“You dear, foolish old chap,” said Wither, “can't you see that very little would make her in love with you, if she is not so already? Why should you two not get married?”
“I marry!” gasped Kent, as if struck by a new idea. “I ask Clytie Davenant, with her beauty and intellect and genius, to come and share--this! Clytie Davenant marry me! Why, the idea is ludicrous--preposterous!”
“If I were she, I should not think so,” said Wither affectionately.
Kent shook his head gloomily, and kicked the smouldering coal into a fitful blaze.
“No. Until she shows me unmistakably--which can be never--that she cares for me in that way, I would sooner bite my tongue out than tell her.”
“Until she asks you to marry her, in fact! John Kent, you are two years older than I am, and three times as big. But verily you are a little child! And if you weren't,” he added impulsively, with a soft glitter in his elfin eyes, “you would not be the lovable old chap that you are! Good-bye!”
“Oh, stay a little, Teddy!” cried Kent. “I'm not much company, but I----”
“Come round with me and have some dinner, then,” interrupted Wither. “It will occupy your body--if not your mind. And it will be better for you than the bottled beer and sardines which you usually feast upon. I shall be quite alone and you can do some work for me.”
“All right!” replied Kent dejectedly. “It does not matter what I do.”
Wither turned his face to the fire, while Kent prepared to go out. When he turned round Kent was holding the cash-box in his hand. The handkerchief and letter were gone from the table, and Wither smiled inwardly. He had himself disposed of many such trifles in a similar way. Men are very much alike in several matters.
The atmosphere of Durdleham was uninspiring. Clytie could make no progress with her picture, and at last she laid it aside in despair. She had set her heart upon painting it, and the thoughts of it worried her, prevented her from sleeping. Not only would it give her fame, satisfy her ambition, stimulated by the success of “Jack,” but it would satisfy certain cravings of her soul. And yet she was conscious that only when these cravings found articulate utterance could the haunting shadows be fixed. The lack, therefore, seemed to lie in herself: whether in her spiritual nature or in her material experience of the world she could not tell; perhaps it was a subtle combination of the two. She could not bring her lens of introspection to a focus. What she saw through it was blurred and inchoate.