Part 30

"Now, look here, Charmian Maybough," said Cornelia sternly, "if you ever mention that again, or allude to it the least in the world----"

"Don't I say I won't?" demanded Charmian, jumping up. "That will be the whole fun of it. From the very first moment, till I'm framed and hung in a good light, I'm going to be mum, through and through, and if you don't speak of him, I sha'n't, except as a fellow-artist."

"What a simpleton!" said Cornelia. She laughed in spite of her vexation. "I'm not obliged to let what you think trouble me."

"Of course not."

"Your thinking it doesn't make it so."

"No----"

"But if you let him see----"

"The whole idea is not to let him see! That's what I shall do it all for. Good-by!"

She put the paper bag down on the bureau for the greater convenience of embracing Cornelia.

"Why don't you stay and have breakfast with me?" Cornelia asked. "You'll be sick."

"Breakfast? And ruin everything! I would rather never have any breakfast!" She took up the paper bag again, and explored it with an eager hand, while she stared absently at Cornelia. "Ah! I thought there was one left! What mites of things." She put the last ginger-snap into her mouth, and with a flying kiss to Cornelia as she passed, she flashed out of the door, and down the stairs.

XXV.

After all, Ludlow decided that he would paint Charmian in her own studio, with the accessories of her peculiar pose in life about her; they were factitious, but they were genuine expressions of her character; he could not realize her so well away from there.

The first afternoon was given to trying her in this light and that, and studying her from different points. She wished to stand before her easel, in her Synthesis working-dress, with her palette on her thumb, and a brush in her other hand. He said finally, "Why not?" and Cornelia made a tentative sketch of her.

At the end of the afternoon he waited while the girl was putting on her hat in Charmian's room, where she smiled into the glass at Charmian's face over her shoulder, thinking of the intense fidelity her friend had shown throughout to her promise of unconsciousness.

"Didn't I do it magnificently?" Charmian demanded. "It almost killed me; but I meant to do it if it did kill me; and now his offering to see you aboard the car shows that he is determined to do it, too, if it kills him. I call it masterly."

"Well, don't go and spoil it now," said Cornelia. "And if you're going to ask me every day how you've done----"

"Oh, I'm not! Only the first day and the last day!"

"Well!"

As Ludlow walked with Cornelia toward the point where she was to take her car down town, he began, "You see, she is so dramatic, that if you tried to do her in any other way--that is, simply--you would be doing her artificially. You have to take her as she is, don't you think?"

"I don't know as I think Charmian is acting all the time, if that's what you mean," said Cornelia. "Or any of the time, even."

Ludlow wished she had said she did not know that instead of as, but he reflected that ninety Americans out of a hundred, lettered or unlettered, would have said the same. "Oh, I don't at all mean that she is, intentionally. It's because it's her nature that I want to recognize it. You think it is her nature, don't you?" he asked deferentially.

"Oh, I suppose it is," she answered; it amused her to have him take such a serious tone about Charmian.

"I shall have to depend a great deal on your judgment in that matter," he went on. "You won't mind it, I hope?"

"Not if you won't mind it's not being worth anything."

"It will be worth everything!"

"Or if you won't care for my not giving it, sometimes."

"I don't understand."