Cummings.—"I don't know that I do."
Bartlett.—"Why, my dear old fellow, you're hurt! It was a silly joke, and I honestly ask your pardon." He lays down his brush and palette and leaves the easel. "Cummings, I don't know what to do. I'm in a perfect deuce of a state. I'm hit—awfully hard; and I don't know what to do about it. I wish I had gone at once—the first day. But I had to stay,—I had to stay." He turns and walks away from Cummings, whose eyes follow him in pardon and sympathy.
Cummings.—"Do you really mean it, Bartlett? I didn't dream of such a thing. I thought you were still brooding over that affair with Miss Harlan."
Bartlett.—"Oh, child's-play! A prehistoric illusion! A solar myth! The thing never was." He rejects the obsolete superstition with a wave of his left hand. "I'm in love with this girl, and I feel like a sneak and a brute about it. At the very best it would be preposterous. Who am I, a poor devil of a painter, the particular pet of Poverty, to think of a young lady whose family and position could command her the best? But putting that aside,—putting that insuperable obstacle lightly aside, as a mere trifle,—the thing remains an atrocity. It's enormously indelicate to think of loving a woman who would never have looked twice at me if I hadn't resembled an infernal scoundrel who tried to break her heart; and I've nothing else to commend me. I've the perfect certainty that she doesn't and can't care anything for me in myself; and it grinds me into the dust to realise on what terms she tolerates me. I could carry it off as a joke at first; but when it became serious, I had to look it in the face; and that's what it amounts to, and if you know of any more hopeless and humiliating tangle, I don't." Bartlett, who has approached his friend during this speech, walks away again; and there is an interval of silence.
Cummings, at last, musingly.—"You in love with Miss Wyatt; I can't imagine it!"
Bartlett, fiercely.—"You can't imagine it? What's the reason you can't imagine it? Don't be offensive, Cummings!" He stops in his walk and lowers upon his friend. "Why shouldn't I be in love with Miss Wyatt?"
Cummings.—"Oh, nothing. Only you were saying"—
Bartlett.—"I was saying! Don't tell me what I was saying. Say something yourself."
Cummings.—"Really, Bartlett, you can't expect me to stand this sort of thing. You're preposterous."
Bartlett.—"I know it! But don't blame me. I beg your pardon. Is it because of the circumstances that you can't imagine my being in love with her?"