If she goes on standing so close to me and looking at me like that I shall have to kiss her. I’ve never wanted to kiss someone so much in my life. Now I’m being completely ridiculous.

“So, you see,” he says, just a little too loudly, “your evaluation is indeed … worthwhile. Or will be, when you eventually decide to give it.” He knows he should turn away from her, mix some paint, perhaps, work at a corner of the painting. Anything, rather than just stand there, watching her watching him. But he wants to look at her. He wants to drink in every available second of her.

At last she speaks, not for one instant taking her eyes from his.

“I think Perry is right, it is rather good.”

“Oh. Thank you,” he says, but he is not, in truth, thinking about the painting anymore. He is thinking about how Lilith’s eyes shine as she teases him. He is thinking about how clear and pale her skin is. He was thinking about how, even wearing black, she glows, somehow. He finds himself smiling at her, a broad, honest grin that he simply cannot hold back. And it is a smile that has very little to do with her appraisal of his picture. To his astonishment, and, were he to admit it, to his delight, she returns his smile with one of pulse-speeding loveliness.

Bram Cardale, he scolds himself silently, what in God’s name do you think you are doing?

*   *   *