Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/157

A Puritan Bohemia But Mrs. Orr forbade him to open the window.

"Sure as you do, you'll have a relapse," she insisted, as she left the room, "and me with Tommy and Sarah and you all on my hands."

He sank meekly into a chair.

"I haven't the nerve to assert myself," he said. "My spirit is broken by an infant disease."

He looked languidly at the pile of mail that had accumulated on his table during the past weeks. Then he tore off the cover of the Art Review.

"My little sisters are both drowned," remarked Annabel mournfully.

"What little sisters?" he asked absent-mindedly. He was reading, not without interest, some comments on his work.

"Not a mere tour-de-force—a keenly intelligent facility—sensitive and thoughtful method—a not unnatural divergence into purely subjectless and impersonal motifs—subtle in effect, ingenious in process—note the intensity of expression"