Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/105

Rh Because, you see, art's a wonderful resource." (She pronounced it re-source.)

He continued to look at her kindly. "You won't need it—or any other—when you grow young, as you will some day," he assured her.

"Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love— Oh, there's Eldorada and Mr. Beck!" She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the nave. "I told them that if they'd meet me here to-day I'd try to make them understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really have understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to realize it. Mr. Buttles simply won't." She turned to Lansing and held out her hand. "I am in love," she repeated earnestly, "and that's the reason why I find art such a re-source."

She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode across the church to the expectant neophytes.

Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment; then, with a queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that, no, he certainly was not. But then—but then—. Well, there was no use in following up such conjectures. He turned homeward, wondering if the picnickers had already reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.