Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/239

Rh demi-jour.' He continued to smile at her as if he thoroughly hoped to kindle her, and it was interesting at that moment to get this vivid glimpse of his conception.

I could see it quickly enough break out in Miss Delavoy, who sounded for an instant almost assenting. 'And you want the obscurity and the mystery, the tantalising demi-jour, cleared up?'

'I want a little lovely, living thing! Don't be perverse,' he pursued, 'don't stand in your own light and in your brother's and in this young man's—in the long run, and in mine too and in every one's: just let us have him out as no one but you can bring him and as, by the most charming of enhances and a particular providence, he has been kept all this time just on purpose for you to bring. Really, you know'—his vexation would crop up—'one could howl to see such good stuff wasted!'

'Well,' our young lady returned, 'that holds good of one thing as well as of another. I can never hope to describe or express my brother as these pages describe and express him; but, as I tell you, approaching him from a different direction, I promise to do my very best. Only, my condition remains.'

Mr. Beston transferred his eyes from her face to the little bundle in her hand, where they rested with an intensity that made me privately wonder if it represented some vain vision of a snatch defeated in advance by the stupidity of his having suffered my copy to be multiplied. 'My printing that?'

'Your printing this.'

Mr. Beston wavered there between us: I could make out in him a vexed inability to keep us as distinct as he would have liked. But he was triumphantly light. 'It's impossible. Don't be a pair of fools!'

'Very well, then,' said Miss Delavoy; 'please send me back my drawing.'

'Oh dear, no!' Mr. Beston laughed. 'Your drawing we must have at any rate.'