The Incomplete Amorist

"I wish I were like him," said he,--"at any rate, in his paintings."

"At any rate--yes. But one can't have everything, you know. You have qualities which he hasn't--qualities that you wouldn't exchange for any qualities of his."

"That wasn't what I meant; I--the fact is, I like old Vernon, but I can't understand him."

"That philosophy of life eludes you still? Now, I understand him, but I don't always like him--not all of him."

"I wonder whether anyone understands him?"

"He's not such a sphinx as he looks!" Her tone betrayed a slight pique--"Now, your character would be much harder to read. That's one of the differences."

"We are all transparent enough--to those who look through the right glasses," said Temple. "And part of my character is my inability to find any glass through which I could see him clearly."

This comparison of his character and Vernon's, with its sudden assumption of intimacy, charmed yet embarrassed him.

She saw both emotions and pitied him a little. But it was necessary to interest this young man enough to keep him there till Vernon should return. Then Vernon would see her home, and she might find out something, however little, about Betty. But if this young man went she too must go. She could not outstay him in the rooms of his friend. So she talked on, and Temple was just as much at her mercy as Betty had been at the mercy of the brother artist in the rabbit warren at Long Barton.

But at seven o'clock Vernon had not returned, and it was, after all, Temple who saw her home.

Temple, free from the immediate enchantment of her presence, felt the revival of a resentful curiosity.

Why had Betty refused his help? Why had she sought Vernon's? Why did women treat him as though he were a curate and Vernon as though he were a god? Well--Lady St. Craye at least had not treated him as curates are treated.