Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/233

Rh telegram had fallen in with complications at which I could only guess; it had not found her quiet; she was living in a troubled air. But her wonder leaped from her lips. 'He does want two?'

I had brought in my proof with me, putting it in my hat and my hat on a chair. 'Oh, no—he wants only one, only yours.'

Her wonder deepened. 'He won't print?'

'My poor old stuff! He returns it with thanks.'

'Returns it? When he had accepted it!'

'Oh, that doesn't prevent—when he doesn't like it.'

'But he does; he did. He liked it to me. He called it "sympathetic."'

'He only meant that you are—perhaps even that I myself am. He hadn't read it then. He read it but a day or two ago, and horror seized him.'

Miss Delavoy dropped into a chair. 'Horror?'

'I don't know how to express to you the fault he finds with it.' I had gone to the fire, and I looked to where it peeped out of my hat; my companion did the same, and her face showed the pain she might have felt, in the street, at sight of the victim of an accident. 'It appears it's indecent.'

She sprang from her chair. 'To describe my brother?'

'As I've described him. That, at any rate, is how my account sins. What I've said is unprintable.' I leaned against the chimney-piece with a serenity of which, I admit, I was conscious; I rubbed it in and felt a private joy in watching my influence.

'Then what have you said?'

'You know perfectly. You heard my thing from beginning to end. You said it was beautiful.'

She remembered as I looked at her; she showed all the things she called back. 'It was beautiful.' I went over and picked it up; I came back with it to the fire. 'It was the best thing ever said about him,' she went on. 'It was the finest and truest.'