The vicar took a mouthful and then another; his wife followed the same process; and—well, they both had second helpings. The strawberry shortcake thing had won no less a victory at Truckleford than had Virginia ham.
"It wasn't the taxation without representation on Virginia ham and shortcake that led to your Declaration of Independence, was it?" the vicar asked jocularly.
"No, that was tea," Phil replied. "Afterwards we became a nation of coffee drinkers, further to prove our independence."
"When you come to Mervaux," Henriette said, "Jacqueline will make you forest strawberry tartlets as only a French cook can and omelets so light that they have to be weighed down lest they fly out of the window when they are brought to table. We're all for art at Mervaux."
She again had the monopoly of his attention.
"Do you allow spectators?" he asked. "May I lie on the grass and watch you paint, or shall I be required to pull up trees and rearrange the landscape?"
"It depends. I——" she murmured thoughtfully as she stirred her coffee.
Helen did not hear what they were saying. If they were preoccupied with each other, she was preoccupied with the portrait. The living face underneath the frame was in the same pose as its prototype. Phil's unconsciousness of what was so apparent to other eyes gave dramatic point to the situation. At last she could restrain herself no longer. She cut into Henriette's sentence with her outcry:
"Look! You must look!"
For him there was a sudden transition from a concentration of attention on Henriette to Helen's eyes, flaming with intensity, not lacking in mischief, as she leaned across the table.