“Never heard a word about the lady before.”
“What's the use of having a friend, if you must sling your notions at him in words? You ought to know what I'm thinking about. You've heard me grunt lately?”
“Even so; but grunts mean anything in your language, from bad 'baccy to wicked dealers. And I don't think I've been much in your confidence for some time.”
“It was a high and soulful grunt. You ought to have understood that it meant the Melancolia.” Dick walked Torpenhow up and down the room, keeping silence. Then he smote him in the ribs, “Now don't you see it? Bessie's abject futility, and the terror in her eyes, welded on to one or two details in the way of sorrow that have come under my experience lately. Likewise some orange and black,—two keys of each. But I can't explain on an empty stomach.”
“It sounds mad enough. You'd better stick to your soldiers, Dick, instead of maundering about heads and eyes and experiences.”
“Think so?” Dick began to dance on his heels, singing—
“They're as proud as a turkey when they hold the ready cash, You ought to 'ear the way they laugh an' joke; They are tricky an' they're funny when they've got the ready money,—Ow! but see 'em when they're all stone-broke.”
Then he sat down to pour out his heart to Maisie in a four-sheet letter of counsel and encouragement, and registered an oath that he would get to work with an undivided heart as soon as Bessie should reappear.
The girl kept her appointment unpainted and unadorned, afraid and overbold by turns. When she found that she was merely expected to sit still, she grew calmer, and criticised the appointments of the studio with freedom and some point. She liked the warmth and the comfort and the release from fear of physical pain. Dick made two or three studies of her head in monochrome, but the actual notion of the Melancolia would not arrive.
“What a mess you keep your things in!” said Bessie, some days later, when she felt herself thoroughly at home. “I s'pose your clothes are just as bad. Gentlemen never think what buttons and tape are made for.”