“No, he wasn’t,” said Blake angrily. “You’re crazy.”
Maria stuck her nose up in the air. “You ask him,” she said. “Ask him about Revelita and see how he looks.”
Slightly worried, Blake did not argue with her. He had an instinct about it: if he stopped talking about it perhaps he could forget. Maria waited for more conversation, and when it was not forthcoming she changed the subject.
“I see you with Teddy all the time. Every afternoon, nearly, you pass the window when you go to play tennis. I am working every day now in the afternoon. Mr. Lyons is very nice, I think. Mrs. Lyons too, she is a nice lady. She says she will find work for me with the other artists when it is time for them to go away in the fall.”
“That would be fine,” Blake said absently. Teddy had never even mentioned Revelita.
“But my mother will not let me. Mr. Lyons she says is all right for me to work for, but all the other artists are too young, she says. My mother is very particular.”
She paused sadly, and he said, “That’s too bad. That’s a shame.”
“Yes, it is,” she sighed. “I must go back to the convent in the fall, she says.”
“You too? That’s a shame.”
“It is silly. My mother thinks that the artists might want me to take off my clothes. She has read about it. I do not want to go back to school.”