Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/358

 return to Paris had been postponed several times, for reasons which were never entirely definite but which everyone, including himself, accepted without question—indeed with enthusiasm.

"What on earth are those?" asked Rhoda one Sunday morning when he had remained in bed with a cold and she had come in to see that he had had a suitable breakfast.

She was pointing to a heap of papers that he had neglected to replace in his portfolio, and for a moment he thought she was referring to the novel about how tragic life was, and was groping frantically in his mind for an alibi, when he raised himself on his pillow and saw that she was holding the sketches he had made for her father.

"What darling little birds!" she laughed, and then, as she glanced through the other sketches, her astonishment grew.

Grover had meant to show them to her but had postponed the occasion, to avoid the inevitable pain for her, and had ended by overlooking their existence. He explained how they had come into being.

Rhoda forgot her interest in his breakfast, and while he balanced the heavy tray on his thighs she lost herself in the playful propaganda he had written with a pen to which he had given carte blanche.

No one had ever looked at his portraits and land-