Mallowbanks is entertaining an artist—a painter of portraits. His name is Keefe O’Connor; his residence is New York. He was wired for imperatively by Madam Knox who offered him more for the painting of her portrait than he had previously received for any such commission. Telegrams were exchanged. The artist, it appeared, was much engaged. Madam Knox wished more than ever to secure him. She increased her offer. He came—he is here in “the artist’s suite.” Madam Knox sits to him in gray velvet and pearls. Her hair is as white as the drifted snow; her eyebrows are dark and pointed, her little mouth looks secret and proud, her aristocratic nose is a straight line, her old, beautiful eyes are full of vanity and wisdom, sternness and kindness, memories and hopes. She is very wrinkled and very beautiful. The portrait painter appears to be in raptures, and he works early and late and is growing hollow-eyed. My own conviction is that he does not eat enough nor sleep very well. Semmy seems to think he has a secret sorrow.
“Miss Zalie,” said she to me—she learned to call me Zalie from the McBirneys—“that theah painter man has somethin’ gnawin’ him, suah.”
The painter man avoids me. When I come near, he goes—as soon as politeness permits. I retire to my room and read his assurances of friendship; I remember my own, and wonder if my imagination is not running away with me. But no—he avoids me. The other day, however, we were left together at the breakfast table and conversation became absolutely necessary. What he said was:
“And you don’t like the change, Mr.—Keefe?”
“My liking or disliking it has nothing to do with the case,” he answered gloomily. “I repeat, you are changed.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I have changed a number of times in the course of my life, but so, I suppose, have others.”
“Should you say I had changed for the worse or the better?”
“It is not a question of better or worse. You wrote me that you were the same old Azalea, but I do not find you so. Why, how meek you used to be!”
“Meek! I never was! I wouldn’t be! Meek!”
“When I think of you teaching those mountain children so lovingly, going around in your little pink sunbonnet, chatting by the hour with Mrs. Medicine Bottle—what was her name?—and look at you as you are now, and hear you talk as you do now—”