"Well, why don't you say you'll be blessed if you come?" she asked, moving towards the door.
"Ah, I'm quite willing to come," he said. "Why shouldn't I come? I always would come anywhere with you."
He followed her towards the door, and in passing suddenly caught sight of the easel. He looked round like a child afraid of being detected in doing something it ought not, and before Margery could stop him he had taken two quick steps towards it and turned it round. In a moment his mood changed.
"Do you see that?" he said in a whisper, as if the thing would overhear him. "That's what I was all the morning when you were not here, and I knew I oughtn't to be painting. Wait a minute, Margy; I want to finish a bit I was working at!"
His face grew suddenly pale, and the look of guilt descended on it like a mist, blotting out the features.
"That's what you are making of me," he said. "Give me my palette. Quick! I sha'n't be a minute."
But Margery caught up, as she had often done before, his palette and brushes from the table where he had left them, and fled with them to the door.
"Give them to me at once!" shouted Frank, holding out his hand for them, but still looking at the picture.
Margery gave one long-drawn breath of pain and horror when she looked at Frank's face, and then, a blessed sense of humor coming to her aid, she broke out into a light laugh—half hysterical and half amused.
"Oh, Frank," she cried, "you look exactly like Irving in 'Macbeth' when he says, 'This is a sorry sight! I never saw a sorrier.'"