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54 and the hardest drinker of them all; but now he had become more Teresa's friend than Basil's.

By the time the grapefruit had gone its way, and the soup had proved to be really clear, and the whisky decanter had been twice round the table, the slight constraint in which the meal began had vanished. Basil, as his hunger was appeased, regained his good humour; but Teresa avoided looking at him, and her smile, as she listened to the talk or joined in it now and then, was by no means gay. Basil's roughness always took her by surprise, and always wounded her, especially when it came close on the heels of a passionate expression of his love. She then felt not only pain, but humiliation, and a sort of anger very different from his—not quick, not forced to expression, but half-dormant somewhere in darkness, slow to disappear. Basil called it "the sulks," and much preferred his own kind. "At least, I get it out and over with," he would argue.

Now he sought Teresa's eyes across the table, which was gay with sunlight and yellow daffodils, in little vases of Italian pottery, and silver dishes full of sweets, and Mexican lace-work fine as cobwebs; for, even if meals were late, Teresa always had a pretty table. But she would not look at him, till at last he asked her a direct question.

"Teresa, will you pose for me this afternoon?