance and began to sketch rapidly upon a block on his knee.
“I want to rough it out,” he said, as he tore off a sheet of the paper and flung it on the floor, “until I’ve caught the pose, and then I’ll start to get it on a canvas.”
At first he worked quickly, the while she watched him with keen interest. She knew that if she had aroused deep emotion in him, he could not continue this make-believe of absorption in his work, could not long keep up this semblance of looking upon her simply as a model.
It was partly hatred of the surroundings in which he had found her this morning, partly fear of precipitancy that induced him to act as he was doing. If he spoke too soon he might not only lose her, but lose also—he loved her too sincerely not to dread it—the opportunity of helping her in her distress. But strive strongly as he could he was unable to concentrate his mind upon the work. Every time he looked at her and found her gaze fixed upon him it called for all his powers of control to keep him from throwing discretion aside at once and for all.
“You’re watching me,” he said with a touch of impatience that troubled her; “look at the fire, please.”
“I’m afraid you bully your sitters,” she replied, doing as he bade her. “I’m so tired of being told to do things. There are such lots of things I should like to do—but nobody ever told me to do any of them.”
“What things? May I know?”
“You’ll only laugh at me. They’re the kind of things that a woman with nothing a year and not much hope of earning anything much has to do without and had better not even think about.” She spoke slowly, wondering which of her ambitions it would be discreet to name to him. “I should like a lot of friends, clever people who can talk and be jolly and make me jolly too, if I haven’t forgotten how to be; and pretty rooms. I should like to read and to see pictures, and to go to the opera—and I want sympathy—and—and——”
As she broke off there was a catch in her voice that routed the remains of his discretion. He threw away his pencil and went quickly over to her, standing beside her chair.
“Look up at me,” he said eagerly. “What else do you want? Sympathy—and—what else?”