"Shall you let them have it?"
"Oh yes," she said, "I suppose so. Why not?"
"The carriage will cost a lot, won't it?"
"No, it won't cost anything. They'll send for the picture, and return it to me free of charge, if it isn't sold." Her lips tightened, and she looked away through the window. Engrossed as she was, she noticed that her sister did not say "How jolly for you!" but "Won't the carriage cost a lot?" In the course of the summer Hilda would refer to the invitation casually as "That nice letter you had from Liverpool," quite unconscious that she had shown no perception of its being "nice" when it came.
"Why don't you eat your breakfast?" she asked now, having exhausted the subject of the picture.
"I don't want it," said Bee. "You can have this egg too, if you like."
When the table was cleared, and she was left alone, she sat down to her task. What should she say? Now that the pen was in her hand her eagerness deserted her, and the thought of dispelling his delusion made her tremble again. Her arguments of a while ago recurred to her vainly—she was as sure that he imagined her what she would like to be as she was sure that ugliness repelled him. She set her teeth, and dipped the pen in the ink.
She could find no words. Presently she addressed the envelope, but the notepaper was still blank. In the kitchen the mother and the girl were talking; she could hear them quite distinctly: "And don't forget to call in about the bread as you come back!" She glanced at the clock, and wrote desperately.
"I cannot do as you wish," she scrawled, "because I have never been photographed in my life. I have never been photographed because I am deformed, and——"
No! not like that, she couldn't say it like that. She sat motionless again, hearing the loud ticking of the clock, and hating herself. The clock struck insistently. She pushed the sheet of paper aside, and searched through the blotting-book for another. There was no other in it, so she went to the chiffonnier and opened the drawer. In the drawer there were several things besides the stationery: a sketch-book, some unmounted photographs that she had taken last week in Penshurst, some unmounted photographs that she had taken last week of Hilda. She picked one of them up mechanically, and stood looking at it; stood looking at the photograph of Hilda—a study in sunlight and shadow, dreaming in a garden chair under the boughs.