He watched her, smiling, while she hovered on from topic to topic, looking up at him now and then; now and then nervously turning over the books on the table before her, and wondering within herself just why it was this man had always vaguely intimidated her. She was about to open her lips when he suddenly stopped her.
"Did you know that that's Hartley's book you have there?"
For one quick, searching second she looked up at him, and then casually opened the little volume upon which her hand had fallen by accident. Repellier had once thought her the sort of woman that never blushed.
"'Atalanta and Other Poems, by John Hartley,'" she read aloud idly, with raised eyebrows. "And a dedication as well: 'To C. M.' Did he leave it last night, or is he the kind that always sends them round next day?"
The woman slipped into a chair, and with her chin on her hand, meditatively turned over a page or two. Then she closed the book nonchalantly, almost disdainfully. She confessed that she had no particular love for poetry.
"Tell me about him, though," she finally said quite seriously and quite openly. "I'd like to know something about him--_all_ about him."
Repellier, who had been adjusting a great paint-besplattered easel, came over and took up the thin, green volume.
"This is what I want to knock out of him," he said, tapping the little book, "for a while, at least. And I think, Miss Vaughan, you are the happy possessor of a lot I'd like to pound into him."
"Oh, I mean poise and balance--good, practical judgment."
"Thank you." She caught up her skirts and courtesied.
Repellier raised a deprecating hand, and laughed.
"Well, you know what I mean. And that's why I'm glad you like him."
"I mean all he wants is ballasting with a little of that business spirit which we call American push."
"Thanks," she murmured. "But tell me about him."
"Well, there isn't much to tell--at least not much that I know."
"Yes, I met him two years ago at Lady Meredith's--those were the Woodstock Merediths of Meredith Hall. I was doing a portrait of Connie Meredith--that's the 'C. M.' of the book--and he used to tramp over from Oxford now and then. His father was Sir Harry Hartley, who was killed in the Dunstable Hunt four or five years ago. Hartley himself was wasting his time about Oxford, unsettled, unsatisfied, impecunious, and unrecognized. As I said, I saw a good deal of him at the Merediths'. He was to have married the girl--it was she who gave me that volume--but she was always delicate. In fact, they had to pack her off to the south of England, and then to Italy. She died at Fiesole. On my way back from the Continent I ran across Hartley again, and asked him why he didn't try America."