Then he returned to the drawings, sitting at the table, while she stood over him and told him what they were.
There was no diffidence or mock-modesty at all about her. The drawings were her life, and represented her inmost thoughts. She had never shown them all together to a single person, and now she was laying them all open before the young man whom yesterday she had met for the first time.
It seemed to him as if she were baring her very soul for him to read.
"I like to do them," she said, "because then I can recall everything that I have done or seen. Look! Here is the dear old house at Highgate, where I stayed for thirteen years without once going beyond its walls. Ah, how long ago it seems, and yet it is only a week since I came away! And everything is so different to me now."
"You were happy there, Phil?"
"Yes; but not so happy as I am now. I did not know you then, Jack."
He beat down the temptation to take her in his arms and kiss her a thousand times. He tried to sit calmly critical over the drawings. But his hand shook.
"Tell me about it all," he said softly.
"These are the sketches of my Highgate life. Stay; this one does not belong to this set. It is a likeness of you, which I drew last night when I came home."
"Did you really draw one of me? Let me have it. Do let me have it."