He said, intensely amused: "It might be safer not to give pink teas while I am working from the nude."
"Duane! Do you think me a perfect ninny? Anyway, you're not always painting Venus and Ariadne and horrid Ledas, are you?"
"Not always!" he managed to assure her; and her pretty, confused laughter mingled with his unembarrassed mirth as the motor-car swung up to carry him and his traps to the station.
They said good-bye; her dark eyes became very tragic; her lips threatened to escape control.
Kathleen turned away, manoeuvring Scott out of earshot, who knowing nothing of any situation between Duane and his sister, protested mildly, but forgot when Kathleen led him to an orange-underwing moth asleep on the stone coping of the terrace.
And when the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminishing conceit found utterance:
"I say, Kathleen, it's all very well for me to collect these fascinating things, but any ass can do that. One can't make a particular name for one's self by doing what a lot of cleverer men have already done, and what a lot of idle idiots are imitating."
She raised her violet eyes, astonished:
"Do you want to make a name for yourself?"
"Yes," he said, reddening.