Aurora looked a long time without saying anything; Gerald did not speak either. After the length of time one allows for the examination of a picture, he took away that one and put another in its place; and so on until he had shown her a dozen.
“I don’t know what to say,” she finally got out, as if from under a crushing burden of difficulty to express herself.
“Please don’t try!” he begged quickly. “And please not to care a bit if you don’t like them.”
She let out her breath as at the easing of a strain. He heard it.
“I won’t be so offensive,” he went on, “as to say that in not liking them you merely add yourself to the majority, nor yet that my feelings are in no wise hurt by your failure to like them. But I do wish you to know that I think 175it a sin and a shame to get a person like you, who can’t pretend a bit, before a lot of beastly canvases inevitably repugnant to your mood and temperament, and make you uncomfortable with the feeling that compliments are expected.”
“All right, then; I won’t tell any lies.” She added in a sigh, “I did want so much to like them!”
And he would never know what shining bubble burst there. She had wanted so much, as she said, to like them, and, as she did not say, to buy some of them, a great many of them, and make him rich with her gold.
He replied to her sigh:
“You are very kind.”
After a moment spent gazing at the last painting placed on the easel, as if she hoped tardily to discover some merit in it, she said: