"Out hunting a model for her Pegasus. She asked me to pose for the mounted figure, but I haven't time. I can fancy myself, in a complete state of nature, scrambling onto some rickety old livery hack——" She threw back her head and laughed, then inspected her new hat, and, facing the studio mirror, pinned it to her chestnut hair.
"Do you like it, Jim?"
"Fine. You make all hats look well."
"Such a nice, polite boy! So well brought up! But unfortunately I heard you say the same thing to Helen.... Where have you been, Jim? I called you up an hour ago."
"I went to see Grismer," he said, coolly ignoring her perverse and tormenting humour.
"You did? Bless your dear, generous heart!" cried the girl. "Do you know that if it were in me to be sentimental over you, what you did would start me? Continue to behave like a real man, dear friend, and I'll be head over heels in love before I know it!"
"Why?" he asked, conscious again of her gaily derisive mood and not caring for it.
"Because," she said, "you have acted like a man in calling on Oswald, and not like a spoiled boy. You resented Oswald's marrying me. You have been sullen and suspicious and aloof with him since you came back. I know Oswald better than you do. I know that he has felt your attitude keenly, though he never admitted it even to me.
"He is a man of few friends, admired but not well liked; he is wretchedly poor, fiercely proud, sensitive——"
"What!"