"Why, Victor, you've quite coloured up!" said Howard with a sort of derisive triumph.
I felt I had. Why? I can hardly say. The word "love," the sudden view of the portrait, dashed, whirling headlong over each other, through my brain, followed by a sort of hazy cloud, out of which looked two azure eyes.
"She is very lovely, isn't she?" Howard remarked affectionately, setting the card upright against the wall.
"Very—in her own way," I assented.
I admitted it willingly, with pleasure. Why not?—an evident fact. The blue slime in a blocked gutter of the road is very lovely also.
"Well, I'm going there to-night, because I admire the sister, and you must come, too. You are killing yourself by sticking to the work in the way you do. Come along! Where's the harm? Lucia will never know. I won't split. God's in heaven and the Czar's a long way off! So you may as well come and knock about a little. This monotonous life will put an end to you!"
I was silent.
"Lucia won't know," he repeated.
"There's no question of Lucia's knowing anything," I said.
"Then why do you work as you do, and always refuse to come to a supper, or a dance, or anything? You can't be really a quiet fellow or you wouldn't write things the English won't have. You say it's not a question of Lucia—then what the dickens is it that makes you live the life you do?"