"I don't think that, 'amuse' is exactly the word, Mrs. Taine," the other returned coldly.
"No? Surely you don't meant to tell me that it is anything serious?"
"I don't mean to tell you anything about it," he retorted rather sharply.
She laughed. "You don't need to. Jim has already told me quite enough. Mr. King, himself, will tell me more."
"Not unless he's a bigger fool than I think," growled the novelist.
Again, she laughed into his face, mockingly. "You men are all more or less foolish when there's a woman in the case, aren't you?"
To which, the other answered tartly, "If we were not, there would be no woman in the case."
As Conrad Lagrange spoke, Louise, exhausted by her efforts to achieve that sunset in the mountains with her limited supply of adjectives, floundered hopelessly into the expressive silence of clasped hands and heaving breast and ecstatically upturned eyes. The artist, seizing the opportunity with the cunning of desperation, turned to Mrs. Taine, with some inane remark about the summers in California.
Whatever it was that he said, Mrs. Taine agreed with him, heartily, adding, "And you, I suppose, have been making good use of your time? Or have you been simply storing up material and energy for this winter?"
This brought Louise out of the depths of that sunset, with a flop. She was so sure that Mr. King had some inexpressibly wonderful work to show them. Couldn't they go at once to the equally inexpressibly beautiful studio, to see the inexpressibly lovely pictures that she was so inexpressibly sure he had been painting in the inexpressibly grand and beautiful and wonderfully lovely mountains?