Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/221

Rh case stood, he had seen she would 'do.' I, too, had seen it, but then I was a critic: these remarks will sadly have miscarried if they fail to show the reader how much of one.

 III

my paper and my disappointment, but I think it was only in the light of subsequent events that I could fix an impression of his having, at the moment, looked a trifle embarrassed. He smote his brow and took out his tablets; he deplored the accident of which I complained, and promised to look straight into it. An accident it could only have been, the result of a particular pressure, a congestion of work. Of course he had had my letter and had fully supposed it had been answered and acted on. My spirits revived at this, and I almost thought the incident happy when I heard Miss Delavoy herself put a clear question.

'It won't be for April, then, which was what I had hoped?' It was what I had hoped, goodness knew, but if I had had no anxiety I should not have caught the low, sweet ring of her own. It made Mr. Beston's eyes fix her a moment, and, though the thing has as I write it a fatuous air, I remember thinking that he must at this instant have seen in her face almost all his contributor saw. If he did he couldn't wholly have enjoyed it; yet he replied genially enough: 'I'll put it into June.'

'Oh, June!' our companion murmured in a manner that I took as plaintive—even as exquisite.

Mr. Beston had got up. I had not promised myself to sit him out, much less to drive him away; and at this sign of his retirement I had a sense still dim, but much deeper, of being literally lifted by my check. Even before it was set up my article was somehow operative, so that I could look from one of my companions to the other and quite magnanimously smile. 'June will do very well.' 