Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/244

236 receiving the portrait,' she concluded, 'by to-morrow evening at latest.'

I felt, before this speech was over, so sorry for her interlocutor that I was on the point of asking her if she mightn't finish him without my help. But I had lighted a flame that was to consume me too, and I was aware of the scorch of it while I watched Mr. Beston plead frankly, if tacitly, that, though there was something in him not to be finished, she must yet give him a moment and let him take his time to look about him at pictures and books. He took it with more coolness than I; then he produced his answer. 'You shall receive it to-morrow morning if you'll do what I asked the last time.' I could see more than he how the last time had been overlaid by what had since come up; so that, as she opposed a momentary blank, I felt almost a coarseness in his recall of it with an 'Oh, you know—you know!'

Yes, after a little she knew, and I need scarcely add that I did. I felt, in the oddest way, by this time, that she was conscious of my penetration and wished to make me, for the loss now so clearly beyond repair, the only compensation in her power. This compensation consisted of her showing me that she was indifferent to my having guessed the full extent of the privilege that, on the occasion to which he alluded, she had permitted Mr. Beston to put before her. The balm for my wound was therefore to see what she resisted. She resisted Mr. Beston in more ways than one. 'And if I don't do it?' she demanded.

'I'll simply keep your picture!'

'To what purpose if you don't use it?'

'To keep it is to use it,' Mr. Beston said.

'He has only to keep it long enough,' I added, and with the intention that may be imagined, 'to bring you round, by the mere sense of privation, to meet him on the other ground.'

Miss Delavoy took no more notice of this speech than if she had not heard it, and Mr. Beston showed that he had heard it