"Oh, whenever you like," Betty answered gaily; "whenever Lady St. Craye can spare you."
He let her say it.
CHAPTER XVI.
"LOVE AND TUPPER."
"Whenever Vernon liked" proved to be the very next day. He was waiting outside the door of the atelier when Betty, in charcoal-smeared pinafore, left the afternoon class.
"Won't you dine with me somewhere to-night?" said he.
"I am going to Garnier's," she said. Not even for him, friend of hers and affianced of another as he might be, would she yet break the rule of a life Paula had instituted.
"Fallen as I am," he answered gaily, "I am not yet so low as to be incapable of dining at Garnier's."
So when Betty passed through the outer room of the restaurant and along the narrow little passage where eyes and nose attest strongly the neighborhood of the kitchen, she was attended by a figure that aroused the spontaneous envy of all her acquaintances. In the inner room where they dined it was remarked that such a figure would be more at home at Durand's or the Café de Paris than at Garnier's. That night the first breath of criticism assailed Betty. To afficher oneself with a fellow-student—a "type," Polish or otherwise—that was all very well, but with an obvious Boulevardier, a creature from the other side, this dashed itself against the conventions of the Artistic Quartier. And conventions—even of such quarters—are iron-strong.
"Fiddle-de-dee," said Miss Voscoe to her companions' shocked comments, "they were raised in the same village, or something. He used to give her peanuts when he was in short jackets, and she used to halve her candies with him. Friend of childhood's hour, that's all. And besides he's one of the presidents of our Sketch Club."