BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 171
" Mr. Chetwynd," Philip replied, " overrates my sketch, but since your ladyship wishes to see it, it is here."
He wheeled towards her chair an easel upon which he lifted the sketch we have already seen. He did so in a somewhat perfunctory manner, for he had found some of his enthusiasm for the countess evaporate at her mention of his engagement. Not that it had set him thinking more of Dolly, as a lover should, but it had appeared in his mental groping to have projected a shadow between him and the delirious pleasure of having the countess all alone to paint, and at the same time to study to worship perhaps for he had encouraged an indefinite kind of anti- cipation in regard to this visit in which art was not the only factor, and almost the first words of his sitter appeared to him to have set up a barrier against the romance of it.
The countess rose from her seat, stepped down from the platform, and gazed at the medal sketch. The light fell effectively upon picture and reality. Philip noted the fair, round figure of the woman, simply clad in a pale silk gown draped to her figure, her red-gold hair dressed high as on the night before, her bonnet designed as if to set off rather than hide it, her pale face, with the dark lashes of her eyes shadowed upon her cheeks, her entire appearance singu- larly graceful and queenlike.
" And you think this woman like me ! " she said, after standing before the picture as it seemed to Philip for quite five minutes.
" Chetwynd thought it like you."
" Chetwynd did ? " she said, still looking at the sketch.
" Indeed he recognized you from this clumsy description of you."
" Not clumsy but remarkable," she replied. "You painted it after seeing me at the opera ? "
"Yes."
" What if I have not been at the opera ? "
