“Perhaps,” nodded Bertram. “She, too, has been very kind, all the way through.”
Billy hesitated again.
“But I thought—it was going so splendidly,” she faltered, in a half-stifled voice.
“So it was—at the first.”
“Then what—ailed it, at the last, do you suppose?” Billy was holding her breath till he should answer.
The man got to his feet.
“Billy, don't—don't ask me,” he begged. “Please don't let's talk of it any more. It can't do any good! I just flunked—that's all. My hand failed me. Maybe I tried too hard. Maybe I was tired. Maybe something—troubled me. Never mind, dear, what it was. It can do no good even to think of that—now. So just let's—drop it, please, dear,” he finished, his face working with emotion.
And Billy dropped it—so far as words were concerned; but she could not drop it from her thoughts—specially after Kate's letter came.
Kate's letter was addressed to Billy, and it said, after speaking of various other matters:
“And now about poor Bertram's failure.” (Billy frowned. In Billy's presence no one was allowed to say “Bertram's failure”; but a letter has a most annoying privilege of saying what it pleases without let or hindrance, unless one tears it up—and a letter destroyed unread remains always such a tantalizing mystery of possibilities! So Billy let the letter talk.) “Of course we have heard of it away out here. I do wish if Bertram must paint such famous people, he would manage to flatter them up—in the painting, I mean, of course—enough so that it might pass for a success!