and regarding me,” he choked, “—with very bitter looks—you know,” he said, turning to Eugene, “they feel quite bitterly towards me—they really do, you know. It’s obvious,” he said, “that they regard me as an unprincipled seducer who has defiled,” his voice trembled uncertainly again, “—who has defiled the virtue of their only darter!” he brought this word out with a droll and luscious nasality that made them howl with laughter.
“But really,” he went on seriously, turning to Elinor as he wiped his laughter-reddened face with a handkerchief, “I’m sure that’s how they feel about it. When your mother and father came to the studio the other day and found me there,”—Elinor’s parents were at that time in Paris—“your father glared at me in much the same way that Cotton Mather would look at Casanova. But quite! He really did, you know. I’m sure he thought you had become my concubine.”
“But, darling,” Elinor replied, in her playful coaxing tone, “can’t I be your concubine?… Oh, how mean you are!” she said reproachfully. “I do so want to be somebody’s concubine.” She turned to Eugene protestingly. “Now is that mean or not? I ask you. Here I am, a perfectly good well-meaning female thirty years old, brought up in Boston all my life, and with the best advantages. I’ve been a good girl all my life and tried to do the best I could for everyone, but try as I will,” she sighed, “no one will help me out in my lifelong ambition to be somebody’s concubine. Now is that fair or not?—I ask you!”
“But not at all!” said Starwick reprovingly. “Before you can realize your ambition you’ve got to go out first and get yourself a reputation!… And,” he added, with a swift exuberant glance at the crafty whispering old heads and faces all around them, “—I think you’re getting one very fast.”
They went upstairs immediately to the rooms that Elinor had engaged. Starwick had two comfortable big rooms in one wing of the pension; in his living-room a comfortable wood-fire had been laid and was crackling away lustily. Elinor had taken a small bedroom for Eugene and a larger room for herself and Ann. In Ann’s room a good wood-fire was also burning cheerfully. Elinor and Starwick obviously wanted to be alone to talk together—they conveyed this by a kind of mysterious more-to-this-than-meets-the-eye quietness that had been frequent with them during all these weeks. They announced that they were going for a walk.
