Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/247

Rh You're the right one. What a misery,' I pursued, 'for us not to be "on" you!'

His eyes showed me for a second that he yet saw how our not being on him did just have for it that it could facilitate such a speech; then they rested afresh on Miss Delavoy, and that brought him back to firm ground. 'I don't think you can imagine how it will come out.'

He was astride of the portrait again, and presently again she had focussed him. 'If it does come out!' she began, poor girl; but it was not to take her far.

'Well, if it does?'

'He means what will you do then?' I observed, as she had nothing to say.

'Mr. Beston will see,' she at last replied with a perceptible lack of point.

He took this up in a flash. 'My dear young lady, it's you who'll see; and when you've seen you'll forgive me. Only wait till you do!' He was already at the door, as if he quite believed in what he should gain by the gain, from this moment, of time. He stood there but an instant—he looked from one of us to the other. 'It will be a ripping little thing!' he remarked; and with that he left us gaping.

 VIII

first use I made of our rebound was to say with intensity: 'What will you do if he does?'

'Does publish the picture?' There was an instant charm to me in the privacy of her full collapse and the sudden high tide of our common defeat. 'What can I? It's all very well; but there's nothing to be done. I want never to see him again. There's only something,' she went on, 'that you can do.'

'Prevent him?—get it back? I'll do, be sure, my utmost; but it will be difficult without a row.'

'What do you mean by a row?' she asked. 