she looked at him anxiously. "Why are you doing that?" she asked.
"Don't you want the picture?"
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Give it to you, I guess. For a wedding-present, Mary."
"You mustn't say those things," said Mary, gravely. She went on working, but her face was serious.
"It's queer, isn't it," remarked Wilmer, after a pause, "this notion you've got that Marshby's the only one that could possibly do? I began asking you first."
"Please!" said Mary. Her eyes were full of tears. That was rare for her, and Wilmer saw it meant a shaken poise. She was less certain to-day of her own fate. It made her more responsively tender toward his. He sat up and looked at her.
"No," he said. "No. I won't ask you again. I never meant to. Only I have to speak of it once in a while. We should have such a tremendously good time together."
"We have a tremendously good time now," said Mary, the smile coming while she again put up the back of her hand and brushed her eyes. "When you're good."
"When I help all the other little boys at the table, and don't look at the nice heart-shaped cake I want myself? It's frosted, and got little pink things all over the top. There! don't drop the corners of your mouth. If I were asked what kind of a world I'd like to live in, I'd say one where the corners of Mary's mouth keep quirked up all the time. Let's talk about Marshby's picture. It's going to be your Marshby."
"What do you mean?"
"Not Marshby's Marshby—yours."
"You're not going to play some dreadful joke on him?" Her eyes were blazing under knotted brows.
"Mary!" Wilmer spoke gently, and though the tone recalled her, she could not forbear at once, in her hurt pride and loyalty.
"You're not going to put him into any masquerade?—to make him anything but what he is?"
"Mary, don't you think that's a little hard on an old chum?"
"I can't help it." Her cheeks were hot, though now it was with shame. "Yes, I am mean, jealous, envious. I see you with everything at your feet—"
"Not quite everything," said Jerome. "Not quite. I know it makes you hate me."
"No! no!" The real woman had awakened in her, and she turned to him in a whole-hearted honesty. "Only, they say you do such wizard things when you paint. I never saw any of your pictures, you know, except the ones you did of me. And they're not me. They're lovely—angels with women's clothes on. Aunt Celia says if I looked like that I'd carry all before me. But, you see, you've always been—partial to me."
"And you think I'm not partial to Marshby?"
"It isn't that. It's only that they say you look inside people and drag out what is there. And inside him—oh, you'd see his hatred of himself!" The tears were rolling unregarded down her face.
"This is dreadful," said Wilmer, chiefly to himself. "Dreadful."
"There!" said Mary, drearily, emptying the pods from her apron into the basket at her side. "I suppose I've done it now. I've spoiled the picture."
"No," returned Jerome, thoughtfully, "you haven't spoiled the picture. Really I began it with a very definite conception of what I was going to do. It will be done in that way or not at all."
"You're very kind," said Mary, humbly. "I didn't mean to act like this."
"No,"—he spoke out of a maze of reflection, not looking at her. "You have an idea he's under the microscope with me. It makes you nervous."
She nodded, and then caught herself up.
"There's nothing you mightn't see," she said, proudly, ignoring her previous outburst. "You or anybody else, even with a microscope."
"No, of course not. Only you'd say microscopes aren't fair. Well, perhaps they're not. And portrait-painting is a very simple matter. It's not the black art. But if I go on with this, you are to let me do it in my own way. You're not to look at it."
"Not even when you're not at work?"
"Not once, morning, noon, or night, till I invite you to. You were always a
