Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/271

 "Perhaps she does know. Everybody else knows."

"And perhaps she doesn't!" cried Hortense. "Tell her! Tell her!"

Cope stared. "She is a sweet girl," he repeated; "and she has been filling very discreetly a somewhat difficult position——"

He knew something of the suppressed bitterness which, in subordinate places, was often the lot of the pen. He found himself preferring, just here, "pen" to "typewriter": he would give Carolyn a touch of idealization—though she had afflicted him with a heavy stroke of embarrassment.

"'Difficult position'?" shrilled Hortense. "With Aunt Medora the very soul of kindness? I like that! Well, if you want to rescue her from her difficult position, do it. If you admire her—and love her—tell her so! Shell be grateful—just read those sonnets over again!"

Hortense dropped her palette and brushes and burst into outrageous tears.

Cope sat bolt upright in that spacious chair. "Tell her? I have nothing to tell her. I have nothing to tell anyone!"

His resonant words cut the air. They uttered decision. He did not mean to make the same mistake twice.

Hortense drew across her eyes an apron redolent of turpentine and stepped toward the throne.

"Nothing? Why this sudden refuge in silence?" she asked, almost truculently, even if tremulously.