or some
reason I refrained from taking the cue. I would not lug him in either.

'That is a new accomplishment,' was as much as I felt I could say with
dignity, and she responded:

'Yes, isn't it?'

I felt some slight indignation on Lady Pilkey's account. 'Do you really
think you ought to do things like that at the eleventh hour?' I asked,
but Dora smiled at a glance, the hypocrisy out of my face.

'What does anything matter?' she demanded.

I knew perfectly well the standard by which nothing mattered, and there
was no use, of course, in going on pretending that I did not.

'I assured him that you didn't paint,' I said, accusingly.

'Oh, I had to--otherwise what was there to go upon? He would have been
found only to be lost again. You did not contemplate that?' Miss Harris
inquired sweetly.

'I should have thought it was the surest way of losing him.'

'I can't think why you should be so rude. He observes progress already.'

'With a view to claiming and holding him, would it be of any use,' I
asked, 'for me to start in oils?'

Miss Harris eyed me calmly.

'I don't know,' she said, 'but it doesn't seem the same thing somehow. I
think you had better leave it to me.'

'Indeed, I won't,' I said; 'there is too much in it,' and we smiled
across the gulf of our friendly understanding.

I crossed to the mantelpiece and picked up one of the little wet panels.
There was that in it which explained my friend's exultation much more
plainly than words.

'That is what I am to show him tomorrow,' she exclaimed; 'I think I have
done as he told me. I think it's pretty right.'

Whether it was pretty right or pretty wrong, she had taken in an
extraordinary way an essence out of him. It wasn't of course good,
but his feeling was reflected in it, at once so brilliantly and so
profoundly that it was startling to see.

'Do you think he'll be pleased?' she asked, anxiously.

'I think he'll be astounded,' I said, reserving the rest, and she cried
in her pleasure, 'Oh, you dear man!'

'I see you have taken possession of him,' I went on.

'Ah, body and soul,' Dora rejoined, and it must have been something like
that. I could imagine how she did it; with what wiles of simplicity and
candid good-fellowship she had drawn him to forgetfulness and response,
and how presently his enthusiasm leaped up to answer hers and they had
been caught altogether out of the plane of common relations, and he had
gone away on that disgraceful ba