“No,” said Clytie, looking at him in her quick, frank way. “Why should I?”
Hammerdyke did not reply, but smiled and shrugged his shoulders a little.
“Well, since you are so particular as to the wording, let us be friends. For Caroline's sake,” he added after a short pause.
“Very well, for Caroline's sake,” repeated Clytie. “Only, you know I am a very humble person.”
“Oh, no! I know too much about you. You are by way of becoming a great artist—and it would be a privilege for an uncultivated barbarian like me. Tell me, how could we begin being friends?”
“Well, suppose you tell me some of the wonders you have seen.”
“'Anthropophagi, or men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders'? Very well—and you shall show me your pictures. Will you let me come and see them sometime or the other? Do!”
He spoke low, with a touch of softness in his voice. Clytie felt flattered, touched. It was a little tribute to her womanhood to be pleaded with, especially by a man who, in the eyes of the world, was a recognised heroic figure. There was a latent light, too, in the depths of his dark eyes, a sign of reserved power and strange, unknown forces, that pleased her strangely. All the day she had felt sore, ill at ease, with a little aching, chafing sense of loss. The time had seemed woefully out of joint, and the setting of it right again utterly beyond her powers. But now the world's equilibrium seemed more stable.
“I am not sure whether you would care for my pictures,” she said.
“Oh, I have seen those that Caroline has,” he replied. “I made her show them to me. I don't know what your art word is—but they seem to me to have a grip upon life that I like.”