Chapter Fourteen.
On Cornish Cliffs.
“Let us return now, Mr Trethowen. The night is chilly, and, besides, if we are too long, Jack—I mean Mr Egerton—will suspect us of whispering sweet nothings.”
“And if he does, surely there’s no harm, Dolly? He’s not jealous of you, he—I mean, it isn’t as if you were engaged to him.”
“No, that is so,” she replied; “he is such a prosaic old bachelor. Why, I assure you that ever since I have known him he’s never hinted at love. I am his model, his friend—that is all.”
“Do you know,” Trethowen said, after a few moments’ reflection, “I’ve often wondered, Dolly, how it is you have not married him.”
“Why should he marry me?” she asked in surprise. “I’m only an artist’s model, a woman who is looked down upon by fastidious prudes as immodest—yet the same women admire the pictures when in the galleries, and—”
“But supposing he loved you?”
She shook her head.
“He does not,” she answered. “We are both Bohemians, and have many tastes in common. We found our ideas were similar years ago, when he was struggling for an existence in an attic and I was almost starving. Since that time to the present we have, in a pecuniary sense, shared one another’s lot. If I became his wife it is possible neither of us would be so happy as we are.”