And taking up her position, a little closer this time to him and the easel, she bent upon him that wide-eyed, impersonal stare.... Felix was rather in awe of her by this time. She had ceased to seem to him the careless, slangy bohemian girl that he had first known. She was an expert and delicate technician. Those four portraits in succession had stunned his imagination. She seemed to him almost superhuman—with a little of the flavour of black magic in her. That wide-eyed impersonal stare was part of the effect. At first she seemed merely a pretty girl lifting her face to yours and looking at you, steadily; and if one was not used to returning the wide-eyed stare of a pretty girl, one became a little embarrassed—there is something so intimate about this meeting and touching through the eyes; one seems to be let in, unreservedly, to some mysterious depth. But, as the stare continued, piercing you, probing you, seeing you with calm indifference, you became uneasy and almost afraid—you wanted to look away, and that seemed cowardly and evasive, so you kept on staring back as long as you could ... until those dark blue eyes of hers seemed profound gulfs over which you hung, dizzy, tottering, about to drown.... And then, saying “Mm,” she went over to her canvas again and put on a little dab of paint. She had probably been considering carefully whether or not she had made your nose too long! 3 Felix raved in this fashion to Rose-Ann, who heard him with interest and in silence till he had finished. “And what does the portrait look like now?” she asked. “Well—very much like any other portrait, I must say. A little bolder, and lots of colour, but nothing startling. Or perhaps I’ve become so used to startling things by now that this seems a little tame.” The last sitting was a prolonged one, in which the painter looked at him for what seemed hours at a time, and in which he could not rid himself of the perturbing conviction that she was seeing into his soul.... He was very tired when she finished at last—the sitting had as a matter of fact taken two hours, with only a few momentary rests—and Felix was in a mood of weariness and self-distrust when he went over to look at the completed portrait. Perhaps that accounted for what he saw: Painted with an exquisite and mordant irony—with stick and cigarette, uncertainly halting, as if in front of life, the head tilted with a quirk of inquiry, the face curious and evasive, with something that was almost boldness in the eyes, something that was almost courage in the chin—Felix Fay, observant, indecisive, inadequate, against a rose-coloured background. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXXIX. A Date on the Calendar 1