Astrid did not take much interest in these artistic pilgrimages and she soon tired of the lessons. Although unwilling to work regularly or steadily her natural aptitude soon enabled her to make pretty little sketches, in which the delicacy of colour and facility of treatment atoned to some extent for the faulty drawing. Incapable of prolonged or serious effort, she was pleased with the progress made and could see no reason for hard work. She was capricious and flighty, and Valentini, seeing her complete inability for application ceased to urge her, letting her take her own easy way, since she was so evidently satisfied with it and the results. Ragna, on the contrary, could not be satisfied with what was merely pleasing; she was both conscientious and thorough and consequently had less to show for her labours than her friend. Her drawings were almost painful in the evident struggle for exactitude, they had a grim, almost Dutch character. Her work looked "tight"--she was one who would never attain to facility of execution. Still she persevered and her work if not exactly pleasing, was interesting, and showed promise of talent.
Easter had passed with the usual quaint ceremonial of the Scoppio del Carro, and afterwards the weather grew rapidly warm--a continuous succession of soft spring days, the crown of the year in Tuscany, celebrated in earlier times with the _feste del Calendi maggio_. About this time Ragna began to suffer from headaches, as well as vague physical discomfort, and on several occasions was obliged to absent herself from the studio.
Egidio had been observing her closely. Something that Ferrati had said of her manner suggesting some unpleasant experience in the past, had stuck in his mind, and as he watched her, returned to him again and again.
That would explain the girl's fits of despondency, and her almost feverish application to her work. The more he observed her, the greater grew his curiosity. It must have been a love affair he decided, first because an Italian can imagine no other cause for the inexplicable in a woman's character, and then because she objected so unmistakably to their conversation ever taking a sentimental turn. She was curiously reticent too, he thought, as to her impressions of Rome, indeed it was impossible to get her to talk at any length about Rome at all. Now, Egidio was young and a Latin, and in spite of the self-control of which he boasted, it was clearly impossible that he should continue to be for so long and almost constantly in the company of a pretty girl, whose dazzlingly white skin and golden hair were to his Italian eyes as the fair fruit of some Garden of the Hesperides, without feeling the effects of it. His prudence forbade him, however, to make any advances of a compromising nature until he had assured himself of the material advantages to be obtained. To this end he availed himself of the opportunity offered on those occasions when Ragna was unable to come to the studio, by leading Astrid to talk of her friend. Astrid, nothing loath, chattered on in a light-hearted fashion, talking of their days together at the Paris Convent, of the life in Christiania, of Ragna's incomprehensible dislike of society in general and of men in particular, of Fru Boyesen,--and this interested Valentini most of all.