But the press-cuttings from the provincial papers were still coming in, and her courage revived as she remembered Mr. Hamilton Dix’s newest article on her and her work. He was coming to interview her. The market for her twenty-eight canvases was already being prepared. Mr. Dix would hardly be doing all that unless it was intended that her show should come on in the autumn....
She went to sleep, once more resolved that when, presently, she should come into her kingdom, no poor artist, provided he were really deserving, should ask her help in vain.
Two days later she had cast her money cares almost entirely to the winds. Naturally it was not to be supposed that she could come into a hundred pounds and not buy herself at least one frock; as a matter of fact she had bought two. She hoped she had not offended Dorothy about them. It was one of the advantages of Dorothy’s occupation that she was frequently offered clothes, not merely at cost price, but at truly absurd reductions. But then (Amory had thought) they were such clothes—inartistic and irrational in the extreme, conventional Paris and Viennese models, some of them actually resembling those excruciating drawings of Dorothy’s, and hats that (to put it bluntly) Amory would not have been found dead in. Dorothy had offered to get her a number of these, and had said that it was a chance to be jumped at!... Why, even Cosimo, a man, had laughed and said, “Dear old Dot—she means awfully well, doesn’t she?”... And Cosimo had chosen the two frocks Amory actually had bought. One of them was terra-cotta, the other green; both were exquisitely smocked at yoke and hips, and any of the Pre-Raphaelites (Cosimo said) would have gone half wild with delight over the drawing of the myriad intricate folds. He had made a suggestion or two in the shop itself, and when the things had been, delivered at the studio, Cosimo had not rested until he had seen Amory put them on. Amory had looked round the room; the curtain that was to enclose her new bed was not up yet, but she thanked goodness she was not one of your shrinking prudes.... “I don’t suppose a girl’s arms will shock you, will they?” she had asked, smiling.... So she had tried, first the terra-cotta, then the green. “Oh, I say, you do look stunning!” Cosimo had flattered her, lifting his fine dark eyes as she had turned this way and that; “but you ought to have a Portia cap, you know——” And that was only another instance of the way their minds jumped together; for Amory, without saying anything to Cosimo, had already got two of the Portia caps, one for each frock.... Then she had got back into the old frock again, and they had discussed the preparation of the studio once more.
As Cosimo said, they had really got most of the work done. The furniture would not arrive until the morrow, but the walls were already distempered a light green colour, almost white, and the ceiling was done, and the floor was a wide frame glassy with boiled oil and paraffin and polish, only awaiting the square of Japanese matting in the centre. The shining brown border was not yet quite dry, and Cosimo had very cleverly built up a sort of gang-plank across it to the door. To see Jellies, herself of a yielding figure, crossing this yielding plank, was very funny indeed. The framing in passe-partout of the photographs of old masters went down as sundries; Amory, with Myers on Human Personality tucked under her arm, had spent half the day in setting the photographs each in the one and only place for it; and now, until the bed and chest of drawers and things should come, she and Cosimo were sitting cross-legged in the middle of the unstained part of the floor. A yard of casement-cloth was between them, which Cosimo deftly ripped up with a pair of scissors. He had brought his own little work-basket. He was as handy with a needle as a sailor. And as he measured the casement-cloth he talked.
“Steady a moment—you’ve got hold of the wrong end; that’s the end, where I’ve basted it. If I were you I should buttonhole the eyelets.... Look out, you’re giving me a finished pair to cut ... and I say, Amory, you want a fresh binding on that skirt—you’ll be catching your heel and coming down; I’ll put a stitch in it for you as soon as I’ve finished this.... I say you’re quiet; a penny for your thoughts!”
Amory, as a matter of fact, had been once more hoping that Cosimo would by and by find some really nice girl to marry. In his case the wrong one would be dreadfully wrong; he had the woman’s point of view so perfectly. That, in a sense, was why he was so exquisitely right in not wanting to marry Amory herself—supposing, that was, that Amory had not definitely decided never to marry at all. They knew one another too well; were too much alike, too beautifully “pals”; somehow they seemed almost to come within the prohibited degrees.... Still, if Amory couldn’t marry Cosimo, she could keep, as it were, an eye on him. It would be dreadful if he fell into the hands of some jealous creature or other, worthy neither of him nor of Amory herself. Amory had long thought that it would be rather nice to be “Aunt Amory” to a number of eugenically-selected and rationally-clothed boys and girls, who were not told lies about where they came from, and had moral courage enough, when they were afraid, to say that they were afraid; but she wasn’t going to be “come over” by their mother, and permitted as a favour to see Cosimo once in a while, and to be put off with a “Not at Home” when she and Cosimo wished to discuss her art.... So, when Cosimo said, “A penny for your thoughts,” Amory was silent for a moment, and then, lifting her pretty brook-brown eyes over the yard of casement-cloth that united their hands, she smiled pensively and said:
“I was wondering, Cosimo, why—why you don’t marry Dorothy.”
Cosimo dropped his end of the casement-cloth and reached for a needle with black thread in it. He leaned forward.
“Here, let me stitch that binding while I think of it.... What’s that? Marry Dorothy?... Why, you don’t suppose Dorothy would have me, do you? Because I don’t.”
Of course, Cosimo was far too well-bred to say that he wouldn’t have Dorothy. Still, she guessed what he meant. Dorothy (he seemed to say) was a perfect dear, but not in that way. Nevertheless, Amory, who sat in the light and could see herself ever so tiny in Cosimo’s black-coffee-coloured eyes, looked a little doubtful, and said, “Are you quite sure of that?”