Whats Bred In The Bone | Page 3

blush than
even her usual self. "On the contrary, I really liked to see him. He's
such a glorious snake! The lights and shades on his back are so
glancing and so wonderful! He's a perfect model. Of course, you're
painting him."
The stranger started. "I'm painting him--yes, that's true," he replied,
with a look of sudden surprise; "but why 'of course,' please? How on
earth could you tell I was an artist even?"
Elma glanced back in his face, and wondered to herself, too. Now she
came to think of it, HOW did she know that handsome young man,
with the charming features, and the expressive eyes, and the neatly-cut
brown beard, and the attractive manner, was an artist at all, or anything
like it? And how did she know the snake was his model? For the life of
her, she couldn't have answered those questions herself.
"I suppose I just guessed it," she answered, after a short pause, blushing
still more deeply at the sudden way she had thus been dragged into
conversation with the good-looking stranger. Elma's skin was dark--a
clear and creamy olive-brown complexion, such as one sometimes sees
in southern Europe, though rarely in England; and the effect of the
blush through it didn't pass unnoticed by Cyril Waring's artistic eye. He
would have given something for the chance of transferring that
delicious effect to canvas. The delicate transparency of the blush threw
up those piercing dark eyes, and reflected lustre even on the glossy
black hair that fringed her forehead. Not an English type of beauty at
all, Elma Clifford's, he thought to himself as he eyed her closely: rather
Spanish or Italian, or say even Hungarian.
"Well, you guessed right, at any rate," he went on, settling down in his
seat once more, after boxing his snake, but this time face to face with
her. "I'm working at a beautiful bit of fern and foliage--quite tropical in
its way--in a wood hereabout; and I've introduced Sardanapalus, coiled
up in the foreground, just to give life to the scene, don't you know, and
an excuse for a title. I mean to call it 'The Rajah's Rest.' Behind, great
ferns and a mossy bank; in front, Sardanapalus, after tiffin, rolled
spirally round, and taking his siesta."
This meeting was a long-wished-for occasion. Elma had never before
met a real live painter. Now, it was the cherished idea of her youth to
see something some day of that wonderful non-existent fantastic world

which we still hope for and dream about and call Bohemia. She longed
to move in literary and artistic circles. She had fashioned to herself, like
many other romantic girls, a rose-coloured picture of Bohemian
existence; not knowing indeed that Bohemia is now, alas! an extinct
province, since Belgravia and Kensington swallowed it bodily down,
digested, and assimilated it. So this casual talk with the handsome
young artist in the second-class carriage, on the Great Southern line,
was to Elma as a charming and delightful glimpse of an enchanted
region she could never enter. It was Paradise to the Peri. She turned the
conversation at once, therefore, with resolute intent upon art and artists,
determined to make the most while it lasted of this unique opportunity.
And since the subject of self, with an attentive listener, is always an
attractive one, even to modest young men like Cyril Waring--especially
when it's a pretty girl who encourages you to dilate upon it--why, the
consequence was, that before many minutes were over, the handsome
young man was discoursing from his full heart to a sympathetic soul
about his chosen art, its hopes and its ideals, accompanied, by a
running fire of thumb-nail illustrations. He had even got so far in the
course of their intimacy as to take out the portfolio, which lay hidden
under the seat--out of deference to his disguise as a stock-broker, no
doubt--and to display before Elma's delighted eyes, with many
explanatory comments as to light and shade, or perspective and
foreshortening, the studies for the picture he had just then engaged
upon.
By-and-by, as his enthusiasm warmed under Elma's encouragement, the
young artist produced Sardanapalus himself once more from his box,
and with deftly persuasive fingers coiled him gracefully round on the
opposite seat into the precise attitude he was expected to take up when
he sat for his portrait in the mossy foreground.
Elma couldn't say why, but that creature fascinated her. The longer she
looked at him the more intensely he interested her. Not that she was
one bit afraid of him, as she might reasonably have expected to be,
according to all womanly precedent. On the contrary, she felt an
overwhelming desire to take him up in her own hands and stroke and
fondle him. He was so lithe