She reached out her hand to take back the photographs, but Martha handed her only the first.
“Oh, Sonia, let me keep this!” she begged. “It is such delight to me to look at it!”
“No, dear; I couldn’t. No one but myself should ever see that picture. I ought not perhaps to have shown it to you. It was just an impulse. Promise never to speak of either of these pictures—not even to me. You never will?”
“Never,” said Martha, sadly, as she gave the picture up. Her friend took it, and, without glancing at it, locked it away in a drawer.
When she came back her whole manner had changed. She began at once to talk about her work at the atelier, and told Martha that Étienne wished her to enter a picture for the Salon. The wedding preparations had kept Martha at home a good deal lately, and the princess had some interesting bits of news to give her. She was very graphic in her account of some of Étienne’s last criticisms, and got into high spirits, in which Martha, somehow, could not entirely take part.
The girl went away at last rather heavy-hearted. This conversation had deprived her of her last hope of bringing the princess and her brother together. She had an engagement with Harold for the afternoon, so she could not go to the atelier; but she promised to meet the princess there in good time next morning.
That afternoon she indulged herself in giving her brother a brief account of her romantic friendship. She did not, however, mention the name by which the princess was known to her, or any but the external facts in the case.
As she had foreseen, her brother made no objection to the intercourse, and told her she had been very wise to keep the whole thing to herself. He did not seem in the least surprised that the princess refused to make his acquaintance, and explained it to Martha by saying that she was probably an independent and self-willed young woman, who was disposed to suit only herself in the matter of friends; but that this was not inconsistent with a certain regard for conventionalities, and it was probable that she did not care to bother with her family, or even to take the trouble to find out anything about them. Martha felt that her brother was moderately interested in the matter because of its relation to herself; but in spite of all her enthusiasm she could not feel that she had inspired him with any special interest in the princess, or any appreciably greater desire to make her acquaintance than she had shown to make his.
IX
A few days later Martha came to the atelier in a state of only half-concealed excitement. She had a plan which she broached to the princess with some timidity. She began by saying that her brother was compelled to be absent from Paris during the whole of the next day, and that, as it was Sunday, and there would be no work at the atelier, she would have the whole day on her hands.