“No, not a bit.”
“I’m Miss Carfax, and I paint a little. I wondered whether you would let me come and make some studies in your gardens.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
He turned the chair towards her, but she remained standing, her shyness lifting a little under the spell of his tranquil bigness. She became aware suddenly of the rosery. Her eyes swept it, glimmered, and something seemed to rise in her throat.
“Nothing but roses!”
Canterton found himself studying her profile, with its straight, low forehead, short nose, and sensitive mouth and chin. Her hair was a dense, lustrous black, waved back from the forehead, without hiding the shapeliness of her head. She wore a blouse that was cut low at the throat, so that the whole neck showed, slim but perfect, curving forward very slightly, so that her head was poised like the head of one who was listening. There was something flower-like in her figure, with its lithe fragility clothed in the simple white spathe of her dress.
Canterton saw her nostrils quivering. Her throat and bosom seemed to dilate.
“How perfect it is!”
“Almost at its best just now.”
“They make one feel very humble, these flowers. A paint brush seems so superfluous.”