Miss Waters sat down and thought, with a deep frown.
“My dear, it couldn’t have been anything I said. Not possibly. I didn’t speak of you except as an artist. I said how talented you were. And what a lovely disposition you had. Nothing else at all.”
No one could have better appreciated the situation than Miss Waters, no one could have better understood the need for the most extreme care and caution in dealing with men. The poor defrauded creature was convinced that at least three of the sentimental “disappointments” of her past had come from trifling mistakes she had made, minute errors of judgment which had frightened away the elusive and fastidious male. Her eyes filled with tears.
“My dear!” she said. “I hope there’s no misunderstanding! So many young people have had their lives absolutely wrecked and ruined by misunderstandings.”
Rosaleen shook her head.
“No,” she said. “There isn’t any misunderstanding. There couldn’t be.... But I don’t understand it.”
She picked up her brushes and began to paint, and Miss Waters, to keep her company, sat down before her easel, to put the finishing touches to a copy she was making of one of her earlier works—“The School,” she had called it, five puppies and five kittens, some in dunces’ caps, some wearing spectacles. She was aware that she could no longer conceive and execute such paintings now, she had to be satisfied with imitations of her past virtuosity.
Absorbed in their dismal reflections, they scarcely noticed the flight of time. Miss Waters looked up startled when the clock struck one.
“One o’clock!” she observed. “I never imagined! Rosaleen, you must stay and have lunch with me!”
Rosaleen had nothing on earth to go home for, so she agreed, and the hospitable Miss Waters rushed out to the French delicatessen nearby, where she could buy curious and economical things.