Of
course! How stupid of her not to have known at once! There, in a brown
frame, hung a photograph of the celebrated Botticelli or Masaccio "Head
of a Young Man" in the National Gallery. She had fallen in love with
it years ago, and on the wall of her room it had been ever since.
That broad face, the clear eyes, the bold, clean-cut mouth, the
audacity--only, the live face was English, not Italian, had more humour,
more "breeding," less poetry--something "old Georgian" about it. How
he would laugh if she told him he was like that peasant acolyte with
fluffed-out hair, and a little ruching round his neck! And, smiling, Gyp
plaited her own hair and got into bed.
But she could not sleep; she heard her father come in and go up to his
room, heard the clocks strike midnight, and one, and two, and always the
dull roar of Piccadilly. She had nothing over her but a sheet, and still
it was too hot. There was a scent in the room, as of honeysuckle. Where
could it come from? She got up at last, and went to the window. There,
on the window-sill, behind the curtains, was a bowl of jessamine. Her
father must have brought it up for her--just like him to think of that!
And, burying her nose in those white blossoms, she was visited by
a memory of her first ball--that evening of such delight and
disillusionment. Perhaps Bryan Summerhay had been there--all that time
ago! If he had been introduced to her then, if she had happened to dance
with him instead of with that man who had kissed her arm, might she not
have felt different toward all men? And if he had admired her--and had
not everyone, that night--might she not have liked, perhaps more than
liked, him in return? Or would she have looked on him as on all her
swains before she met Fiorsen, so many moths fluttering round a candle,
foolish to singe themselves, not to be taken seriously? Perhaps she had
been bound to have her lesson, to be humbled and brought low!
Taking a sprig of jessamine and holding it to her nose, she went up to
that picture.
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