The Danger Mark Part 19

"How are your pictures coming on?"

"The portrait?" he asked absently.

"Portrait? I thought all the very grand ladies you paint had left town.

Whose portrait are you painting?"

Before he answered, before he even hesitated, she knew.

"Rosalie Dysart's," he said, gazing absently at the lilac-bush in flower as the wind-blown curtain revealed it for a moment.

She lifted her dark eyes curiously. He began to stir the ice in his gla.s.s with a silver paper-cutter.

"She is wonderfully beautiful, isn't she?" said the girl.

"Overwhelmingly."

Geraldine shrugged and gazed into s.p.a.ce. She didn't exactly know why she had given that little hitch to her shoulders.

"I'd like to paint Kathleen," he observed.

A flush tinted the girl's cheeks. She said nervously:

"Why don't you ask her?"

"I've meant to. Somehow, one doesn't ask things lightly of Kathleen."

"One doesn't ask things of some women at all," she remarked.

He looked up; she was examining her empty teacup with fixed interest.

"Ask what sort of thing?" he inquired, walking over to the table and resting his gla.s.s on it.

"Oh, I don't know what I meant. Nothing. What is that in your gla.s.s? Let me taste it.... Ugh! It's Scotch!"

She set back the gla.s.s with a shudder. After a few moments she picked it up again and tasted it disdainfully.

"Do you like this?" she demanded with youthful contempt.

"Pretty well," he admitted.

"It tastes something like brandied peaches, doesn't it?"

"I never noticed that it did."

And as he remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty gla.s.s and watched him where he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the loop of his riding-crop.

"I'd like to see a typical studio," she said reflectively.

"I've asked you to mine often enough."

"Yes, to tea with other people. I don't mean that way. I'd like to see it when it's not all dusted and in order for feminine inspection. I'd like to see a man's studio when it's in shape for work--with the gr-r-reat painter in a fine frenzy painting, and the model posing madly----"

"Come on, then! If Kathleen lets you, and you can stand it, come down and knock some day unexpectedly."

"O Duane! I _couldn't_, could I?"

"Not with propriety. But come ahead."

"Naturally, impropriety appeals to you."

"Naturally. To you, too, doesn't it?"

"No. But wouldn't it astonish you if you heard a low, timid knocking some day when you and your Bohemian friends were carousing and having a riotous time there----"

"Yes, it would, but I'm afraid that low, timid knocking couldn't be heard in the infernal uproar of our usual revelry."

"Then I'd knock louder and louder, and perhaps kick once or twice if you didn't come to the door and let me in."

He laughed. After a moment she laughed, too; her dark eyes were very friendly now. Watching the amus.e.m.e.nt in his face, she continued to sip from his tall, frosted gla.s.s, quite unconscious of any distaste for it.

On the contrary, she experienced a slight exhilaration which was gradually becoming delightful to her.

"Scotch-and-soda is rather nice, after all," she observed. "I had no idea--_What_ is the matter with you, Duane?"

"You haven't swallowed all that, have you?"

"Yes, is it much?"

He stared, then with a shrug: "You'd better cut out that sort of thing."

"What?" she asked, surprised.

"What you're doing."

"Tasting your Scotch? Pooh!" she said, "it isn't strong. Do you think I'm a baby?"

"Go ahead," he said, "it's your funeral."

Legs crossed, chin resting on the b.u.t.t of his riding-crop, he lay back in his chair watching her.

Women of her particular type had always fascinated him; Fifth Avenue is thronged with them in sunny winter mornings--tall, slender, faultlessly gowned girls, free-limbed, narrow of wrist and foot; cleanly built, engaging, fearless-eyed; and Geraldine was one of a type characteristic of that city and of the sunny Avenue where there pa.s.s more beautiful women on a December morning than one can see abroad in half a dozen years' residence.

How on earth this hemisphere has managed to evolve them out of its original material n.o.body can explain. And young Mallett, recently from the older hemisphere, was still in a happy trance of surprise at the discovery.

Lounging there, watching her where she sat warmly illumined by the golden light of the window-shade, he said lazily:

"Do you know that Fifth Avenue is always thronged with you, Geraldine?

I've nearly twisted my head off trying not to miss the a.s.sorted visions of you which float past afoot or driving. Some day one of them will unbalance me. I'll leap into her victoria, ask her if she'd mind the temporary inconvenience of being adored by a stranger; and if she's a good sport she'll take a chance. Don't you think so?"