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When he had rung the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing to the wall. He could not bear, somehow, that his work should be seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of the great room which had been designed expressly to afford wall space for his own pictures.
A table littered with a variety of those flimsy trifles which ladies are wont to dignify with the name of "work" occupied the centre of the room, a harp stood in one corner and a guitar in another, an easel supporting an unfinished sketch in water-colours stood by one of the two windows which lighted the room, and a small bookcase filled with elegantly-bound books occupied a niche in one of the walls.
There was the big canvas of the man fallen from the horse, there was a painting of flowers, there was a small landscape. His hands on the back of the chair, Denis leaned over her. From behind the easel at the other side of the room Mr. Scogan was talking away.
Near the easel was a small marble table covered with palettes, brushes, and crayons. When Therese retired to this boudoir, her maid was accustomed to keep watch lest she should be surprised by visitors. If any were announced, Therese came out of her boudoir, and, carefully closing the door, awaited her friends in the parlor.
He put the panel away and looked about for something else, the sketch he had made of Simonetta on that last day. When he had found it, he rolled it straight and set it on his easel. It was not the first charcoal study he had made from life, but a brush drawing on dark paper, done in sepia-wash and the lights in white lead. He stood looking into it with his hands clasped.
For some thirty years the husband and wife never set eyes upon each other were absolutely separated. He had now as much work as he could possibly execute. He was often at his easel for thirteen hours a day, beginning at eight in the morning, lighting his lamp when the daylight had gone, and toiling on sometimes until midnight. He had five, and occasionally six, sitters a day.
"I own, sir," replied Gabriel, demurely, "that they are riotous fellows; but some of them are clever, and " "And excessively drunk," interrupted Dalibard, examining the gait of his son. "Do you learn that accomplishment also, by way of steadying your hand for the easel?" "No, sir; I like wine well enough, but I would not be drunk for the world.
But he very soon saw that I didn't, and he came down to my level again. Well, as it happened, I had once photographed a drawing for a fellow, and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant. "More," he said.
He should go naked as a faun; such things roamed about the primeval woods seeking what they might devour. I wish I had asked him to sit for me." He went to his easel and began to sketch a head on the canvas he had prepared for the Rosamund. "He has the short Neronic upper lip," he murmured. Olive lost patience. "I wonder you had the heart to risk spoiling its contour," she said resentfully.
After everyone was put on the easel Henrietta Templeton Price would stick her thumb up in the air and sight across it with one eye shut and say "A stunning bit, that!" and the others would gasp with delight and mutter to each other about its being simply wonderful. Vernabelle listened in an all-too-negligent manner, putting in a tired word or two now and then.
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