“Have we what?”
“Decided whether you will sit for my picture
of Circe?”
Magda lifted her long white lids and met his glance.
“Why should I?” she asked lazily.
He shrugged his shoulders with apparent unconcern.
“No reason in the world—unless you
feel inclined to do a good turn.”
His indifference was maddening.
“I don’t make a habit of doing good turns,”
she retorted sharply.
“So I should imagine.”
The contemptuous edge to his voice roused her to indignation.
As always, she found herself stung to the quick by
the man’s coolly critical attitude towards her.
She was back once more in the atmosphere of their
first meeting on the day he had come to her assistance
in the fog. It seemed almost incredible that
all that followed had ever taken place—incredible
that he had ever cared for her or taught her to care
for him. At least he was making it very clear
to her now that he intended to cut those intervening
memories out of his life.
It was a sheer challenge to her femininity, and everything
that was woman in her rose to meet it.
She smiled across at him engagingly.
“I might—perhaps—make
an exception.”
For a moment there was silence. Quarrington’s
gaze was riveted on her slim, supple figure with its
perfect symmetry and rare grace of limb. It was
difficult to interpret his expression. Magda wondered
if he were going to reject her offer. He seemed
to be fighting something out with himself—pulled
two ways—the artist in him combating the
man’s impulse to resist her.
Suddenly the artist triumphed. He rose and, coming
to her side, stood looking down at her.
“Will you?” he said. “Will you?”
Something more than the artist spoke in his voice.
It held a note of passionate eagerness, a clipped
tensity that set all her pulses racing.
She turned her head aside.
“Yes,” she answered, a little breathlessly.
“Yes—if you want me to.”
A READJUSTMENT OF IDEAS
Magda glanced from the divan covered with a huge tiger-skin
to Michael, wheeling his easel into place. A
week’s hard work on the part of the artist had
witnessed the completion of Lady Arabella’s portrait,
and to-day he proposed to make some preliminary sketches
for “Circe.”
Magda felt oddly nervous and unsure of herself.
This last fortnight passed in daily companionship
with Quarrington had proved a considerable strain.
Not withstanding that she had consented to sit for
his picture of Circe, he had not deviated from the
attitude which he had apparently determined upon from
the first moment of her arrival at the Hermitage—an
attitude of aloof indifference to which was added a
bitterness of speech that continually thrust at her
with its trenchant cynicism. It was as though
he had erected a high wall between them which Magda
found no effort of hers could break down, and she was
beginning to ask herself whether he could ever really
have cared for her at all. Surely no man who
had once cared could be so hard—so implacably
hard!
