Excerpt from Awakening: A Study
The olive skin faintly aglow, the velvet darkness of eyes that brooded upon sky and sea, were framed in a gold bordered sari, pale as an evening primrose, that half veiled without hiding the sweet seriousness of the girl’s face. These, and her aloofness from the chattering tea-drinkers in the verandah below, conspired to give her an alluring air of unreality; and her purely Eastern stillness, in that temple of unrest, a Riviera hotel, enhanced the effect.
Sinclair had leisure to approve the delicate curves of brow and cheek and nostril, the slender symmetry of the hand and arm resting on the balcony’s ledge, the classic poise and outline of the veiled head. For all the gravity of her eyes, a hint of passion in the ripe lower lip, and of wilfulness in the round chin that matched it, promised just those varying elements of light and shade that would some day make her all a woman. At present she seemed little more than a sheaf of possibilities; a bud half Open awaiting the strong kiss of the sun. And behind her loomed the wide, white facade of the Hotel du Cap, un compromisingly square and solid; as it were the House of Life with its hundred rooms, and hundred complications, old as the sea, yet eternally changeful as the myriad waves thereof.
Sinclair had dallied with love in more than one form, even as he had dallied with art and life; reaching the core of none. But art had lured him farthest and he saw this child of an alien race rather as a possible picture than a pos sible woman. Her absorption tempted him: so also did the sketch-book on his knee. He Opened it, and paused - looking upward. The thrill of inspiration was on him: a visitation too rare, too imperative to be ignored. There was also the insidious joy of yielding to temptation. Out came the pencil, and he went swiftly and skilfully to work. N atur ally she moved the moment stillness was essential. But it was only to set an open book upon the ledge and give him an instant’s fuller vision of her face. Then, her cheek lightly resting on her hand, she fell into a pose more lasting, more enchanting than before.
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