"Dear Mr. Ludlow: I thank you very much for your letter, and I am going to do what you say. Yours sincerely,
"Cornelia Saunders.
"P. S. I do appreciate your kindness very much."
She added this postscript after trying many times to write a reply that would seem less blunt and dry; but she could not write anything at all between a letter that she felt was gushing and this note which certainly could not be called so; she thought the postscript did not help it much, but she let it go.
As soon as she had done so, it seemed to her that she had no reason for having done so, and she did not see how she could justify it to Charmian, whom she had told that she should not offer her picture. She would have to say that she had changed her mind simply because Mr. Ludlow had bidden her, and she tried to think how she could make that appear sufficient. But Charmian was entirely satisfied. "Oh, yes," she said, "that was the least you could do, when he asked you. You certainly owed him that much. Now," she added mystically, "he never can say a thing."
They were in Charmian's studio, where Cornelia's sketch of her had been ever since she left working on it; and Charmian ran and got it, and set it where they could both see it in the light of the new event.
It's magnificent, Cornelia. There's no other word for it. Did you know he was going to give me his?"
"Yes, he told me he was going to," said Cornelia, looking at her sketch, with a dreamy suffusion of happiness in her face.
"It's glorious, but it doesn't come within a million miles of yours. Mr. Wetmore isn't on the Committee, this year, but he knows them all, and——"
Cornelia turned upon her. "Charmian Maybough, if you breathe, if you dream a word to him about it I will never speak to you. If my picture can't get into the Exhibition without the help of friends——"