Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/98

88 Then she abruptly realized that the question was already settled. For she knew, as she saw Raoul Uhlan step quietly into the studio and close the door behind him, that the die was cast, that it was already too late to evade that intimidating final issue. Yet her visitor, as he crossed smilingly to the table where she sat, carried less of the air of a cave-man than she had expected. There was a carnation in his button-hole and an air of relief touched with meekness on a face plainly more pallid than usual. He stood looking down at her with mournful and slightly reproving eyes.

"Don't be afraid of me," he murmured, as he put down his hat and gloves without letting his gaze for one moment wander from her face.

"I'm not," asserted Teddie, quite bravely, as she rose to her feet. But there was a tremor in her voice, for his meekness, she already realized, was merely a mask. And inapposite as it may have been, he impressed her as being pathetic, as pathetic as a ponderous and full-blooded