Dudley was pained and rebuffed by the pleasant casual manner of his guest. He would have held Laurence's hand but that Laurence withdrew it. "I had nothing to do but wait for you," Dudley said. He took Laurence's hat and stick and drew forward a chair.
Laurence seated himself with strained ease, and scrutinized a half-finished picture that leaned on the mantel shelf opposite. "I've been reading some references to your work lately." As he glanced away from the study, his mouth twitched slightly and his hard smiling eyes were full of an instinctive defiance.
Dudley's inquisitive imagination was fired by the recognition of the secret voluptuous relationship between them. He held Laurence's gaze with a passionate expression of understanding which to Laurence was peculiarly offensive and disturbing. "Inspired idiocy," Dudley said. "I hope you won't judge me by the banal standards which govern my other critics." His light tone, as usual, was awkwardly assumed.
"My unfailing refuge." Laurence reached in his pocket and took out his pipe. Dudley observed the tension of Laurence's hands that were too steady.
A pause.
Laurence said, "Well—your pictures are interesting. I like them. I won't subject you to my bromidic attempts at analysis. My appreciation of art is limited by my training. I'm too factual in my approach to follow the ebullitions of the modern consciousness." He glanced about the room again.
Dudley was disappointed in him, and unhappy in the way a child may be. It wounded him, that Laurence, like Julia, persisted in excluding him by means of a false pride. "It is a great deal to me that you are ready to be my friend. Julia told me." Dudley's eyes were oppressively gentle.
Laurence did not reply at once. He looked about the room. His glance was bright with uneasiness. He pressed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. His knuckles were white. This visit was an ordeal which the bitterness of his pride had forced him to accept. He wondered what he must do to prevent talk of Julia which he could not endure.
"It seems to me it would have been very absurd if I had refused to be your friend." He made his gaze steady as he turned to watch Dudley.
Dudley's negligee shirt was open over his chest which was beaded with sweat. His face was flushed and his hair clung darkly to his moist temples. His lips pouted slightly beneath his small glistening mustache. The expression of his eyes suggested a domineering desire for openness. He felt that already through Julia's body he knew Laurence's life. The same virginal pagan quality of pride that had to be overcome in Julia was in Laurence too. Dudley wanted to perpetrate an outrage of compassion upon it. "I realized before Julia told me that there was a side to you altogether different from the one you show to the world."