nately in this
case it's not. Then you'll excuse me if I take off my coat?"

"Yes, I want you to--coat, collar, and tie; so that I can sketch your
neck down to the base of the throat."

"Ah!" I said, drawing off my coat, "I was wondering how you were going
to fix up Hyacinthus with a lavender tie!"

She deigned no answer to that, and sat down just in front of me. A
piece of plain drawing paper was put upon the easel before the canvas.

"Will you raise your head more? and throw your eyes up? higher, above
my head!"

"May I not look straight at you?"

"No: up! up! to the window above me!"

"Won't you come and put me in the right position?"

"No. I am sure you have intellect enough to understand verbal
directions."

"Well there," I said, throwing myself into the position she wanted;
"that is easy: but how about that jolly expression? where's that to
come from?"

"Can't you imagine for a moment that you are successful, and we are
married?"

"A pretty good stretch of the imagination that!" I muttered, "as things
are at present!"

And involuntarily I brought my eyes down from the window to the pale,
delicate, abstracted face opposite me. I did not intend to convey any
reproach to her, but perhaps she thought so, for she seemed to answer
that which she took to be in my mind.

"But, Victor, you know," she said, laying down the pencil she had just
taken up, "it is in your own hands. I am willing to marry you when you
like!"

She said it very gently, but with just a touch of cold restraint that
irritated me excessively.

"Oh yes, I know it's all my own confounded fault, but that does not
make it any pleasanter. However, let all that pass. I'll look as
cheerful as I can."

There was a long silence. She was absorbed in the drawing, and I in my
own thoughts, as I stared through the upper pane, as directed, at the
grey, drifting, hurrying November clouds. Had I descried a quoit there
about to descend upon me I should have been rather pleased than not. At
last I became conscious of an intolerable crick in my neck.

"May I move?"

"Oh, one minute! one minute!" she answered, and her voice struck me. It
was faint, breathless, mechanical: the voice of a person whose whole
being is tense with some straining effort. At least fifteen more
minutes of silence passed.

"I say! I really must turn my head now!"

"No, no! not for worlds! Keep still!"

I kept still, but I felt sick with the peculiar cramp in my neck.