Thomas Gainsborough Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher painting

Thomas Gainsborough Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher paintingAlexandre Cabanel The Birth of Venus paintingSandro Botticelli The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti paintingSandro Botticelli The Cestello Annunciation painting
bought. I gather you’re in competition for the same girl.”Neither the winter day outside nor the cool air here in the flower shop was responsible for the chill that might have rattled Ethan’s teeth if he hadn’t clenched them.He at the front of the shop, as though expecting to see someone familiar—and unwelcome—at the door.Ethan gave her an opportunity to consider her words, and at last she spoke: “He said you think he’s dead.”Images swelled to the foreground of memory: the empty gurney and the tangled shroud in the hospital morgue; the elusive phantom in the steam-blurred bathroom mirror; the lizard on the driveway, struggling to ascend in spite of its broken back, confronted by a cruel [150] degree of incline and by sluicing water as cold and insistent as the flow of time. ...“He said you think he’s dead,” Rowena repeated, shifting her gaze from the shop door to Ethan once more. “And he said I should tell you that you’re right.”suddenly realized that Rowena’s smile had a curious tilt, as though tempered by uncertainty or uneasiness.When she recognized how deeply her revelation troubled him, her tentative smile faltered, vanished.“He was a strange man,” she said.“Did he say anything else?”Rowena broke eye contact and looked toward the windows