Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/303

Rh he used chiefly for time exposures in interiors; he had made some extraordinarily fine photographs of the bronzes in the Museum of the Acropolis with this, and as he was considering whether on the Riviera there would conceivably be a use for it, there came into his mind a day he and Lucia had spent on the Acropolis on their first tour. It was with the vividness of a thing actually seen with his eyes now and here that he recalled a particular moment when she had come into the room when he was photographing.

"Oh, Edgar," she said, "it is spring, and outside 'blossom by blossom the spring begins.' Do let us go out on to Pentilicus this afternoon, instead of spending it photographing. If you must photograph, you may photograph me. I will pose on a bed of asphodel and moly."

And suddenly his breath caught in his throat.

No; there would be no need for taking this big time-exposure camera. Whatever photography he did would be in the open air. Yet Lucia had asked him once to photograph her "dear cabin" on the yacht, and, not having a plate to spare, he had not done so. Very likely she would ask him again; it was worth taking the camera, then. It had a wider lens than the other; nothing else at such close quarters could take more than a section of the cabin. By using the widest stop, he could take the whole side of it with this. There was her bed along one side; a table which she called "Utility," because she wrote at it; another which she called "Flora-dora," because she had nothing but flowers on it. No; it was he who had suggested those names; hers had been the delighted acceptance of them.

He took hold of his mind again, and shook it up. These thoughts would lead on to other thoughts, and his present business was with cameras. There was a focal-plane camera which was supposed to work at a fifteen-hundredth part of a second. But when he used it last it struck him that the shutter did not move quite as quickly as it ought. It would be well to test this, for in the bright glare of the Riviera its fastest pace was not at all too quick. If it was still working sluggishly, it must be looked to before he went South.

Edgar had the films handy, and put a roll in; then, with it in his hand, he went to the window. Outside the brilliance of the morning rivalled the southern sun, and he only wanted some quickly-moving object on which to test the shutter. It happened to be focussed, he saw, for six yards, and even at the moment there came the crunch of gravel outside, and round the corner in