Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/251

 sharp tones and quivering nostrils, but commonly amity and peace.

They were seen, or heard of, as going about a great deal together: to lectures, to restaurants, to entertainments in the city. But they went no longer, for the present, to Ashburn Avenue; they took their time to remember Randolph's repeated invitation; and there was, as yet, no further attendance at the studio in the Square,—for any reference to the unfinished portrait was likely to produce sharp tones and quivering nostrils indeed.

Other invitations began to come to Cope,—some of them from people he knew but slightly. He wondered whether his swoon and his shipwreck really could have done so much to make him known. Sometimes when these cards seemed to imply but a simple form of entertainment, at a convenient hour of the late afternoon, he would attend. It did not occur to him to note that commonly Medora Phillips was present: she was always in "active circulation," as he put it; and there he let things lie.

One of these entertainments was an afternoon reception of ordinary type, and the woman giving it had thrown a smallish library into closer communication with her drawing-room without troubling to reduce the library to order: books, pamphlets, magazines lay about in profuse carelessness. And it was in this library that Cope and Medora Phillips met.

"You've been neglecting me," she said.

"But how can I——?" he began.

"Yes, I know," she returned generously. "But after