"And brother Robert has taken her," said Lisbeth, with a fleeting glance at the self-deposed fiancée.
This revelation of Phyllis's diplomacy came upon me with a shock. She is such a simple-minded Angel; but I suppose all girls are alike in some ways. And she is so kind-hearted, she must have been anxious to put Robert out of his misery as soon as she could. Well, she couldn't have done it much sooner.
"There they come," cried Lilli. And perhaps I should have been tempted to search their faces for news if Freule Menela had not turned her back upon the advancing figures, and begun to talk, with an air of proprietorship, to me.
"It's found!" cried Phyllis, to all whom it might concern. "I was so—fond of it, I should have hated losing it. And it was so kind of Mr. van Buren to help me."
I wondered whether there were others on board beside myself who detected in this announcement a double meaning? Something in her voice told me that she really was thankful not to have lost the thing of which she was so fond, the thing for which she had gone back to the hotel, the thing Mr. van Buren had kindly helped her to find. But there was no chance for a self-sacrificing brother to question his sister. Freule Menela saw to that.
It was my luck at its worst, to be torn in my mind on this exquisite day on the Vecht. Once in a while it dimly comes back to me that, in a past existence unbrightened by Nell Van Buren and Phyllis Rivers, I came to Holland with the object of painting pictures. Never, since my arrival in the bright little country of wide spaces, have I had a keener incentive to improve the shining hours; but how can a man remember that he's an artist when the girl he loves has engaged herself to another man, and one of the few girls he never could love is rapidly engaging herself to him?
It was in self-defense, not a real desire for work, that I fled to "Waterspin" and screened myself behind easel and canvas. And then it was but to find that I had jumped from the frying-pan into the fire.
My move was made while "Mascotte" and her fat companion lay at rest, that Alb might buy fruit for us from a fruit boat; and Freule Menela also availed herself of the quiet interval.
"May I come and watch you paint?" she asked, in a tone which showed that vanity made her sure of a welcome.
I longed for the brutal courage to say that I could never work with an audience; but I remembered letting slip last night the fact that I constantly sat sketching on the deck of "Mascotte," during the most crowded hours of life.