“You have nothing to fear,” she said with a touch of pride.
Dangerfield did not seem to have heard her for he whipped about the room a score of times, before stopping suddenly.
“Inga,” he said nervously, “what would you show him? Just the things I did lately, that bit of Grand Street and the Italian wedding? They’re the best, I think. Or would you show the sketches at the seashore also? Or what would you do?”
Womanlike, she resented this sudden timidity before the judgment of another, resenting that the masculine authority which she had herself built up should yield, if only momentarily, before the personality of another man.
“Begin with the beginning. Show him all just as you did it. It’s that that’s wonderful; to follow each step, to realize how you have grown to what you are doing now.”
“You think so?” he said doubtfully.
“Why do you care so much what one man thinks?” she said with a flash of anger. “It’s you who have done the big thing. I am not afraid.”
“It’s not entirely what he will say,” he answered slowly. “It’s the criticism I shall pass on myself when I look at them through his eyes. So you would begin with the beginning. Yes, I think you’re right.”
He gave a sigh of relief, as though this were a difficult point settled, and began to rummage among the records of the year, sorting the canvases as he wished to have them presented.
She moved over to the open window and waited, her arm on the sill, looking out, listening for a footstep in the hall with a little frightened tremulous leap of the heart, feeling the imminence of a new phase in the life of this man whose every hour she had shared, a phase that held something ominous for her, the rushing in of the outer world, the return of old friends, the thronging in of admiring acquaintances, the multitude pouring in to separate them and claim its right in the life which had been wholly hers.