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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Or sheer heartsickness," suggested Lady Arabella, with one of those quick flashes of tender insight which combined so incongruously with the rest of her personality. "Do you think she cared, then?" asked Gillian. "For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in the end, I hope.
She tucked her arm into Gillian's and, as they moved away together, threw back over her shoulder: "By the way, have you two settled the vexed question of the model for the picture yet?" Quarrington blew a thin stream of smoke into the air before replying. Then, looking quizzically across at Magda, he asked: "Have we?" "Have we what?" "Decided whether you will sit for my picture of Circe?"
And seeing that "The Repose of Titania" was the first of his paintings to bring Michael Quarrington that meed of praise and recognition which was later his in such full measure, perhaps she had. "I think I'm glad you're not a saint, after all," remarked Magda thoughtfully. "Saint's are dreadfully dull and superior." He smiled down at her. "Are they? How do you know?"
It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing to allow her quite a good deal of rope. As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella. But somehow no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set her heart upon.
"Thank you," she answered. "I enjoyed that quite as much as I used to enjoy being told I'd a pretty dimple when I was a girl." "You have now," rejoined Quarrington audaciously. Lady Arabella's eyes sparkled. She loved a neatly turned compliment. "Thank you again. But it's a pity to waste your pretty speeches on an old woman of seventy." "I don't," retorted the artist gravely.
"You'd better postpone your visit to the Antipodes, Mr. Quarrington," said the latter, as presently they all three stood together in the vestibule, halted by the stream of people pouring out from the theatre. "I'm giving a dinner-party next week, with a 'crush' to follow. Stay and come to it." "It's awfully kind of you, Lady Arabella, but I'm afraid it's impossible." "Fiddlesticks!
"I reserve them for the young people I know of that age." She laughed delightedly. Then, turning to Davilof, she drew him into the conversation and the talk became general. Later, as they were all three standing in the hall preparatory to departure, she flashed another of her sudden remarks at Quarrington. "I understand you came to my god-daughter's rescue in that bad fog last week?"
In her other hand she held a golden goblet, proffering the fatal draught, and her tilted face with its strange, enigmatic smile and narrowed lids held all the seductive entreaty and beguilement, and the deep, cynical knowledge of mankind, which are the garnerings of the Circes of this world. At length Quarrington laid down his charcoal. "It's a splendid pose," he said enthusiastically.
The quiet grey eyes revealed nothing. "I was privileged to be some little use," he replied lightly. "I hardly gathered you regarded it as a privilege," observed her ladyship drily. The shaft went home. A fleeting light gleamed for a moment in the grey eyes. Davilof was standing a few paces away, being helped into his coat by a man-servant, and Quarrington spoke low and quickly.
Their solitude had been ruthlessly destroyed; the outside world had thrust itself upon them without warning, jerking them back to the self-consciousness of suddenly arrested emotion. "I must be going." The stilted, banal little phrase had fallen awkwardly from Magda's lips, and Quarrington had assented without comment. She felt confused and bewildered. What had he meant?
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