She was not, she now believed, ill enough to keep to her room; nor did she deny herself to callers, although she was expecting no one in particular. Her mood was capricious, volatile, vibratory. She welcomed, therefore, the announcement of the arrival of the expressman with two large crates from Paris, and she ordered them deposited in the drawing-room, sending Frederika for the butler and hammer and screw-driver. The crates were not entirely a surprise. Fannie had written that she was shipping some pictures.
They proved to be unusually interesting pictures by Henri Rousseau and Marc Chagall, artists whose work Campaspe admired vastly. The Chagall was a portrait of a girl with bangs across her forehead, long hair down her back, melancholy eyes (eyes which were uncertain, Campaspe noted), a sensual mouth, and an intellectual nose. She wore a tightfitting yellow bodice with a frill, clasped by a brooch, around the throat, and deep indigo gloves. The background, too, was a rich blue. Campaspe considered the picture: fantasy, fable, colour. She would think about it a good deal more in the future, she was certain. She realized that Laura's first question would be, What does it mean? That was, perhaps, its chief charm, that it did not mean anything; it was as meaningless as Mozart's E flat major symphony or life itself. The Rousseau was a splendid and definite jungle, with curiously exotic trees with long green fronds, plants with startling
