Durant put a small oil painting into her hand. He had kept his finest to the last. "If you're fond of the sea that may please you."
Mid-ocean, the slope and trough of a luminous sea; in the foreground one smooth, high-bosomed, unbroken wave, the light flung off from its crest like foam, to slide down its shoulder like oil on rounded glass. On the sky-line the white peak of a sail; the whole a heaving waste of wind and water, light and air. It was a consummate bit of painting, as nobody knew better than Maurice Durant.
She looked at it as though she would never be tired of looking. A sudden impulse seized him, a blind instinct to give pleasure at any cost, to make amends for pain.
"If you honestly like it, I wish you'd keep it."
"Keep it? Keep it? Do you really mean it?"
"It would give me pleasure if you would."
"But isn't—might it not be valuable?"
It was valuable, as Durant reflected somewhat regretfully, but he answered well. "Valuable chiefly to me, I fancy. Which is all the more reason, if you like it——"
"Like it? I should lo——" She drew back her breath. "No; I think I'd better not. Thank you very much, all the same." She laid the canvas down with a gesture of renunciation.
"Now that's foolish. Why ever won't you?"