“Yes. I’ve got a pretty good mental digestion; it can take most things,” he said, the corners of his mouth curving into a smile. “Look! Miss—Miss—What’s your name, by the way?”
“Well now, Miss Paleaf, let us turn to the second picture.”
Reluctantly she turned round once more, to behold a forest jungle, as fine and beautiful a scene as one could wish. Its size and realism made her put out her hand to pull a twig of feathery foliage, when suddenly she was startled to see beneath it a pair of eyes, wild and yet intelligent, gleaming out at her. It was an animal shaped and sized much like a monkey. Behind it was another of the same kind, a partner in its joys and sorrows evidently.
“Look at that hideous thing!” she cried in horror, pointing to it. Then recollecting herself, she said, with an effort at more self-control and appreciation: “Are—are they extinct now?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. What would _you_ say?”
“I sincerely hope so, I’m sure. Put it away. There is something uncanny about that book. That creature startled me.”
“It’s an acquired taste. Here we come to another.”
He had turned onward to a third picture, in which was shown a woman sitting on the roots of a tree, the expression of her face long and uncompromising, full of discontent. She wore no clothing, but her long and silky hair was sufficient covering. She was of no particular beauty, and her expression of discontent, mingled with curiosity, subtly introduced, and having little intelligence to enlighten it, gave the girl a feeling of repugnance. In one hand she held a fruit of brilliant scarlet; a mouthful was being eaten, and its taste did not seem altogether to her liking.
“I like it very little better. The man who painted it, judging from her face, understood human nature, and had very little mercy for it.”
“There you are mistaken. It is a caricature,” he answered softly, “painted one day by a man, and sent to his dearest friend—a woman.”
The next picture showed this same woman standing beside a man who sat upon a rock cracking nuts with his teeth. As Rosalie looked the scenes began to move and become lifelike, pretty much in the same way as a cinematograph. At first the man did not perceive his companion, but turning suddenly, in the act of taking a broken shell from his mouth, he saw her holding the scarlet fruit, from which she had taken no more than two fair mouthfuls. On seeing this his jaw dropped, his eyes expanded.