"Why not?"
She could not tell him. She could not tell—that between her and her thought of Randy was the barrier of all that George Dalton had meant to her.
"If you paint the picture," she evaded, "you must finish it at Huntersfield. Why can't you and Louise come down this winter? It would be heavenly."
"It would be Heaven for me. Do you mean it, Becky?"
She did mean it, and she told him so.
"I shall paint you," he planned, "as a little white slip of a girl, with pearls about your neck,
and dreams in your eyes, and back of you a flight of shadowy swans——"
They rose and walked on. "I thought you were to be with the Admiral in Boston this winter."
"I stay until Thanksgiving. I always go back to Huntersfield for Christmas."
After that it was decided that she should sit for him each morning. They did not speak again of Randy. There had been something in Becky's manner which kept Archibald from saying more.