"Different from herself--as she was when I painted her. There's
something the matter with her."
"Ah, then, it's for me to ask _you_ what. I don't myself, you see,
perceive it."
He made for a little no answer, and we were both indeed by this time
taken up with the withdrawal of the two other members of our group. They
moved away together across the shining floor, pausing, looking up at the
painted vault, saying the inevitable things--bringing off their retreat,
in short, in the best order. It struck me somehow as a retreat, and yet
I insisted to myself, once more, on its being perfectly natural. At the
high door, which stood open, they stopped a moment and looked back at
us--looked frankly, sociably, as if in consciousness of our sympathetic
attention. Mrs. Server waved, as in temporary farewell, a free
explanatory hand at me; she seemed to explain that she was now trying
somebody else. Obert moreover added _his_ explanation. "That's the way
she collars us."
"Oh, Long doesn't mind," I said. "But what's the way she strikes you as
different?"
"From what she was when she sat to me? Well, a part of it is that she
can't keep still. She was as still then as if she had been paid for it.
Now she's all over the place." But he came back to something else. "I
like your talking, my dear man, of what you 'don't perceive.' I've yet
to find out what that remarkable quantity is. What you do perceive has
at all events given me so much to think about that it doubtless ought to
serve me for the present. I feel I ought to let you know that you've
made me also perceive the Brissendens." I of course remembered what I
had said to him, but it was just this that now touched my uneasiness,
and I only echoed the name, a little blankly, with the instinct of
gaining time. "You put me on them wonderfully," Obert continued, "though
of course I've kept your idea to myself. All the same it sheds a great
light."