"For goodness sake! Can't you speak?" she asked, and extricated a thumb from the palette, and turned to lay it and the paint brush on a littered table near her easel. Inasmuch as her eyes were for the moment diverted from him he succeeded in recovering some of his customary wits.
"Speak? Speak! I've got so much to speak that I'm smothered with talk," he replied. "Aren't you going to shake hands before I begin?"
"I suppose it's polite," she said, extending a hand which, with all the delightful inconsequence of a man infatuated with love, he had frequently craved to hold forever. "Suppose you sit down to tell it!" she suggested, withdrawing her hand from his. "I'm—I'm rather curious to hear you talk."
"Why?" he asked. "Don't I talk enough—usually?"
"Yes, but——" She stopped, appeared to hesitate, and then almost irrelevantly said "You've never said what you thought of my work. Do you think I should continue it, or drop it?"
Jimmy was so astonished by the unexpected that he forgot his embarrassment.
"Drop it? Of course not. How absurd! It was never in me to do anything very well," he added almost wistfully, "for I have no gifts. But if I could sing even a little, I would cultivate my voice. And if I but knew how to paint at all, I would work to paint better, always hoping that some time I might do at least one picture. But—isn't it unusual for you to be either discouraged, or questioning?"
"Perhaps," she said, looking away from him. "But—suppose I had to give it up?"
"Why?" he cried solicitously. And then, remembering that all his recent worries had been of a financial nature, he was fearful that some wolf of poverty had thrust its head into the studio door. "If—if—it's money that keeps you from going ahead as you have been, I—look here! Your work mustn't stop. We're too good friends to be falsely modest. If—if you're broke, I'd like to let you have some money. I haven't got much, but—Mary—I'm going to make some. I'll—I'll buy a picture. I'd like one. I've always wanted one of yours."
She smiled a trifle sadly and shook her head in negation. He thought she doubted the affluence of a mere chocolate salesman and it brought his mind back to his own good news.