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Jack, too, thought Imogen's life a flower so precious that it must be placed where it could best bloom; but, feeling in her dispassionateness a hurt to his hope that it would best bloom in his care, he asked: "Mightn't the making something of it come after the choice, dear?" Very clear as to what was her own meaning, Imogen shook her lovely, unconfused head.
She had seen that his eye was as much on Imogen as on herself. She had seen Imogen's eye meet his with a deep insistence. What it commanded, this eye, Valerie did not know, but she had grown accustomed to seeing such glances obeyed and she expected to watch, presently, Imogen's and Sir Basil's departure into the moonlit woods.
The girl led the way into Imogen's old bedroom, set ready for her toilet. June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the sere and yellow. Fleur locked the door. The girl stood before her divested of her wedding-dress. What a pretty thing she was! "I suppose you think me a fool," she said, with quivering lips, "when it was to have been Jon. But what does it matter?
Sir Basil asked abruptly, after another moment in which Imogen's hand grasped his tightly, its soft, warm fingers more potent in appeal than even her eyes had been. And now, again, she leaned toward him, her eyes inundating him with radiant trust and gratitude, her hands drawing his hand to her breast and holding it there, so clasped. "Will you? Oh, will you? dear Sir Basil."
Then the lovely lady of the portrait, just like the portrait in Imogen's recollection, had come, all in white, with wonderful white shoulders, holding a fan and long white gloves in her hand, and, looking round from her dolls, small Imogen had known in a moment that displeasure was in the air. "You are not dressed!"
Of these there were, perhaps, not many in our little group; but the guidance of such a past mistress of the art as Imogen's mother steered the social craft, on this occasion, past the reefs and breakers into a tolerably smooth sea. With an ally as facile, despite his personal perturbations, as Sir Basil, a friend like Mrs.
"No, dear, I didn't think that you would want to; I didn't want it for you, either; I only suggested it so that you might see clearly just where we stand, and in case you might prefer it, with our limited means." Imogen's next words broke out even more vehemently. "I can't leave this house! I can't! It is my home." The tears ran down her face. "My poor darling!" her mother exclaimed.
"I used to think I'd go in for something of that sort in my young days," said Sir Basil, holding Imogen's photograph; "and I dabbled a bit in water-color for a time. Do you remember that little sketch of the Hall, done from the beech avenue, Mrs. Upton? Not so bad, was it?" "Not at all bad," said Valerie; "but we can't use such negatives for Jack's work. It's very seriously good, you know.
To think of Imogen's filial grief and of his promise to her, a promise deeply recalled to him by the message of her tear-worn eyes, to steady his mind to the task of friendly helpfulness, was to put aside the accompanying memory of eyes, lips, gold hair on a background of flowering laurel, was to re-enter, through sane, kind altruism, his old, normal state of consciousness, and to shut the door on something very sweet and wonderful, to shut the door in Imogen's phraseology on his soul, but, in doing that, to be loyal to the older hope.
Are they all foreigners who have been naturalized?" "Oh, no. It is not so bad as that. There are a great many 'real Americans. I am one, for example." "You!" There was such a world of unfeigned surprise in Imogen's tone that it was impossible for her new friend not to laugh. "I. Did you not know it? What did you take me for?" "Why, English of course, like myself.
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