ADOLPH KELLER gave a low whistle. He took in his breath quickly. The treasure, in its rare incredible beauty, had declared itself to his eyes. And to the eyes of an artist, wholly unready for the revelation, it came in a single devastating flash.
“My God!” he said, in a whisper, half rapture, half surprise.
Aglow with excitement he removed the shade from the electric lamp. Holding the picture beneath the light, an arm’s length away from his eyes, he turned it over several times in that fashion of the expert which June had now learned to dread. And then humming softly, and with his fingers still enclosing it, he passed beyond the screen to a table on which lay a microscope.
With a feeling of nausea, June watched everything he did. Only too well she knew that the microscope would simply feed his excitement. In a fresh spasm of weakness, she reeled against the chimneypiece. She had now the sensation of having fallen over a precipice into a bottomless pit. Already she was sinking down, down, down into night and damnation.
Keller soon returned, microscope in hand; and while he plied it under the lamp she dare not glance at his face. Passively she waited for his next words. The power of action had left her.
When, at last, he did speak, his voice was calmer and gentler than she looked for. “Tell me,” he said, “how did you come by this rather jolly old thing?”
The tone of playfulness was almost silly. But she was not deceived, for striking through it was the oiliness of Uncle Si. And she knew that she had only to glance at that face shining pale under the lamp, which was a thing she dare not do, to carry the resemblance farther.
“Tell me,” he repeated softly.
A sense of destiny seemed to weigh her down.
“It has been given to me.” Her voice was hardly audible.
“Given to you.” He smiled a little, as his mind went off in search of the half forgotten fragments of their talk two days ago. “Let me see—your best boy, wasn’t it?—who made you a present of a picture—by a well known R. A.?”
June did not know how to answer, yet she was able to realize that an answer of some kind was imperative.
“That’s it,” she said. There was nothing else she could say.
“I rather like this thing, do you know.” His voice was acquiring a sort of growing brightness which seemed quite to admit her to his confidence. “It might almost have been painted by the snuffy old Scotsman—one MacFarlane by name—who first shewed me how to draw. It’s just in his manner. By Jove!”—The voice of Adolph Keller seemed to glow with humour—“I can almost see that cantankerous whiskyfied old fool daubing that water and those trees. But in his day not a bad painter, you know, not a bad painter.” And the voice of the pupil tailed off in a note of reluctant affection of which he seemed half ashamed.
It was June’s turn to say something, but her frozen lips could not utter.
Keller, holding the picture in both hands, gave her a side look, which he tried, as far as he could, to conceal. In the midst of this scrutiny, he said: “To you, I expect, one picture is very much the same as another?”
“I know what I like,” June was able to answer, perhaps for no better reason than that by now she understood only too well that it hardly mattered what she answered.
“Well, anyhow, that’s something,” said Keller, with a forced laugh. “Great thing to know your mind in these little matters. Nice of your best boy—was your best boy, wasn’t it?—to give you this. Not that it’s worth much to the ordinary buyer. Pictures are like lovers, you know. Their beauty, sometimes, is in the eye of the beholder.”
It sickened her to hear him lie in this way. The deadly sensation of falling, falling, falling came over her again. But she let him run on. For one thing she lacked the power to check him; and even had the power been hers it would have been worse than futile to try to do so.