“And when do you propose going to see her?”
“God knows! I don't.”
“I don't know whether this is fin de siècle or whether it belongs to the glacial epoch,” said Wither, drawing a breath of bewilderment. “At any rate, has it never struck you, friend John, that being in love with a woman is no reason why you should be rude to her?”
“I have scarcely thought of that.”
“Then, by Jove, the sooner you can get it into your muddled head, the better. What have you been doing with yourself these evenings?”
“Anything to keep away. A meeting of the Geological, another of the Numismatic—a theatre, where there was just such another ass as myself. I couldn't stand it, so I went out and turned into the Empire and tried to find comfort in performing dogs. I have also dined out.”
“You must have been a cheerful lot. What did you say to your partner?”
“Nothing. She wanted to babble on, and I let her babble. Curse the whole thing!” he cried, smiting a block of coal with the poker, so hard that the chips flew over the hearthrug; “To think that it should be my fate to meet the only woman in the whole world who doesn't babble!”
“I should consider it in the light of a privilege,” said Wither.
The next morning, after a night's agony of indecision, he plucked up courage and tapped at the studio door. He entered. Clytie was alone, busily preparing her palette. She paused with the half-squeezed tube in her hand, and looked up at him without rising, her brows slightly knitted. He remained motionless, too, on the threshold, after mechanically shutting the door behind him. He tried to utter the little address of lame excuses which he had framed, but the words stuck, somehow, in his throat. He was only conscious that she was there, in the same room with him again, looking bewilderingly fresh and beautiful in her dark dress, with its dainty painting-apron, too simple almost for the rich colour of her eyes and hair and the stately bend of her neck. Yet even then he noticed she was a trifle paler than usual.