Part 28

"For two reasons. Do you want the real reason first?" he asked, smiling at her.

She laughed. "No, the unreal one!"

"Well, I doubt whether Mrs. Maybough wrote to me of her own inspiration, entirely. I suspect that Wetmore and Plaisdell have been working the affair, and I don't like that."

"Well?"

"And I'm waiting for you to say whether I could do it. That's the real reason."

"How should I know?"

"I could make a picture of her," he said, "but could I make a portrait? There is something in every one which holds the true likeness; if you don't get at that, you don't make a portrait, and you don't give people their money's worth. They haven't proposed to buy merely a picture of you; they've proposed to buy a picture of a certain person; you may give them more, but you can't honestly give them less; and if you don't think you can give them that, then you had better not try. I should like to try for Miss Maybough's likeness, and I'll do that, at least, if you'll try with me. The question is whether you would like to."

"Like to? It's the greatest opportunity! Why, I hope I know what a chance it is, and I don't know why you ask me to."

"I want to learn of you."

"If you talk that way I shall know you are making fun of me."

"Then I will talk some other way. I mean what I say. I want you to show me how to look at Miss Maybough. It sounds fantastic----"

"It sounds ridiculous. I shall not do anything of the kind."

"Very well, then, I shall not paint her."

"You don't expect me to believe that," said Cornelia, but she did believe it a little, and she was daunted. She said, "Charmian would hate it."

"I don't believe she would," said Ludlow. "I don't think she would mind being painted by half-a-dozen people at once. The more the better."

"That shows you don't understand her," Cornelia began.

"Didn't I tell you I didn't understand her? Now, you see, you must. I should have overdone that trait in her. Of course there is something better than that."

"I don't see how you could propose my painting her, too," Cornelia relented, provisionally.

Ludlow was daunted in his turn; he had not thought of that. It would be a little embarrassing, certainly, but he could not quite own this. He laughed and said, "I have a notion she will propose it herself, if you give her a chance."

"Oh," said Cornelia, "if she does that, all well and good."

"Then I may say to her mother that I will make a try at the portrait?"

"What have I to do with it?" Cornelia demanded, liking and not liking to have the decision seem left to her. "I shall have nothing to do with it if she doesn't do it of her own accord."

"You may be sure that she shall not have even a suggestion of any kind," said Ludlow, solemnly.

"I shall know it if she does," Cornelia retorted, not so solemnly, and they both laughed.

While he stayed and talked with her the affair had its reason and justification; it seemed very simple and natural; but when he went away it began to look difficult and absurd. It was something else she would have to keep secret, like that folly of the past; it cast a malign light upon Ludlow, and showed him less wise and less true than she had thought him. She must take back her consent; she must send for him, write to him, and do it; but she did not know how without seeming to blame him, and she wished to blame only herself. She let the evening go by, and she stood before the glass, putting up her hand to her back hair to extract the first dismantling hairpin, for a sleepless night, when a knock at her door was followed by the words, "He's waitun' in the parlor." The door was opened and the Irish girl put a card in her hand.

XXIV.

The card was Ludlow's, and the words, "Do see me, if you can, for a moment," were scribbled on it.

Cornelia ran down stairs. He was standing, hat in hand, under the leafy gas chandelier in the parlor, and he said at once, "I've come back to say it won't do. You can't come to paint Miss Maybough with me. It would be a trick. I wonder I ever thought of such a thing."