Free Rose in the Bud by Susan Barrie Page B

but think about you since I left you. Instead of going to bed I sat and drank endless cups of coffee and gave myself up to thoughts of you ... and the feel of your lips when they met mine.”
    There was a quality in his voice that caused her to shiver, despite the heat of the sun. She didn’t understand the shiver, or the reason why her fingers trembled as Mor o c possessed himself of them.
    Giovanni, who had directed several smiling glances at them over his shoulder during the course of the journey, was now tying up at a landing-stage, and Moroc helped her to alight and stand on the steps that were partly awash with the afternoon tide. Above them hung baskets of flowers and lace-like windows and balconies broke up the plain pink facade of a singularly beautiful, small palazzo. The great front door, when it was opened, disclosed a marble staircase that was so wide at the foot it could have accommodated a team of horses abreast, and unlike the Palazzo di Rini the ground floor rooms appeared to be used, although it was to one of the upper ones that Edouard conducted Cathleen.
    She didn’t know quite what she expected, but by this time she was growing used to Venetian gilt and plush, and it took her by surprise when she found that Edouard’s studio was furnished in a completely modern manner, with accent on comfort rather than elegance, although the elegance was certainly there ... but not quite the elegance the di Rinis understood.
    The carpet that had been laid over the marble floor was thick and plain, and the curtains well drawn back from the windows were nevertheless lush and beautifully fitting. There were several settees and equally comfortable armchairs, a giant easel in a corner , a cocktail cabinet in another. The one or two pictures on the walls were modern , but not painfully modern ... and Cathleen was not very impressed by modern art. There appeared to be a large number of stacked canvases around the walls, and on the easel there was a nearly finished and extremely clever picture of a corner of one of the waterways just before the light died out of the sky following the last of a sunset.
    The corner , in broad daylight, would be scarcely glanced at, overlooked, but in the afterglow it acquired enchantment. It was as unreal as if it didn’t actually exist.
    “Oh, but I like that!” Cathleen exclaimed, as she stood in front of it.
    “Do you ? ” He sounded pleased as he came up behind her. “I paint for pleasure, more than anything else. It is as perhaps as well,” he added a little drily, “since they do not sell very well. I am no Picasso, nor yet a Velasquez. I am simply Edouard Moroc.”
    She turned and met his eyes, and her own opened wider with curiosity ... curiosity that she was unable to conceal.
    “You say your pictures do not sell well,” she observed. “That, I’ll admit, surprises me, because I think they’re tremendous. They have a quality that is indescribable. You yourself probably know that.” He smiled a little more sardonically as if he would not, or could not, agree with her. “But judging by the fact that you own this palazzo, that its furnishings must have cost a great deal of money, that you own a fast motor-boat and seem to employ the man Giovanni all the time...”
    “Quite right,” he told her, smiling now in amusement. “Giovanni is on my regular pay-roll, and so is his mother and a couple of his brothers. A place like this—” he waved a hand—“does not run itself. So what do you deduce from all that ? ”
    “That you do not need to sell pictures.”
    “Quite right.”
    “Therefore you don’t bother to find purchasers for them.”
    “Right again.” He moved closer to her and caught her chin and held it in his hand. “What does money mean to you, little one?” he enquired softly. “Now that you have enough of your own to make life pleasant what does it mean to you ? ”
    She lowered her eyes quickly to the carpet. There it was again ... mention of what he