"The only bother with the arrangement," he said, looking serious, "is that it takes your time. Ought n't you to be at Julien's this morning?"
She had forgotten about Julien's. Yet for the last two years it had been the very center of her own individual life. Now the crowded studio, the smell of turpentine, the odd cosmopolitan gathering of fellow students, the little pangs following the bitter criticisms of the master, receded into the background until they became as a dream of long ago.
"I don't think I shall ever go to Julien's again," she answered.
"But look here--that won't do," he objected. "If I'm to interfere with all your plans--"
"It isn't that, Monte," she assured him. "Ever since I came back this last time, I knew I did n't belong there. When Aunt Kitty was alive it was all the opportunity I had; but now--" She paused.
"I have my hands full with you until you get out again," she answered lightly.
"That's what I object to," he said; "If being engaged is going to pin you down, then I don't think you ought to be engaged. You've had enough of that in your life."
The curious feature of her present position was that she had no sense of being pinned down. She had thought of this in the night. She had never felt freer in her life. Within a few hours of her engagement she had been able to do exactly what she wished to do without a single qualm of conscience. She had been able to come here and look after him in this emergency. She would have done this anyway, but she knew how Marcellin and his assistant and even Nurse Duval would have made her pay for her act--an act based upon nothing but decent loyalty and honest responsibility. Raised eyebrows--gossip in the air--covert smiles--the whole detestable atmosphere of intrigue with which they would have surrounded her, had vanished as by a spell before the magic word fiancée. She was breathing air like that upon the mountain-tops. It was sweet and clean and bracing.
"Monte," she said, "I'm doing at this moment just exactly what I want to do; and you can't understand what a treat that is, because you've always done just exactly as you wanted. I 'm sure I 'm entirely selfish about this, because--because I'm not making any sacrifice. You can't understand that, either, Monte,--so please don't try. I think we'd better not talk any more about it. Can't we just let it go on as it is a little while?"