Cordelia failed to understand why she should feel so nervous. She half wished, as she climbed the long stairs leading up to Repellier's studio, that she had kept her promise with Hartley, and spent the afternoon in the open air, in the Park, with him. She idly wondered how many more rides they should have together—as she pulled the dangling rabbit's-foot which Repellier affected for a bell-rope—suddenly whimsically curious to know if Hartley was missing her that afternoon.
The old artist himself answered the ring, greeting her with a face that looked peculiarly aged and worn, she thought. As she stepped into the studio, notwithstanding her desire for perfect self-control, she could not help looking up at him with anxious and inquiring eyes—his solemnity frightened her.
"Why, I'm the only one," she said, inadequately, glancing round the large, airy-looking room, with its profusion of casts and sketches and scraps of costume and old armor about the walls.
"I thought from your note, you know, that there would be—be others," she went on, buttoning and unbuttoning the white glove on her slender wrist.
He asked her to be seated. "And won't you let me take your wraps?" he said, still quite impassively.
"Thank you, no," she answered coldly. "I can stay for just a minute or two."
"But this is important," he protested, still waiting dominantly, "and I fear I may detain you."
She surrendered them reluctantly, and seated herself in the chair stiffly, uncomfortably. She wondered why her heart should be beating at such a rate. But she looked out at him with coldly inquiring eyes, and with just a touch of indignation in the down-drawn corners of her thin lips.
"The truth is, Miss Vaughan," he began slowly, "I want you to help me out of a very great difficulty."