As a matter of course, he looked to her easel with the expectation of
finding no new work, but was disappointed; for a portrait of himself
confronted him. He knew her trick of copying the pose and lines from a
photograph and filling in from memory. The particular photograph she
was using had been a fortunate snapshop of him on horseback. The
Outlaw, for once and for a moment, had been at peace, and Dick, hat in
hand, hair just nicely rumpled, face in repose, unaware of the
impending snap, had at the instant looked squarely into the camera. No
portrait photographer could have caught a better likeness. The head and
shoulders Paula had had enlarged, and it was from this that she was
working. But the portrait had already gone beyond the photograph, for
Dick could see her own touches.
With a start he looked more closely. Was that expression of the eyes,
of the whole face, his? He glanced at the photograph. It was not there.
He walked over to one of the mirrors, relaxed his face, and led his
thoughts to Paula and Graham. Slowly the expression came into his eyes
and face. Not content, he returned to the easel and verified it. Paula
knew. Paula knew that he knew. She had learned it from him, stolen it
from him some time when it was unwittingly on his face, and carried it
in her memory to the canvas.
Paula's Chinese maid, Oh Dear, entered from the wardrobe room, and Dick
watched her unobserved as she came down the room toward him. Her eyes
were down, and she seemed deep in thought. Dick remarked the sadness of
her face, and that the little, solicitous contraction of the brows that
had led to her naming was gone. She was not solicitous, that was
patent. But cast down, she was, in heavy depression.
It would seem that all our faces are beginning to say things, he
commented to himself.
"Good morning, Oh Dear," he startled her.
And as she returned the greeting, he saw compassion in her eyes as they
dwelt on him. She knew. The first outside themselves. Trust her, a
woman, so much in Paula's company when Paula was alone, to divine
Paula's secret.
Oh Dear's lips trembled, and she wrung her trembling hands, nerving
herself, as he could see, to speech.
"Mister Forrest," she began haltingly, "maybe you think me fool, but I
like say something. You very kind man. You very kind my old mother. You
very kind me long long time..."
She hesitated, moistening her frightened lips with her tongue, then
braved her eyes to his and proceeded.
"Mrs. Forrest, she, I think..."
But so forbidding did Dick's face become that she broke off in
confusion and blushed, as Dick surmised, with shame at the thoughts she
had been about to utter.
"Very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make," he put her at her ease.
The Chinese girl sighed, and the same compassion returned into her eyes
as she looked long at Dick's portrait.
She sighed again, but the coldness in her voice was not lost on Dick as
she answered: "Yes, very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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