Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/196

178 but to go and do it the next is unpardonable," she grumbled to herself, as she knocked at the door of the middle studio. She remembered with relief that Tom Hallaford had gone abroad for a few weeks, which considerably lessened the chances of detection; and for the rest — it was an adventure, and that was always something. So it was her usual smiling, rather impudent face that finally greeted Askett when he opened the door to her.

"So you didn't forget, after all? Made sure you would," he observed. "People who forget their own names can forget anything."

"I didn't forget my own name," said Anna, truthfully, a remark of which he naturally missed the point.

They did not talk at all for the first hour or so, and Anna began to feel distinctly bored. Being a model was not half so much fun as she had expected to find it, and it made her extremely sleepy. She had hoped for a new sensation, and the only one she felt was an overwhelming dulness. Nothing but her sense of the ridiculous prevented her from throwing up the whole game on the spot, but a single glance at his stern, uncompromising features kept her silent. "Just imagine how he would sneer!" she thought; and the mere idea made her toss her head and laugh scornfully.

"Keep still, please," he said, inexorably. "What's the joke?"

"That is precisely what I can't tell you," said Anna, laughing again. "If I did it wouldn't be a joke at all, you see."

"I'm afraid I don't, but that may be because I haven't known you long enough to have grasped your system of conversation. It's rather difficult to talk to a person who only tells you the ends of her thoughts, as it were. If I were a conjurer, or a medium, or somebody like that, it might be all right." Rh