Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/88

78 her in that fashion he would not have wanted to marry her. She bloomed there, on the easel, as brightly as in life, and the artist had caught the sweet essence of her beauty. It was exactly the way in which her lover would have chosen that she should be represented, and yet it had required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston Probert mused on this mystery and somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it was as little his property, as yet, as the young lady herself.

When, in December, he told Waterlow of his plan of campaign the latter said, "I will do anything in the world you like—anything you think will help you—but it passes me, my dear fellow why in the world you don't go to them and say, 'I've seen a girl who is as good as cake and pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I've taken time to think of it and I know what I want: therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you happen to like her so much the better; if you don't be so good as to keep it to yourselves.' That is much the most excellent way. Why, gracious heaven, all these mysteries and machinations?"

"Oh, you don't understand, you don't understand!" sighed Gaston Probert, with many wrinkles on his brow. "One can't break with one's traditions in an hour, especially when there is so much in them that one likes. I shall not love her more if they like her, but I shall love them more, and