Hartley was studying Cleopatra's Needle. As some remote mental vision of the Old Serpent of the Nile drifted through his mind he thought how few nice Americans he had met before.
"That's where they're so ready to catch me up—the critics, you know," she went on.
She looked very pretty and flower-like under her big hat.
"You can imagine how hard it is, can't you?" she added.
He turned to her with a sudden great purpose in his face. The thought of it warmed and glowed through him like wine.
"Why couldn't I help you with it?" he asked eagerly.
Her fluttering eyes rested on him warmly, but only for a moment. Then she shook her head plaintively. "That's too much," she murmured.
But he asked her again, humbly.
Unconsciously her gloved fingers touched his arm; there was a confession of deeper things in the movement.
"Would you?" she asked in her soft contralto.