The Incomplete Amorist

She drew her quickly away, and led her up to a glaring poster where a young woman in a big red hat sat at a café table, and under cover of Betty's purely automatic recognition of the composition's talent, murmured: "Which of them was it?"

"I beg your pardon?" Betty mechanically offered the deferent defence.

"Which was it that said the three polite words--before you'd ever met anyone else?"

"Ah!" said Betty, "you're so clever--"

"Too clever to live, yes," said Miss Voscoe; "but before I die--which was it?"

"I was going to say," said Betty, her face slowly drawing back into itself its natural colouring, "that you're so clever you don't want to be told things. If you're sure it's one of them, you ought to know which."

"Well," remarked Miss Voscoe, "I guess Mr. Temple."

"Didn't I say you were clever?" said Betty.

"Then it's the other one."

Before the studio tea was over, Vernon and Temple both had conveyed to Betty the information that it was the hope of meeting her that had drawn them to Miss Voscoe's studio that afternoon.

"Because, after all," said Vernon, "we do know each other better than either of us knows anyone else in Paris. And, if you'd let me, I could put you to a thing or two in the matter of your work. After all, I've been through the mill."

"It's very kind of you," said Betty, "but I'm all alone now Paula's gone, and--"

"We'll respect the conventions," said Vernon gaily, "but the conventions of the Quartier Latin aren't the conventions of Clapham."

"No, I know," said she, "but there's a point of honour." She paused. "There are reasons," she added, "why I ought to be more conventional than Clapham. I should like to tell you, some time, only--But I haven't got anyone to tell anything to. I wonder--"

"What? What do you wonder?"

Betty spoke with effort.

"I know it sounds insane, but, you know my stepfather thought you--you wanted to marry me. You didn't ever, did you?"

Vernon was silent: none of his habitual defences served him in this hour.

"You see," Betty went on, "all that sort of thing is such nonsense. If I knew you cared about someone else everything would be so simple."

"Eliminate love," said Vernon, "and the world is a simple example in vulgar fractions."