“Oh, Waring, what’s to be really be?” he chanted. “And the next article, please? I’m sorry, Justin. It’s Browning’s split infinitive, not mine.”
“Isn’t he a fool?” demanded Justin, beaming at him.
“He’s worse. He’s a clever fool,” said Laura darkly.
Oliver blew her a kiss.
CHAPTER XVI
Laura, in the days that followed, could not make up her mind about Oliver: did not know what had come over him. She had always intended him to like her, though there was something in his temperament that must always prevent her from heartily liking him in her turn, good friends as they were; but she wished sometimes that he were less enthusiastic a champion. He was not satisfied with liking her: he published her abroad. He paid attention to her every trivial remark: she had known him to stop Justin himself in the middle of a sentence to listen to what she said. It was getting beyond a joke, you know.... And ever since that unlucky morning in the studio, he had raved about her work, calling heaven and earth and Justin to observe as remarkable a talent as ever lay snug and shameless in its napkin.
He worried at her, always before Justin, to tell him her plans and when she said she had none, explained to her with much picturesque detail exactly what she ought to be doing for the next five years. The only effect of his eloquence upon Laura was to intensify that inexplicable sensation of panic that stole over her at the thought of overleaping the gulf that daily yawned wider between her and her art; but Justin seems to have listened with some respect. At any rate, he had taken to arranging sketching expeditions for them. The plunge once taken, Laura had been too weak to refuse. She had, after all, her paints, an elbow length down her trunk. She had never been so torn in her life as she now was between this definite creative instinct of hers and the other stronger instinct that forbade it, the stronger instinct that she did not remotely understand.
They would all drive out together to some nook of the hills, and she and Oliver would be left to their devices while Mrs. Cloud and Justin explored the village and picked up curios and ordered lunch and came back at last to see and criticize what they had done. One day Justin startled her. He took her aside.
“I say, Laura,” he began solemnly and she racked her brains to remember if she had done anything wrong. “I say you know—if you want to go back to Paris—to train—if you feel you’ve got it in you——”