After a time Milly, wearied of bestowing unreciprocated caresses upon her daughter, left her to the mystery of the hole in the sand and sauntered up the beach. Dotted here and there in the sunlight at favorable points along the dunes were the broad umbrellas of the artists, who were doubtless all busily engaged in trying to transfer a bit of the dazzling sunlight and dancing purple sea to their little squares of canvases. To Milly this ceaseless effort to comment on nature had something of the ridiculous,--perhaps supererogatory would be a better word. It was so much pleasanter to look at the landscape, and easier! Offshore the dun-colored sails of the fishing fleet dipped and fluttered where the sturdy men of Douarnenez were engaged in their task of getting the herring from the sea. That seemed to Milly more real and important in a world of fact. Such a view betrayed the _bourgeois_ in her, she suspected, but according to the Hawaiian all women were _bourgeois_ at heart.
After a time her feet turned into one of the lanes, and she followed unconsciously the well-known path until the gray wall of the ruined _manoir_ came in sight. She paused for a moment--she had not meant to go there--then impulsively went forward, crossed the empty courtyard, and finding the garden door ajar pushed it open. The drowsy midsummer silence seemed to possess both house and garden. The place was deserted. In the corner stood the painter's large canvas on the easel, with the brushes and palette on the bench by its side, as if just abandoned, and one of Madame Saratoff's large hats of coarse straw.
Milly went over and examined the picture. It was almost finished, in that last stage where the artist can play with his creation, fondly touching and perfecting infinitesimal details, knowing that the thing has really been "pulled off." And it was triumphantly done! Even to Milly's untutored eyes, the triumph of it was indubitable. There the Russian stood on her thin, lithe haunches, her head tipped a little back disdainfully as in life, the open mouth about to emit some cold brutality, the long curving lip daringly drawn up over the teeth,--the look of "one who eats what she wants," as she herself had said one day. Milly shuddered before the insolence of the painted face. She felt that this was one of the few creatures on the earth whom she feared and hated. Instinctively she made a gesture as if she would deface the portrait. The face seemed to answer her with a sneer,--"Well, and if you did, what good would that do? Would he love _you_ any more for that?" it said, and she paused.