Part 10

"Will you--now?"

He shook his head.

"Then I will."

"Please don't," he said quietly. Her hand still lay in his; she looked up at him; her eyes were starry bright and a little moist.

"I simply can't stand this," she said, steadying her voice.

"What?"

"Your--your distress--" She choked; her sensitive mouth trembled.

"Good Heavens!" he breathed; "do you care!"

"Care--care," she stammered. "You saved my life with a laugh! You face st-starvation with a laugh! Your father made mine! Care? Yes, I care!"

But she had bent her head; a bright tear fell, spangling his polished shoes; the pulsating seconds passed; he laid his other hand above both of hers which he held, and stood silent, stunned, scarcely daring to understand.

Nor was it here he could understand or even hope--his instinct held him stupid and silent. Presently he released her hands.

She said "Good-by" calmly enough; he followed her to the door and opened it, watching her pass through the hall to her own door. And there she paused and looked back; and he found himself beside her again.

"Only," she began, "only don't do all those beautiful magic things for any--anybody else--will you? I wish to have--have them all for myself--to share them with no one----"

He held her hands imprisoned again. "I will never do one of those things for anybody but you," he said unsteadily.

"Truly?" Her face caught fire.

"Yes, truly."

"But how--how, then, can you--can----"

"I don't care what happens to me!" he said. To look at him nobody would have thought him young enough to say that sort of thing.

"I care," she said, releasing her hands and stepping back into her studio.

For a moment her lovely, daring face swam before his eyes; then, in the next moment, she was in his arms, crying her eyes out against his shoulder, his lips pressed to her bright hair.

And that was all right in its way, too; madder things have happened in our times; but nothing madder ever happened than a large, bald gentleman who came up the stairs in a series of bounces and planted his legs apart and tightened his pudgy grip upon his malacca walking stick, and confronted them with distended eyes and waistband.

In vigorous but incoherent English he begged to know whether this scene was part of an education in art.

"Papah," she said calmly, "you are just in time. Go into the studio and I'll come in one moment."

Then giving her lover both hands and looking at him with all her soul in her young eyes: "I love you; I'll marry you. And if there's trouble"--she smiled upon her frantic father--"if there is trouble I will follow you about the country exhibiting green mice----"

"What!" thundered her father.

"Green mice," she repeated with an adorable smile at her lover--"unless my father finds a necessity for you in his business--with a view to partnership. And I'm going to let you arrange that together. Good-by."

And she entered her studio, closing the door behind her, leaving the two men confronting one another in the entry.

For one so young she had much wisdom and excellent taste; and listening, she heard her father explode in one lusty Saxon word. He always said it when beaten; it was the beginning of the end, and the end of the sweetest beginning that ever dawned on earth for a maid since the first sunbeam stole into Eden.