"You know what Miriam Levey is."
I caught my breath. "You don't mean she's any idea——" I said quickly.
"Oh, none whatever," Louie said hurriedly. "I don't mean that at all. But I do mean she'd thoroughly enjoy seeing you made uncomfortable—got at—scored off—get her own back—you know what I mean."
"That's noth——" I began absently, but checked myself. "That's nothing," I had been on the point of saying, but there were no nothings for us. Louie's vigils must be as unremitting as my own.
Suddenly I found myself without the heart to ask her in detail what these were. We now had the tea-room to ourselves; the bevy of models had scurried off to the party-room, and two of them appeared to be playing an elementary duet on the piano, with wrong notes loudly and laboriously corrected, amid laughter and general high spirits. Again the contrast was cruel. They hadn't to look before, behind and about them for the dread of a ruinous inadvertence.... You will find it difficult to reconcile with remorse, by the way, that, stealing another glance at Louie's drawn and anxious face, I cursed a heedless young cub who had gone to his account nearly six years before.
"Anyway," she said, after a long silence, "I'll see to that as far as I can. Plan as we like, we've got to take some risks. Don't look at me like that. It isn't more than I can bear. There's joy in it too. The only thing I don't quite understand is why I should want to throw that joy away by—by giving you the advice I did."
"The advice you did?"
"To tell your wife."
"But——" It broke agitatedly from me. Again the tourmalines seemed to move.
"The risk; just so; don't think I don't see it. Oh, I see it—far more plainly than you do! Haven't you thought that perhaps it's that that——" She stopped abruptly, ending in a little twanging murmur.