Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/199

Rh, but it did not amuse her: she had never been lectured before, and she was not sure whether she felt angry or merely puzzled. Askett smiled slightly.

"That is hardly my fault," he replied. "I didn't suggest your vocation to you, did I?"

She was burning to tell him that he had, that he, and her own freakishness, and Fate, were entirely responsible for her vocation; but again the dread of his ridicule kept her silent, and she only baffled him once more by breaking into a peal of mirthful laughter.

"Oh, heavens!" he groaned. "How is one to deal with a thing like that? What in the name of wonder is the joke now?"

"It — it's the same joke as before," gasped Anna. " You really don't know what an awfully good joke it is."

"You must forgive me if I don't even want to find out," said Askett, shortly; and he got up and went to the window and looked out. The situation was not dignified, and he apostrophised the whole race of models, and wondered why they could not see that a chap wanted to work, instead of playing up to him with their hopelessly feminine ways. And then he realised that this particular one had stopped laughing, and was waiting for him to say some thing.

"Well? "he said gruffly.

"I'm awfully sorry," said Anna, who was secretly a little ashamed of herself. The"The [sic] fact is, I'm rather a new hand at being a model, and it still makes me feel drowsy, and if I hadn't talked nonsense just now I should have gone to sleep. It isn't so very long since I had to earn my own living, and one doesn't get used to it all at once, don't you know. Shall I go on sitting, now?"

He did not answer for a second or two. For the first time he had noticed her way of speaking, and it struck him that perhaps Rh