that her flesh was ineffably soft. It was a hand like a doll’s hand, too tiny; one couldn’t imagine it doing anything serious whatsoever. But he realized with a start he was standing as still as a statue and that both of them were staring at him. He bent to kiss her hand at once.
Yet he didn’t really mean to touch it with his lips. And she must have seen this, for at the right moment, she lifted her hand just a little and received his kiss.
He glanced up at her. She looked unspeakably vulnerable suddenly. She was peering at him as if they were at a great distance and she had a great deal of time.
“Look at this, Tonio,” Guido said with an easy manner as if he sensed nothing amiss. He was holding up a pastel portrait of himself.
It was an excellent study; Guido was alive in it; there was his brooding, even that glint of menace in his eyes. She hadn’t spared his squashed nose or the fullness of his mouth, and yet she had caught the essence of him, which transformed the whole.
“Tonio,” Guido coaxed, “tell me what you think!”
“Perhaps you could sit for me, Signore Treschi,” she said quickly. “I’d like so to paint you. In truth, I have painted you,” she said almost bashfully, her cheeks coloring slightly, “but only from memory and I would so much like to do a real portrait of you with care.”
“Accept the offer,” Guido said matter-of-factly, leaning his elbow on the draped harpsichord. “In a month, Christina will be the most popular portraitist in Rome. You’ll have to make an appointment and wait your turn like an ordinary mortal, if you don’t.”
“Oh, you’d never have to wait your turn.” She laughed almost gaily, and it seemed she was full of movement suddenly, her blond curls wispy and light in the air that stirred invisibly in the room. “But you could come tomorrow, perhaps,” she said earnestly. “I’m so anxious to get started.” Her eyes were darkly blue, almost violet, and so lovely! Beyond words. In his life he’d never seen dark blue eyes like that.
“You can come at noon,” she was saying with that faint tremolo to her voice. “I’m English, I don’t sleep in the afternoons, but you could come later if you prefer. I should like to paint you before you’re so wildly famous that everyone will want to paint you. It would be a favor to me.”
“Ah, such modesty, these gifted children,” Guido said. “Tonio, the young Signora is speaking to you….”
“You’re going to live in Rome?” Tonio murmured. The words sounded so feeble he was certain she would ask if he were ill.
“Yes,” she said. “There is so much to study here, so much to paint.” Then her expression underwent one of those dramatic alterations, and she added in a strangely simple tone, “But maybe when the opera closes, I’ll follow you, Signore Treschi. I’ll be one of those madwomen who follows a great singer all over the Continent.” Her eyes grew wide, but she was grave. “Maybe I cannot paint if I am too far from the sound of your voice.”
Tonio blushed furiously. And stunned, he heard Guido laugh.
She was too young! She understood nothing of the implications of her words! She couldn’t be here all alone without the Contessa! And to look at her, her exquisite white breasts flattened almost cruelly under that stiff lace border….
The blood was positively stinging his face.
“That would be marvelous,” Guido said. “Everywhere we go you would go, and portraits by the great Christina Grimaldi would appear, and word would get around. Very soon, we’d be summoned to sing by those who are absolutely tone deaf and merely wanted to see themselves immortalized in oil or pastel.”
She laughed, her cheeks reddening, and gave her hair the slightest toss. It was moist on her white neck, and tiny ringlets clung to her cheeks. But there was the faintest edge of strain in her voice.
“The Contessa would come with us,” Guido went on with feigned boredom, “we’d all travel together, a regular cavalcade.”
“Wouldn’t that be lovely,” she whispered, but she was slightly miserable.
And Tonio realized he was staring at her as if he had lost his wits. He looked away from her; he tried to think; even the smallest sentence, what could he say? This talk was all wrong for her; she didn’t understand. It was clever, and for cavalieri serventi and adulterous women, and there was something pure