' The dog looked up at her with
grievous resignation in its large, prominent eyes. She kissed it
fervently, and said: 'I wonder what mine will be like. It's sure to be
awful.'
As she sketched she chuckled to herself, and cried out at times:
'Oh darling, you're so beautiful!'
And again chuckling, she rushed to embrace the dog, in penitence, as if
she were doing him some subtle injury. He sat all the time with the
resignation and fretfulness of ages on his dark velvety face. She drew
slowly, with a wicked concentration in her eyes, her head on one side,
an intense stillness over her. She was as if working the spell of some
enchantment. Suddenly she had finished. She looked at the dog, and then
at her drawing, and then cried, with real grief for the dog, and at the
same time with a wicked exultation:
'My beautiful, why did they?'
She took her paper to the dog, and held it under his nose. He turned
his head aside as in chagrin and mortification, and she impulsively
kissed his velvety bulging forehead.
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