There was a moment of constrained silence. The young man felt that they had been treading on thin ice.
"You must be sure to meet Mrs. Spaulding," went on Cordelia. "I know she'll be interested in you. She'll probably be able to help you, too, in more ways than one. Oh, by the way, does your syndicate publish portraits at all?"
Hartley explained that it did; two pages a week--one of People of the Hour, and the other of Beautiful Women.
As the woman on the orange cushion said nothing for a moment or two, Hartley rose to go.
"Some day you'll have to do Mrs. Spaulding for me," she begged. "She would really be at home on your Beautiful Women page."
Then she looked up and saw that he was standing.
"But don't go; please, don't go!" she cried with the winning ingenuousness and command of a child. "I want you to stop and drink a cup of tea with me, at least."
There was something infectious and pretty, he felt, about her wayward little pout, a momentary mental rejuvenescence, as though her mind had been caught in the undress. Hartley had been almost ready to declare that his time was not his own--which was true enough--but he pulled himself up on the brink of this bruskness as he looked down in her eyes and wondered which was her truer side. With a sudden return of good-nature he took his seat again, and amiably remarked that it was not often he drank afternoon tea in New York--that, in fact, afternoon tea would take on the nature of a Dionysian festivity in the neighborhood of Chatham Square.
"Then your home _is_ England?" asked the other.
He confessed that his English birth was one thing he had yet to live down.
"Oh, no," cried the young authoress; "you'll find it's going to help you a lot. Englishmen are always the vogue with us. And, remember, you must be sure not to waste your accent, and your chances."
Hartley could recall no occasion on which his Anglican origin had materially helped him. But, looking up, he caught her smile, and again he dimly felt that she might still be making fun of him. Yet in the twinkling of an eye she was all soberness once more.
"The moment I saw that study of yours in Stetson's--the Dunes of Sorrow, wasn't it?--I knew that I was finding a new man. The only thing I felt sorry about was that you hadn't placed it with one of the better magazines."