"Ah, well, there's no telling, you know. Hadn't we better begin at once?
Seriously, I want awfully to get you into the spring show."
"Oh, really? That would be too lovely!"
"YOU would be, certainly—the way I mean to do you. But I see Ralph getting glum. Cheer up, my dear fellow; I daresay you'll be invited to some of the sittings—that's for Miss Spragg to say.—Ah, here comes your neighbour back, confound him—You'll let me know when we can begin?"
As Popple moved away Undine turned eagerly to Marvell. "Do you suppose there's time? I'd love to have him to do me!"
Ralph smiled. "My poor child—he WOULD 'do' you, with a vengeance.
Infernal cheek, his asking you to sit—"
She stared. "But why? He's painted your cousin, and all the smart women."
"Oh, if a 'smart' portrait's all you want!"
"I want what the others want," she answered, frowning and pouting a little. She was already beginning to resent in Ralph the slightest sign of resistance to her pleasure; and her resentment took the form—a familiar one in Apex courtships—of turning on him, in the next entr'acte, a deliberately averted shoulder. The result of this was to bring her, for the first time, in more direct relation to her other neighbour. As she turned he turned too, showing her, above a shining shirt-front fastened with a large imitation pearl, a ruddy plump snub face without an angle in it, which yet looked sharper than a razor. Undine's eyes met his with a startled look, and for a long moment they remained suspended on each other's stare.
Undine at length shrank back with an unrecognizing face; but her movement made her opera-glass slip to the floor, and her neighbour bent down and picked it up.
"Well—don't you know me yet?" he said with a slight smile, as he restored the glass to her.