Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/148

138 "I've seen all I want to of men," she announced with unexpected passion. "I despise 'em, the whole pack of them!"

"And you don't intend to marry?" demanded the scion of the statelier years.

"Never!" retorted Teddie, staring fixedly at her unfinished sketch of the Macauley Mission by Moonlight.

"Then what, may I ask, do you intend doing?" inquired her stiff-shouldered old visitor.

She had intended to say that she wanted to live for Art. But she hesitated. For Art, at that particular juncture, seemed a very anemic and elusive thing to live for. She had no idea, in fact, just what she did intend living for. She was less impatient of others than she might once have been. She even recognized kindliness under the intentions of that over-personal emissary from her older world, however heavy-handed he may have been in his executions of those intentions. And that, impinging on her desolated young spirit, intrigued her into a brief but depressing mood of self-pity. There was no trace of tears in