He was on his feet in a moment.
“Don’t talk that way,” he pleaded; “it hurts. I am not going to urge you any more now, because you are angry about the picture. But I want to say this: I can’t take a jesting answer, or an angry one, always. When we speak of it again you must either take me or send me away; and—and you’ll listen to reason, won’t you, Isabel?”
She continued to look steadfastly out of the window and gave him no word of encouragement.
“Won’t you, Isabel?” he repeated.
Still no answer.
“Isabel, I’m going now.”
She did not speak or move until she heard the front gate latch behind him. Then she ran to the easel and snatched the cloth from the newly finished picture.
“Oh, I hate you!” she burst out spitefully; and when Dorothy came in, a few minutes later, the offending canvas had disappeared from the post of honour in the studio.
CHAPTER V
THE SCALE ASCENDING
As for Brant and the successive steps in his reformatory experiment leading up to the good repute hinted at by Isabel’s praise, fortune, good and ill, had befallen in this wise.