Winifred had given her one of her appealing looks from swimming brown eyes, and Clytie, remorseful, had run impulsively up and caressed and kissed her. But she had not washed Jack's face. He scrambled to his feet and looked defiantly, like a young animal, at Kent when he entered.
The ground-glass roof, the white walls scored over with Clytie's fantasies, and the bright red curtain at the back behind the stove gave a singular setting to the picture.
Clytie's eyes brightened. She threw a cloth over the picture she was engaged on.
“How good of you to come—and the hand?”
“A trifle. It will be quite well in a few days; I thought you would not mind my coming to tell you how your doctoring had succeeded. I am keeping it in a sling—so; otherwise I should be always trying to use it. You are none the worse, Miss Davenant?”
“I? Why should I?”
“Oh, nerves, shock, headache—and all that. My mother, I know, would have been upset for a week.”
Clytie laughed; a gay little laugh. She pierced through the words to the simplicity that lay behind them.
“I have never cultivated nerves, Mr. Kent. They sadly interfere with practical life. How do you think Miss Marchpane and I would get on with this sort of thing”—and she nodded towards Jack—“if we had nerves? Winifred, this is Mr. Kent, who put out my fire last night. Miss Marchpane and I share the studio together, you know.”
“You work on very different lines,” said Kent after a while, leaning back in his chair so as to catch a glimpse of Winifred's tiny canvas. “What a strange thing temperament is! I suppose neither of you does landscape.”