"
"Yes, he is fond of you, and I think he knows there is something in
impressionism, after all. Maisie, can't you see?"
"See? See what?"
"Nothing; only, I know that if I could get any man to look at me as that man
looks at you, I'd--I don't know what I'd do. But he hates me. Oh, how he hates
me!"
She was not altogether correct. Dick's hatred was tempered with gratitude for a
few moments, and then he forgot the girl entirely. Only the sense of shame
remained, and he was nursing it across the Park in the fog. "There'll be an
explosion one of these days," he said wrathfully. "But it isn't Maisie's fault;
she's right, quite right, as far as she knows, and I can't blame her. This
business has been going on for three months nearly. Three months!--and it cost
me ten years" knocking about to get at the notion, the merest raw notion, of my
work. That's true; but then I didn't have pins, drawing-pins, and palette-
knives, stuck into me every Sunday.
"Oh, my little darling, if ever I break you, somebody will have a very bad time
of it. No, she won't. I"d be as big a fool about her as I am now. I'll poison
that red-haired girl on my wedding-day,--she's unwholesome,--and now I'll pass
on these present bad times to Torp.
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