Christie laid an unbleached table-cloth, that somehow looked sweeter than a white one, as brown bread is sweeter than white.
But lo! Gatty could not eat; so then Christie would not, because he refused her cheer.
The baddish boy chuckled, and addressed himself to the nice brown steaks with their rich gravy.
On such occasions a solo on the knife and fork seemed better than a trio to the gracious Flucker.
Christie moved about the room, doing little household matters; Gatty's eye followed her.
Her beauty lost nothing in this small apartment; she was here, like a brilliant in some quaint, rough setting, which all earth's jewelers should despise, and all its poets admire, and it should show off the stone and not itself.
Her beauty filled the room, and almost made the spectators ill.
Gatty asked himself whether he could really have been such a fool as to think of giving up so peerless a creature.
Suddenly an idea occurred to him, a bright one, and not inconsistent with a true artist's character—he would decline to act in so doubtful a case. He would float passively down the tide of events—he would neither desert her, nor disobey his mother; he would take everything as it came, and to begin, as he was there, he would for the present say nothing but what he felt, and what he felt was that he loved her.
He told her so accordingly.