“You would like a bicycle ride. Come to-morrow with Katherine and me.”
“I can’t. Don’t think me a prig, but my model is due and I am finishing my picture. Thanks so much; and this walk is almost as good.”
“If Palamon is tired I will carry him, Hilda.”
“Oh, he isn’t tired. See how he pulls at his cord. The sunlight is getting into his veins. What delicious air.”
“The sunlight is getting into your veins too, Hilda. You are looking a little as you should look.”
Hilda did not ask him how she should look. It was an original characteristic of Hilda’s that she did not seem at all anxious to talk about herself, and Odd continued, looking down at her profile—
“That’s what you ought to have—sunlight. You are a little white flower that has grown in a shadow.” Hilda did not glance up at him; she smiled rather distantly.
“What a sad simile!”
“Is it a true one, Hilda?”
“I don’t think so. I never thought of myself in that sentimental light. I suppose to friendly eyes every life has a certain pathos.”