Margot had followed the lads and was beside Adrian, though he had not heard her footsteps. Now he wheeled about, eager, enthusiastic.
“Paint—as I have never painted before!”
“Oh!—are you an—artist?”
“I want to be one. That’s why I’m here.”
“What! What do you mean?”
“I told you I was a runaway. I didn’t say why, before. It’s truth. My people, my—father—forced me to college. I hated it. He was forcing me to business. I liked art. All my friends were artists. When I should have been at the books I was in their studios. They were a gay crowd, spent money like water when they had it; merrily starved and pinched when they hadn’t. A few were worse than spendthrifts, and with my usual want of sense I made that particular set my intimates. I never had any money, though, after it was suspected what my tastes were, except a little that my mother gave.”
Margot was listening breathlessly and watching intently. At the mention of his mother a shadow crossed Adrian’s face, softening and bettering it, and as they rose to go home she saw that his whole mood had changed.
IX.
AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION
IT was weeks afterward when they were again surrounded by the many wonderful inhabitants of the forest that Adrian mentioned his own parents. Their talk drifted from vexing subjects to merry anecdotes of his childhood, in the home where he had been the petted, only brother of a half-dozen elder sisters. But while they laughed and Margot listened, her fingers were busy weaving a great garland of wild laurel, and when it was finished she rose and said:
“It’s getting late. There’ll be just time to take this to the grave. Will you go with me?”