Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/278

268 ceased warfare to come and stare at the canvas—and it would soon be America's time to stop and stare.

The girl moved closer to his side, but he remained unconscious of her presence there. He did not see the rapt light in her eyes. The look of vague triumph on her face was lost to him. It was, in fact, several minutes before he even remembered her. Then it came home to him what the picture meant, not to the America which was to stop and stare, but to the impoverished household where it lay like a jewel hidden away in a straw mattress. He remembered what it would mean to that haughty and broken pair so in need of sustenance. It was their release—their salvation. That benignant golden figure with the apple of desire in her clustered fingers stood the goddess who was to work the miracle, who in a day might transform their penury into plenty. And this thought took his attention back to Julia Keswick.

She was studying him, he saw, with troubled eyes in which some new anxiety seemed to be formulating itself.