“Would you if you could?” I questioned doubtfully. “I don’t know. There is a good deal of method in artlessness. It can always plead itself in excuse for enjoying the pleasures which we sinners must take at the expense of our consciences.”
She knelt at my feet, silently fondling and kissing my hands.
“Are you sure you don’t regret giving him up?” I asked.
“Quite—sure,” she answered, so faintly as to set me off laughing.
“There, Patty mia,” I said; “you are not to be sacrificed to a self-indulgent vapours. You will see some day how kind I am being to you; and you shall have a large family yet.” And with that I kissed and left her, taking the paper with me.
I will admit that the shock to my vanity was for the moment acute, until reflection came to convince me that this rickety light-o’-love, wearying of his one day’s abstinence, and finding me inaccessible, had only palmed off on my friend the reversion of sentiments inspired by me. On further reflection, too, I was not the more angry upon realising that I had acquired a useful weapon for goading him to a definite decision upon an action long deferred—our flight together, that is to say, and, when once emancipated from the stunting influences of Wellcot, the union which, it was understood, was to be conditional on his satisfying me that his ambitions and mine were mutually accommodating partners. But now, if for no other reason, I felt that I owed it to my affection for my poor little friend to precipitate this step, lest she should be led, through her natural incapacity for denying anyone, to making herself miserable for life; and so, armed with my pièce de conviction, I ended by sleeping very soundly and comfortably.
I did not even hesitate the next morning, but, about noon, singing very cheerfully to myself, descended to Mr. de Crespigny’s studio. The door was locked. “Open, please,” I said.
“Go away,” he answered crossly. “I’m at work on the portrait.”
“Yes?” I said; “but I want to come in.”
Perhaps there was something in my tone. Anyhow, after a short interval, during which I heard him wheeling his easel about, he unlocked the door himself. I marched straight in, and, quite radiant, nodded to Gogo, who, busy in a corner, gazed at me with a sort of gloomy alarm.