There was a pause of unrivalled awkwardness, and the longer it lasted the more inevitable did the sequel become.
“I must ask you something,” said Evelyn at length. “I ask it only in common justice. Do you think you are treating me quite fairly in refusing to sit for me again? For I tell you plainly, you cheat me of doing my best. And when one happens to be an artist of whatever class, that is rather a serious thing for anybody to do. It means a lot to me.”
His words, he knew, were rather brutal; it was rather brutal too to take advantage of this enforced tête-à-tête. But he could not pause to think of that; he knew only that unless he said these things he could not trust himself not to say things less brutal, indeed, but harder for her to hear. He could not quite tell how far he had himself in control. She had put out one hand as he began, as if to ward off his question; but as he went on it fell again, and she sat merely receiving what he said, sitting under it without shelter.
“You have no right to treat me like that,” he continued. “We part at my door, as far as I know, perfectly good friends one day, two days afterwards I am told that you cannot sit to me again. What can I have done? Have I done anything? Is it my fault in any way?”
She looked at him once imploringly.
“Please, please don’t go on asking me,” she said.
But she could not stop him now; his own bare rights justified his questions, and there was that behind which urged him more strongly than they.
“Is it my fault in any way?” he repeated.
Then a sort of despairing courage seized the girl; she would nerve herself to the defence of her secret whatever happened.
“No, it is not your fault,” she said.