The Golden Madonna by Rebecca Stratton

rather pointless to ask you to do anything while I watch you and correct you when you go wrong, since you do not take kindly to correction.'
    'I'm not too proud to learn,' Sally objected. 'It's just that I don't like it when you stand over me and tear my work to shreds, at least verbally.'
    'As I said,' he averred, 'you do not take kindly to correction.'
    'I never did,' Sally told him with her chin in the air, and saw his eyes gleam for a moment before he looked away.
    'For the moment you will watch me,' he told her. 'I will try and show you where you go wrong, point out the—pitfalls?—as we go along.'
    'I see.'
    Her reply was non-committal, but he saw through her apparent unconcern and shook his head. 'I can imagine such an arrangement does not suit you very well,' he told her. 'But it is what I will do. Now— if you will please pay attention.'
    Sally got down off the stool, but instead of going across to join him, she walked over to the big window and stood for a moment gazing down at the sea below, already looking dark and indistinct in the dying light, her own spirit as restless as the waves that pounded at the rocks.
    'The view is wonderful from up here,' she said, and he looked at her over the top of the easel, his eyes less stern than the lines of his mouth.
    'It is,' he said. 'But you are here to learn, nina, not to admire the view.'
    She did not immediately move, but spoke again over her shoulder. 'You surely can't do much,' she said. 'It's getting dark already, and the light's going fast.'
    'All the more reason for haste,' he told her shortly. 'It is good enough for our purpose, and bright sunlight does not always make the most beautiful pictures.'
    'I know, but'
    'Sarita!' The black eyes caught and held her gaze as she looked back at him, and he looked at her sternly down the length of his aristocratic nose, his patience gone. 'Come over here and stand beside me,' he told her adamantly. 'Inmediatamente!'
    There was no mistaking the gist of the last order, and Sally thought of defying it for a moment, then shrugged and left the sanctuary of the window reluctantly. Standing beside him, she kept her eyes carefully on the canvas in front of him, and refused to meet that implacable gaze so that eventually he shrugged and turned back to what he was doing. 'Now watch me,' he told her.
    It was fascinating just to watch him work, the skill and care he brought to even the sweeping strokes of the first few lines were beyond anything she could ever hope to achieve, and she sighed deeply after a moment or two. Mistaking her sigh for boredom, he turned swiftly and frowned at her, 1 bringing his black brows into a straight line above glittering eyes.
    'I am sorry if you find this wearying,' he told her. 'But you will nevertheless watch me for as long as I tell you to, senorita. Your father has paid for you to learn to improve your artistic skill, and if you do not mind if he wastes his money, I have more consideration. Now pay attention!'
    Sally felt her colour rise, and she curled her hands into fists at her sides, resisting the temptation to hit him only with difficulty. Why, oh, why did he have to be so infuriating, just when she was admiring him too? 'Si, senor,' she said pertly. 'I hear and obey!' Answering him with such mock meekness, she knew, must inevitably bring a response, and she saw from his eyes that she had provoked him to further anger, for they glittered like coals as he turned to her.
    'Vaya con cuidado, senorita,' he told her, his voice harsh and barely above a whisper. I do not like to be made fun of, even by a beautiful woman. This arrangement was made for your benefit, not for mine, although you seem to think it is not so. Why else would I bring you here to my studio, if not to learri about the art you think you know so much more about than I do?'
    It was a question designed especially to embarrass her. Daring her to voice the suspicions that had been in her mind ever since she had so reluctantly climbed