II.
Bartlett, General Wyatt, and Mrs. Wyatt.
Bartlett, with a smile and nod inclusive of Mrs. Wyatt.—"Nothing worth looking at." He goes and faces it against the wall. "Have I kept Miss Wyatt waiting?"
Mrs. Wyatt, anxiously.—"It's too bad you should waste your time upon her, Mr. Bartlett. I don't know why we let you."
Bartlett.—"You can't help yourself, Mrs. Wyatt. The wrong is owing to circumstances beyond your control. If I have any virtue it is a particularly offensive form of stubbornness. Besides,"—more seriously,—"I feel myself honoured to do it—to contribute anything to Miss Wyatt's—ah—ah—In short, if she can stand it I can."
General Wyatt.—"It's immensely kind of you. By the way, you won't mind my staying here, will you, to read my papers, while you're at work? Because if you do, I can clear out at once." Mrs. Wyatt, with mute but lively tokens of dismay, attends the General's further remarks: "I don't want to stay here and be a bore and a nuisance, you know." Mrs. Wyatt vanishes from the scene in final despair.
Bartlett, going up to the easel and dragging it into an entirely new position.—"Not in the least. Some woman been putting this room in order, hasn't there?"
General Wyatt.—"Three."
Bartlett.—"I thought so." He continues to disarrange all the preparations for his work. His operations bring him in the vicinity of General Wyatt, upon whose box of cigars his eye falls. "Oh, I say, General! Smoking?"
General Wyatt.—"Certainly. Why not?"
Bartlett.—"Well, I don't know. I thought perhaps—I supposed—I imagined somehow from something she said, or that happened—it was offensive to Miss Wyatt."
General Wyatt.—"Why, bless your heart, man, she minds it no more than I do!"
Bartlett.—"You don't say so! Why, I haven't smoked any for the last two weeks, because—because— And I'm almost dead for a pipe!"
General Wyatt.—"Why, poor fellow! Why, here! Take a cigar!"
Bartlett, significantly shaking his head.—"Oh, no, no! I said a pipe." He rushes to an old studio jacket which the landlady has hung for him on the back of a chair; he dives in one pocket and gets out a pipe, plunges into another and extracts a pouch of tobacco. He softly groans and murmurs with impatience while he makes these explorations. Upon their success: "So lucky Mrs. Ransom brought down that coat. I couldn't have lived to get up-stairs after it!" Stuffing his pipe in a frenzy, he runs to the General for a match; that veteran has already lighted it, and extends it toward him. Bartlett stoops over the flame, pipe in mouth. As the General drops the extinct match upon the floor the painter puffs a great cloud, in which involved he is putting on his studio jacket when Constance appears at the door. He instinctively snatches his pipe from his lips and puts it in his pocket.