Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/227

Rh to undertake it. I didn't want to do it. I can't do a pot-boiler of that size!"

He smiled, took out his cigarette-case—and her hand slipped from his arm—and began to smoke with quick, nervous exhalations of relief.

"I'm punished," he said. "I started the thing to please you, Isabel, and, worse still, for the money. I felt like a slave. I don't believe I could have finished it. You're perfectly right to dislike it. Good Lord, how glad I am you dislike it! Now, if you'll forgive me for being a bungler and wasting your time, we can forget it. Do forgive me, will you?"

"I really don't think I shall," said Isabel slowly, clasping and unclasping her nervous fingers. "I don't like to waste my time, as you say. And I think it's childish of you to be so piqued by a hasty word of mine"

"It isn't that, dear Isabel—it really isn't that, but something deeper—my conviction that I wasn't making a good thing of it, and couldn't. I haven't liked it from the start. I hadn't the mood for it. I couldn't see it. I didn't like that dress, for one thing"

"Then why didn't you say so? You know I would have taken any other"

"No, it was your choice, and I was trying to do this simply and solely for you, and that's the reason I've failed. I'm enough of an artist anyhow not to be able to do anything good