"You think I am like a disagreeable girl, then!" said Miss Jones, still laughing. "From the first I have had a bit of a grudge against you for finding me so suitable. I am sure I am not vain."
"Manon was more than vain. She was heartless, a liar." I felt myself stumbling from bad to worse. "Not in the least like you in anything, except that she was beautiful." My explanation, with this bald piece of tasteless flattery, had hardly helped matters. Indeed, Miss Jones became rather coldly silent. I painted on, my mind in a disturbing whirl of conjecture. I felt convinced that I had merely whetted her curiosity and that she would go straight home to the perusal of "Manon"; and to expect from her the faintest literary appreciation of the distinction and the delicacy of the book was hopeless. She would fasten with horror on the brazen immorality of a character she had been chosen to embody. The blood surged up to my head as I painted.
As Miss Jones was preparing to go, I held out my hand.
"Good-bye," I said, feeling very badly.
"Good-bye? Am I not coming to-morrow?" She had paused in the act of neatly folding her umbrella, which had been thoughtfully left open to dry while she posed. It had now stopped raining.
"Yes—yes, of course," I stammered.
She secured the elastic band, and then looked at me.
"Miss Jones," I blurted out, abruptly, "don't read 'Manon Lescaut'; please don't."
Her glance became severely penetrating:
"I really don't understand you," she said, and then added: "I most certainly shall read it."