Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/189

Rh " Oh well," began the man, frowning again, "if you like hanging about"

"I don't like it a bit," she assured him, earnestly. "It is the stupidest occupation imaginable. You should just try it and see!"

But this he showed no anxiety to do, for the mere suggestion precipitated him into his studio again, and she concluded that the frown must have been nervousness after all. She returned to her seat on the stairs, but had hardly settled herself in her corner when the door opened behind her once more, and the owner of the middle studio was again jerking out his abrupt remarks at her back.

"It's no use staying out there in the cold," he said, as though she were somehow morally responsible for the inclemency of the weather. "There's a fire in here, and my model hasn't come back yet. You can come in and wait, if you like."

"All right; I don't mind if I do," she said carelessly, and followed him in. Common gratitude or even civility, she felt, would have been wasted on a man who threw his hospitality at her head; and it was only the unfriendliness of the stone stairs outside, and perhaps her desire for adventure as well, that made her accept his offer at all. But when he did not even trouble to give her a chair, and resumed his occupation of stretching a paper on a board without noticing her in the least, Anna began to feel puzzled as well as slighted. He was certainly odd, and she always liked odd people; he might be nervous into the bargain, and nervousness was a failing so far removed from her own personality that she was always inclined to tolerate it in another; but neither nerves nor eccentricity could quite explain his want of manners, and she had never had to endure discourtesy from a man before. She prepared resentfully to assert herself, but before she had time Rh