"Look here, old lady, it isn't like you to talk this sort of stuff. Buck up! Love isn't life; it's just one incident of it. Work is the real thing, you and I both know that, and matrimony plays the devil with an artist's work, so it's not for us."
"Jerry, you—you beast!" she choked, and ran out of the room.
He stood where she left him, startled, sorry, angry. Bobs, his old pal, his fellow worker; he loved her dearly. He would not hurt her for the world, nor would he marry her. Must he always be in this tumult, this state of unrest? What was there in him which gave all the women he knew the idea of his pursuit of them? How was he to guard against this misunderstanding of his motives? A portrait painter could not manage a love affair with every woman who sat for him.
This was the culminating moment of his weeks of loneliness, his discouragement about his work, his fury at having constantly to extricate himself from tender situations which he did not make. Bobs's revelation made him feel a brute, a cad, but he could not marry Bobs; he did not want to. How could he protect himself from himself?
With an apologetic tap at the door, Jane entered. "Sorry, I forgot my bag," she said.
He confronted her squarely, looked her in the eyes and spoke, almost as if driven by some power not himself.
"Miss Jane Judd," he said earnestly, "will you marry me?"
CHAPTER XI
Jane stood, perfectly still, facing him for a good second.