Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/283

Rh Duke of Olivares, and Frick paid the same amount for a Gainsborough portrait, and a quarter of a million for a small Rembrandt. And I could go on that way until you got tired listening to me. But that's not the important thing. All you've got to do is look at it. You'd know"

He broke off with a sense of inadequacy. Then wakening to the extent to which he had overlooked her in his excitement, he linked his arm fraternally through hers as she stood studying the canvas.

"Yes, it's lovely," she murmured, without responding to the pressure on her arm. She seemed suddenly small and fragile there under the shadow of his shoulder.

"There's only one thing in all the world lovelier," he told her as he smiled down into her face, grown pitiful with its shadows of fatigue.

"One thing lovelier?" she echoed absently, clinging to him with a touch of forlornness. That morning of tangled emotions had plainly been a little too much for her.

"I mean you," he said.