As for Harry, the proposal annoyed him at the beginning, but grew upon his sympathies as they went. He tried to follow her logic, and to think that it would be absurd to treat her otherwise than as a child. What harm could there be after all, and was not her view of it safer than his own? The Silvesters were too busy looking after impossible people in the East End to do their duty by this little exile. What forbade him to treat her as a sister? Upon this there came tumbling many a picture of that bewitching apparition as sympathy could frame it. What a riot she would make in his puny lodging! And how good it would be to watch her swinging her shapely legs on the edge of his pet arm-chair! She filled the whole house with visions already.
They marched up Heath Street forlorn, wind-swept, and deserted, and came at last to his door. He remembered how easily she took possession of the place, marching here and there as though she were its mistress—setting this or that in order instantly; tidying his desk; looking reproachfully upon his joyous negligence. When a lean landlady asked her genially if she would take a little tea, she answered immediately, "No; you are to go to the café for the wine, Mr. Harry will give you the money!"
And Harry gave it, as though it was the best of jokes, and one in which he must now play his part.
II
The first of many visits—how soon it was forgotten, that others more intimate should be remembered!
She came almost every day during the final week of the tribulation, and would sit with him, smoking his cigarettes and drinking his claret as though his house had been a café! He discovered that she had many talents, was a rare dancer of the wild, uncouth dances of the East, and could draw with a wonderful sense of portraiture. Her pictures of Silvester should have gone to Punch, but her portraits of Gabrielle were full of feeling. One day, when she had been sitting upon the arm of his chair, using his broad back for an easel, she asked him, à propos nothing at all, if he were in love, and when he looked at her astonished she seemed insistent.
"Are you in love with her, Harry? Why do you not answer me?"
"Why, you know that I am. Aren't we going to be married, little Gipsy?"
She put the pencil down and laid her head quietly upon his shoulder.
"I shall never believe it; you do not love her—she is nothing to you."