Between Friends

“It sounded like somebody—probably Montaigne. Was it?” he inquired.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh. Then it wasn’t. You’re a funny little girl, aren’t you?”

“Yes, rather.”

“On purpose?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

He looked into her very clear eyes, now brightly blue with intelligent perception of his not too civil badinage.

“And sometimes,” he went on, “you’re funny when you don’t intend to be.”

“You are, too, Mr. Drene.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you know it?”

A dull color tinted his cheek bones.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t know it.”

“But you are. For instance, you don’t walk; you stalk. You do what novelists make their gloomy heroes do—you stride. It’s rather funny.”

“Really. And do you find my movements comic?”

She was a trifle scared, now, but she laughed her breathless, youthful laugh:

“You are really very dramatic—a perfect story-book man. But, you know, sometimes they are funny when the author doesn’t intend them to be.... Please don’t be angry.”

Why the impudence of a model should have irritated him he was at a loss to understand—unless there lurked under that impudence a trace of unflattering truth.

As he sat looking at her, all at once, and in an unexpected flash of self-illumination, he realized that habit had made of him an actor; that for a while—a long while—a space of time he could not at the moment conveniently compute—he had been playing a role merely because he had become accustomed to it.

Disaster had cast him for a part. For a long while he had been that part. Now he was still playing it from sheer force of habit. His tragedy had really become only the shadow of a memory. Already he had emerged from that shadow into the everyday outer world. But he had forgotten that he still wore a somber makeup and costume which in the sunshine might appear grotesque. No wonder the world thought him funny.

Glancing up from a perplexed and chagrined meditation he caught her eye—and found it penitent, troubled, and anxious.

“You’re quite right,” he said, smiling easily and naturally; “I am unintentionally funny. And I really didn’t know it—didn’t suspect it—until this moment.”

“Oh,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean—I know you are often unhappy—”

“Nonsense!”

“You are! Anybody can see—and you really do not seem to be very old, either—when you smile—”

“I’m not very old,” he said, amused. “I’m not unhappy, either. If I ever was, the truth is that I’ve almost forgotten by this time what it was all about—”

“A woman,” she quoted, “between friends”—and checked herself, frightened that she had dared interpret Quair’s malice.

He changed countenance at that; the dull red of anger clouded his visage.

“Oh,” she faltered, “I was not saucy, only sorry.... I have been sorry for you so long—”

“Who intimated to you that a woman ever played any part in my career?”

“It’s generally supposed. I don’t know anything more than that. But I’ve been—sorry. Love is a very dreadful thing,” she said under her breath.

“Is it?” he asked, controlling a sudden desire to laugh.

“Don’t you think so?”

“I have not thought of it that way, recently.... I haven’t thought about it at all—for some years.... Have you?” he added, trying to speak gravely.

“Oh, yes. I have thought of it,” she admitted.

“And you conclude it to be a rather dreadful business?”

“Yes, it is.”

“How?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A girl usually loves the wrong man. To be poor is always bad enough, but to be in love, too, is really very dreadful. It usually finishes us—you know.”

“Are you in love?” he inquired, managing to repress his amusement.

“I could be. I know that much.” She went to the sink, turned on the water, washed her hands, and stood with dripping fingers looking about for a towel.

“I’ll get you one,” he said. When he brought it, she laughed and held out her hands to be dried.

“Do you think you are a Sultana?” he inquired, draping the towel across her outstretched arms and leaving it there.

“I thought perhaps you’d dry them,” she said sweetly.

“Not in the business,” he remarked; and lighted his pipe.

Her hands were her particular beauty, soft and snowy. She was much in demand among painters, and had posed many times for pictures of the Virgin, her hands usually resting against her breast.

Now she bestowed great care upon them, thoroughly drying each separate, slender finger. Then she pushed back the heavy masses of her hair—“a miracle of silk and sunshine,” as Quair had whispered to her. That same hair, also, was very popular among painters.

It was her figure that fascinated sculptors.

“Are you ready?” grunted Drene. Work presently recommenced.

She was entirely accustomed to praise from men, for her general attractiveness, for various separate features in what really was an unusually lovely ensemble.