Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/216

208 "One of those dozen canvases with their backs to us?"

"One of those perhaps."

"Haven't you tried to see?"

"I haven't touched them," said Biddy, colouring.

"Hasn't Nick had it out to show you?"

"He says it's in too bad a state—it isn't finished—it won't do."

"And haven't you had the curiosity to turn it round for yourself?"

The embarrassed look in poor Biddy's face deepened, and it seemed to Sherringham that her eyes pleaded with him a moment, that there was a menace of tears in them, a gleam of anguish. "I've had an idea he wouldn't like it."

Her visitor's own desire however had become too lively for easy forbearance. He laid his hand on two or three canvases which proved, as he extricated them, to be either blank or covered with rudimentary forms. "Dear Biddy, are you as docile, as obliging as that?" he asked, pulling out something else.

The inquiry was meant in familiar kindness, for Peter was struck, even to admiration, with the girl's having a sense of honour which all girls have not. She must in this particular case have longed for a sight of Nick's work—the work which had brought about such a crisis in his life. But she had passed hours in his studio alone, without permitting herself a stolen peep; she was capable of that if she believed it would please him. Sherringham liked a charming girl's being capable of that (he had known charming girls who would not have been), and his question was really an expression of respect. Biddy,