Quicksand
“that though I don‘t entirely understand you, yet in a way I do too. And—” He hesitated. Went on. “I think that my picture of you is, after all, the true Helga Crane. Therefore—a tragedy. For someone. For me? Perhaps.”
“Oh, the picture!” Helga lifted her shoulders in a little impatient motion.
Ceremoniously Axel Olsen bowed himself out, leaving her grateful for the urbanity which permitted them to part without too much awkwardness. No other man, she thought, of her acquaintance could have managed it so well—except, perhaps, Robert Anderson.
“I‘m glad,” she declared to herself in another moment, “that I refused him. And,” she added honestly, “I‘m glad that I had the chance. He took it awfully well, though—for a tragedy.” And she made a tiny frown.
The picture—she had never quite, in spite of her deep interest in him, and her desire for his admiration and approval, forgiven Ol-
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