“Why, I don't go about blustering and carving my fellow-citizens into mincemeat.”
“No. But you--” She began unreflectingly, then she stopped short in confusion. Cyrano, Roxana, Christian; Jimmie, Norma, Morland--the parallel was of an embarrassing nicety. She lost her head, reddened, saw that Jimmie had filled the gap.
“I don't care,” she cried. “You _are_ like him. It's splendid, but it's senseless. You are worth a million of the other man, and she knows it as well as I do.”
She vindictively stitched at the cuff. Jimmie made no reply, but lay back smoking his pipe. Aline recovered and grew remorseful. She had destroyed with an idiotic word the little atmosphere of gaiety she had succeeded in creating. She pricked her finger several times At last she rose and knelt by his side.
“I'm sorry, Jimmie. Don't be vexed with me.”
He looked at her, wrinkling his forehead half humorously, half sadly, and patted her cheek.
“No, dear,” he said. “But I think Slawkenbergius's the better tale. Shall I read it you again?”
“Oh, no, Jimmie,” cried the girl, half crying, half laughing. “Please don't, for heaven's sake. I've not been as naughty as that!”
She resumed her sewing. They talked of daily things. Theodore Weever's purchases. The faun--he was sorry to lose it after its companionship for all these years. He would paint a replica--but it would not be the same thing. Other times, other feelings. Gradually the conversation grew spasmodic, dwindled. Jimmie brooded over his mystery, and Aline stitched in silence.
The whirr of the front door-bell aroused them. Aline put down her work.
Renshaw, a broken-down, out-at-heels, drunken black-and-white artist, once of amazing talent, was almost the only member of a large Bohemian coterie who continued to regard Jimmie as at home to his friends on Sunday evenings. Jimmie bore with the decayed man, and helped him on his way, and was pained when Aline insisted upon opening the windows after his departure. Renshaw had been a subject of contention between them for years.
“He has only come to drink whisky and borrow money. Luckily we have n't any whisky in the house,” said Aline.
“We can give him beer, my child. And if the man is in need of half a crown, God forbid we should deny it him. Has Hannah come home yet?”