'It's too good of you,--much too good. Because you are consoling yourself with what will never happen, and I know that, and yet I want to keep you. Don't blame me later, please.'
'I'm going into the matter with my eyes open. Moreover the Queen can do no wrong. It isn't your selfishness that impresses me. It's your audacity in proposing to make use of me.'
'Pooh! You're only ****,--and a print-shop.'
'Very good: that's all I am. But, Maisie, you believe, don't you, that I love you? I don't want you to have any false notions about brothers and sisters.'
Maisie looked up for a moment and dropped her eyes.
'It's absurd, but--I believe. I wish I could send you away before you get angry with me. But--but the girl that lives with me is red-haired, and an impressionist, and all our notions clash.'
'So do ours, I think. Never mind. Three months from to-day we shall be laughing at this together.'
Maisie shook her head mournfully. 'I knew you wouldn't understand, and it will only hurt you more when you find out. Look at my face, ****, and tell me what you see.'
They stood up and faced each other for a moment. The fog was gathering, and it stifled the roar of the traffic of London beyond the railings. **** brought all his painfully acquired knowledge of faces to bear on the eyes, mouth, and chin underneath the black velvet toque.
'It's the same Maisie, and it's the same me,' he said. 'We've both nice little wills of our own, and one or other of us has to be broken. Now about the future. I must come and see your pictures some day,--I suppose when the red-haired girl is on the premises.'
'Sundays are my best times. You must come on Sundays. There are such heaps of things I want to talk about and ask your advice about. Now Imust get back to work.'
'Try to find out before next Sunday what I am,' said ****. 'Don't take my word for anything I've told you. Good-bye, darling, and bless you.'
Maisie stole away like a little gray mouse. **** watched her till she was out of sight, but he did not hear her say to herself, very soberly, 'I'm a wretch,--a horrid, selfish wretch. But it's ****, and **** will understand.'
No one has yet explained what actually happens when an irresistible force meets the immovable post, though many have thought deeply, even as **** thought. He tried to assure himself that Maisie would be led in a few weeks by his mere presence and discourse to a better way of thinking. Then he remembered much too distinctly her face and all that was written on it.
'If I know anything of heads,' he said, 'there's everything in that face but love. I shall have to put that in myself; and that chin and mouth won't be won for nothing. But she's right. She knows what she wants, and she's going to get it. What insolence! Me! Of all the people in the wide world, to use me! But then she's Maisie. There's no getting over that fact; and it's good to see her again. This business must have been simmering at the back of my head for years. . . . She'll use me as I used Binat at Port Said.
She's quite right. It will hurt a little. I shall have to see her every Sunday,--like a young man courting a housemaid. She's sure to come around; and yet--that mouth isn't a yielding mouth. I shall be wanting to kiss her all the time, and I shall have to look at her pictures,--I don't even know what sort of work she does yet,--and I shall have to talk about Art,--Woman's Art! Therefore, particularly and perpetually, damn all varieties of Art. It did me a good turn once, and now it's in my way. I'll go home and do some Art.'
Half-way to the studio, **** was smitten with a terrible thought. The figure of a solitary woman in the fog suggested it.
