Mrs. Loring reappeared in a tea-gown whose gossamer frothed daintily about her neck. She looked the pink of freshness--and yet she was within three years of thirty. I took a kind of pleasure in the thought. Loring was a lucky man.
A tray was brought in, and this attentive lady fluttered round the little silver urn, and ministered to my _paresse_ with tea and lemon. I grew humorously melancholy, and lapsed into gentle vistas of reminiscence. I believe I sighed.
Mrs. Loring mentally referred the sigh to corpulence, for she came over with tea, and said, “There, poor man. That will cool you.”
I half rose from my reclining posture, and shook my head as I took the cup.
“No, madam,” I said, “tea-leaves cannot allay the dust of memory. I sigh for what once was, for what might have been now. I sigh for Ten Years Back. Do you ever sigh for Ten Years Back?”
From the puzzled way in which she looked at me, she evidently did not.
“Ten years back,” I continued, “you and I were yet young.”
“Ten years back you were interested in painting, and visited the National Gallery. Millie Dixon was also interested in painting and also visited the National Gallery. Loring Chatterton didn’t give a hang for painting, yet he dragged me round to the National Gallery. I paid the sixpences.”
“Anyway you were always glad enough to see Millie Dixon; you didn’t do it out of pure self-sacrifice.”
“The National Gallery,” I continued, not heeding the interruption, “is one of the great storehouses of the world’s art. It is the pride of a great nation. _I_ went there for purposes of study; but how did _you_ profit by it? You used it for rubbing shoulders and squeezing hands.”
“I know how you profited by it,” said Mrs. Loring, laughing. “You used to study the water-colours down-stairs, and you got locked in one day. Millie Dixon, by the way, got locked in too.”
“Millie Dixon always _had_ foresight,” I said musingly.
“But you never painted, and Millie Dixon did.”
“In spite of your insinuation, Mrs. Loring, I never ascertained that. Her complexion----”
“Then you ought to have done. Here are you two still hanging on in the same position as ten years ago. _I_ gave Millicent a month if she knew her business. Loring and I didn’t take so long. I am disappointed in you. I’m sure it’s not Millie’s fault.”