“What about to-morrow?”
“I shall be painting to-morrow.”
“I do think you’re a devil sometimes.”
“I’ll take you to the Paris Café, if you like.”
“Will you?”
She perked up on that. She had not expected so soon to gain her desire.
“Yes. If you’ve got to earn your living you should meet people, and the sooner you get going the better.”
Hetty sat with her chin in her hands, crouched in elation. Everything had turned out as she had hoped and planned, as she had willed that it should, and she regarded him with some contempt because he had been so easy and because he was so young. She was the same age as he, but she thought him a little vain boy. Yet when he looked at her she was afraid of him, for he knew so much and guessed so much more. To defend herself, her instinct drove through to his vanity and flattered it to blind him. She feigned an animation she was incapable of feeling to make herself more beautiful in his eyes, and he thought of his friends, Mitchell and Weldon, and how they would be stirred with her. He thought how she would please Calthrop, and he was lured into believing that he would gain in importance through her.
“You’ve come at a very bad time,” he said. “They’ll all be going away for the summer.”