She turned about on him and jumped to her
feet.
"Sorry--you're sorry? YOU'RE sorry? Why, what earthly difference will it
make to YOU?" She drew back a few steps and lifted her slender arms from
her sides. "Look at me--see how I look--how I'm going to look! YOU
won't hate yourself more and more every morning when you get up and see
yourself in the glass! YOUR life's going on just as usual! But what's
mine going to be for months and months? And just as I'd been to all this
bother--fagging myself to death about all these things--" her tragic
gesture swept the disordered room--"just as I thought I was going home
to enjoy myself, and look nice, and see people again, and have a little
pleasure after all our worries--" She dropped back on the sofa with
another burst of tears. "For all the good this rubbish will do me now! I
loathe the very sight of it!" she sobbed with her face in her hands.
XIV
It was one of the distinctions of Mr. Claud Walsingham Popple that his
studio was never too much encumbered with the attributes of his art
to permit the installing, in one of its cushioned corners, of an
elaborately furnished tea-table flanked by the most varied seductions
in sandwiches and pastry.
Mr. Popple, like all great men, had at first had his ups and downs; but
his reputation had been permanently established by the verdict of a
wealthy patron who, returning from an excursion into other fields of
portraiture, had given it as the final fruit of his experience that
Popple was the only man who could "do pearls.
Pages:
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173