“Oh, Dick!” she exclaimed, grasping his hand. “Oh, I’m so grieved, so horrified! What an awful thing to happen to you! And it’s all my fault! Where—what have you done with—”
“What’s left do you mean? Go and see for yourself.”
She hurried upstairs to the studio. When he followed he found her standing before the mutilated picture, which was still in its place, with tears rolling down her flushed cheeks.
“Good God! Beryl! What’s up? What are you whimpering about?”
“How you must hate me!” she said, in a broken voice. “How you must hate me!”
“Rubbish! What for?”
“This has all happened because of me. If it hadn’t been for me you would never have painted him.”
“I painted the fellow to please myself.”
“But I asked you to get him to come here.”
“What you ask, or don’t ask, doesn’t bother me.”