“Why does she waste her time? Listen to my daughter!”
The next time the Baxter girl came Anita would hardly speak to her.
The Baxter girl seemed to take it as a matter of course. But once she said to me, with a look on her face as if she were defending herself—
“Ah—but you don’t write. You’re not keen. You don’t know what it means to be in the set.”
“But such heaps of people come to see Anita,” I said, “people she hardly knows.”
“They’re only the fringes,” said the Baxter girl complacently. “They’re not in the Grey set. They don’t come to the Nights. At least, only a few. Jasper Flood, of course—You’ve met him, haven’t you?—and Lila Howe—Masquerade, you know, and Sir Fortinbras.” The Baxter girl always ticketed everyone she mentioned. “And the Whitneys. She used to stay with the Whitneys. And Roy Huth. And of course Kent Rehan.”
“Kent Rehan?”
“The Kent Rehan,” said the Baxter girl.
Then I remembered. The vicar’s wife always sent Mother the Academy catalogue after she had been up to town. I used to cut out the pictures I liked, and I liked Kent Rehan’s. They had wind blowing through them, and sunshine, and jolly blobs that I knew must be raw colour, and always the same woman. But you could never see her face, only a cheek curve or a shoulder line. They were in the catalogue every year, and so I told the Baxter girl. She laughed.
“Yes, he’s always on the line. Anita says that’s the worst she knows of him. And of course the veiled lady——” she laughed again, knowingly, “But there is one full face, I believe. The Spring Song he calls it. But it’s never been shown. Anita’s seen it. She told me. He keeps it locked away in his studio. They say he’s in love with her.”