Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/51

THE IVORY TOWER had planned it as a great occasion much before; that in short his thoughts were elsewhere and that I could have made out the trouble in his face if I hadn't wished not to seem to look for it. I hated that he should have it, whatever it was—just how I hated it comes back to me as if from yesterday; and also how at the same time I pretended not to notice, and he attempted not to show he did, but to introduce me, in the rooms, to what we had come for instead—which gave us half-an-hour that I recover vividly, recover, I assure you, quite painfully still, as a conscious, solemn little farce. What put an end to it was that we at last wandered away from the great things, the famous Madonna, the Correggio, the Paul Veroneses, which he had quavered out the properest remarks about, and got off into a small room of little Dutch and other later masters, things that didn't matter and that we couldn't pretend to go into, but where the German sunshine of a bright winter day came down through some upper light and played on all the rich little old colour and old gilding after a fashion that of a sudden decided me. 'I don't care a hang for anything!' I stood before him and boldly spoke out: 'I haven't cared a hang since we came in, if you want to know—I care only for what you're worried about, and what must be pretty bad, since I can see, if you don't mind my saying it, that it has made you cry at home.'" 37