The duet came to an end, and was followed by absurd games and absurdly inadequate refreshments, until almost all together the guests departed. From the street below fainter and fainter sounded their murmurous talk, until it died away, swallowed up in the nightly whisper of the city.
Ayliffe stayed behind for a time, but he could not survive Michael’s too polite “Mr. Ayliffe,” although he did not perhaps realize all the deadliness of this undergraduate insult. Clarissa went off to bed after expressing once more her wish that Michael would sit for her.
“Oh, what for? Of course he will, Clarie,” cried Stella.
“Of course I won’t,” said Michael, ruffling.
“What do you want him to sit for?” Stella persisted, paying not the least regard to Michael’s objection.
“Oh, something ascetic,” said Clarie, staring earnestly into space as if the pictorial idea was being dangled from the ceiling.
“Just now it was to be something passionate,” Michael pointed out scornfully. He suspected Clarissa’s courage in the presence of Stella’s disdainful frankness.
“Ah, perhaps it will be both!” Clarie promised, and “Good night, most darling Stella,” she murmured intensely. Then with one backward look of reproach for Michael she walked with rather self-conscious sinuousness out of the room and up to bed.
“My hat, Stella, where did you pick up that girl? She’s like a performing leopard!” Michael burst out. “She’s utterly stupid and utterly second-rate and she closes her eyes for effect and breathes into your face and doesn’t wear stays.”
“I get something out of all these queer people,” Stella explained.