Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/96

 her fluid face. This haggard old owl, drooping on its perch, was an incubus rather than an inspiration. Not more than twenty minutes passed before he smiled upon her and told her that now she could take up her reminiscences. His smile was reflected back to him like sunrise from a bleak, grey cliff.

'But may I not now come and look?' she begged.

'You'll see nothing yet,' he warned her.

But she got up and came, leaning on her stick, to stand behind him and look at the strange pattern, simple, forcible, significant, displayed on the canvas. She stood there then, speechless; unable to summon one word of flattery.

'Well?' Graham turned his head to smile at her.

'It is a marvel!' she gallantly brought out.

'Not yet. But it will be good.'

'It is a work of genius! In so short a time!' the old lady continued.—'But—Dieu!—Am I so horrible as that?'

'Horrible!' Graham smiled his indignation. 'I call it already beautiful!'

'With the great black mark at the side of the nose; the black caverns under the eyes; the fissures in the neck!—Bien! It is so. I am old. I am horrible. You show me the death's head I am soon to be reduced to,' said the poor old lady with dismal acquiescence.

'But I shouldn't have cared to paint you if you hadn't been old. You are beautiful—in the way I care for—because you are old. You are like a silver medal exquisitely engraved by life;—every line shows what