"I'm afraid I did make rather a scene," she admitted, her lashes on her cheek. "However, that is neither here nor there."
"Then it is all over, the atmosphere cleared and we are to begin our sittings to-morrow." He smiled in anticipation and laughingly drew her picture upon the air.
"No," she shook her head, and spoke more reluctantly than before, "Cresswell has requested me not to have my portrait painted just now. He is kind enough," her smile was shadowy, "to think that there is no particular danger of an immediate waning of my beauty and he desires me to wait a few months."
"But that is impossible! Incredible!" he scowled with irritation and threw himself back in the chair. "Oh, what a sirocco, what a sirocco it must have been!" He shook his head back and forth and then dropped it in his hands, studying the pattern of the table-cloth as though it were the map of the situation. "To pass over my disappointment"--he lifted his head and mechanically pushed about some of the dishes the waiter placed before him on the table--"ignore it, let it go. I'm not going to press that now; but there are other things to be considered. It is known that I am to do your portrait. It was openly discussed last night. All this must be taken into account. That is for appearances as far as you are concerned. Then regarding me. I am not a paper-hanger or house painter to be engaged and then dismissed at the whim of a millionaire. I can not accept a commission from Hepworth and permit him to cancel it by a negligent message, sent through a third person. Absurd!" He frowningly bit a finger. "My plans and arrangements must be concluded for months ahead. They can not be thrown askew like this. Oh, Dita, what did you do, what did you say that brought this about? I worked like a Trojan last night to avert anything of the kind."
She did not answer, but sipped her tea with downcast eyes and he saw that the lashes on her cheeks were wet.
"Ah, Dita," his voice fell to a charming note of tenderness, a note to stir any woman's heart, with the purple and white of the wistaria clusters swaying above their heads and the mellow light reflected in his eyes, his eager eyes which pierced life's stained and sordid curtain and saw the wonder and miracle of beauty; and it was this power to discern the eternal vision which illuminated his ugly, irregular, fascinating face upon which work and dreams and experience had stamped their impress. "You can not fancy what it means to me to paint your portrait now. I've painted it before, crudely, in boyhood, and experienced then a casual delight in the effort to portray a beautiful thing, and wrest a few new secrets of art from the portrayal. That was all. But now," his voice without being raised, yet lifted exultantly, "but now--my heart is swept with insurgent seas at the thought of what it means. I am lover and artist, fused in a fire of white enthusiasm. The lover sees, divines what the artist can only guess at, and the artist offers to the lover a perfected technique. I feel the stirring of this power to catch your loveliness, Dita, and fix it on canvas imperishably. It would be the great achievement. That is in the background of every artist's thoughts. It is his pillar of cloud by day and his pillar of fire by night. The great achievement!" He dreamed over it a moment. "I would paint the South in you, Dita, 'warm and sweet and fickle is the South.' Ah! I thought I loved you then. I thought I loved you the evening we parted, but I know now that I have never really loved you before or I could not have given you up."