The Dark Star

"I know they're good," he said. And, half laughingly: "I'm beginning

to find out that you're a rather wonderful and formidable and

overpowering girl, Ruhannah."

"You don't think so!" she exclaimed, enchanted. "Do you? Oh, dear!

Then I feel that I ought to show you my pictures and set you right

immediately----" She sprang to her feet. "I'll get them; I'll be only

a moment----"

She was gone before he discovered anything to say, leaving him to walk

up and down the deserted room and think about her as clearly as his

somewhat dislocated thoughts permitted, until she returned with both

arms full of portfolios, boards, and panels.

"Now," she said with a breathless smile, "you may mortify my pride and

rebuke my vanity. I deserve it; I need it; but Oh!--don't be too

severe----"

"Are you serious?" he asked, looking up in astonishment from the first

astonishing drawing in colour which he held between his hands.

"Serious? Of course----" She met his eyes anxiously, then her own

became incredulous and the swift colour dyed her face.

"Do you like my work?" she asked in a fainter voice.

"Like it!" He continued to stare at the bewildering grace and colour

of the work, turned to another and lifted it to the light: "What's this?" he demanded.

"A monotype."

"You did it?"

"Y-yes."

He seemed unable to take his eyes from it--from the exquisite figures

there in the sun on the bank of the brimming river under an

iris-tinted April sky.

"What do you call it, Rue?"

"Baroque."

He continued to scrutinise it in silence, then drew another carton

prepared for oil from the sheaf on the sofa.

Over autumn woods, in a windy sky, high-flying crows were buffeted and

blown about. From the stark trees a few phantom leaves clung,

fluttering; and the whole scene was possessed by sinuous, whirling

forms--mere glimpses of supple, exquisite shapes tossing, curling,

flowing through the naked woodland. A delicate finger caught at a dead

leaf here; there frail arms clutched at a bending, wind-tossed bough;

grey sky and ghostly forest were obsessed, bewitched by the winnowing,

driving torrent of airy, half seen spirits.

"The Winds," he said mechanically.

He looked at another--a sketch of the Princess Naïa. And somehow it

made him think of vast skies and endless plains and the tumult of

surging men and rattling lances.

"A Cossack," he said, half to himself. "I never before realised it."

And he laid it aside and turned to the next.

"I haven't brought any life studies or school drawings," she said. "I

thought I'd just show you the--the results of them and of--of whatever

is in me."

"I'm just beginning to understand what is in you," he said.

"Tell me--what is it?" she asked, almost timidly.