"You'll promise that; and I'll promise--just to be as nice to you as ever
I can!" She paused. They looked at each other; the trouble in his eyes
questioning the smile in hers. "Now please!--my friend!"--she slid
dexterously, though very softly, into the everyday tone--"will you advise
me? Mr. Delorme has asked me to sit to him. Just a sketch in the
garden--for a picture he's at work on. You would like me to accept?"
She stood before him, her eyes raised, with the frank gentleness of a
child. Yet there was a condition implied in the question.
Tatham broke out--passionately,
"Just tell me. There's--there's no one else?"
She suffered for him; she hastened to comfort him.
"No, no--indeed there's no one else. Though, mind, I'm free. And so are
you. Shall I come to-morrow?" she asked again, with quiet insistence.
There was a gulp in Tatham's throat. Yet he rose--dismally--to her
challenge.
"You would do what I like?" he asked, quivering.
"Indeed I would."
"I invited Delorme here--just to please you--and because I hoped he'd
paint you."
"Then that's settled!" she said, with a little sigh of satisfaction.
"And what, please, am I to do--that _you'd_ like?" She looked up
mischievously.
"Call me Lydia--forget that you ever wanted to marry me--and don't mind a
rap what people say!"
He laughed, through his pain, and gravely took her hand.
"And now," said Lydia, "I think it's time to go home."
* * * * *
When all the guests were gone, when Gerald and Delorme had smoked their
last interminable cigars, and Delorme had made his last mocking comments
on the "old masters" who adorned the smoking-room, Tatham saw him safely
to bed, and returned to his sitting-room on the ground floor.
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