"
"Aren't you getting away from the point a little?" he asked, baffled and
confused, as he often was, by her measured decisiveness.
"It seems to me that I am _on_ the point.--The point is that she cared so
little about _him_--in either way."
This was what he had foreseen that she would think.
"The point is that she cares so much for you," he ventured his conviction,
fixing his eyes, oddly deepened with this, his deepest appeal, upon her.
But Imogen, as though it were a bait thrown out and powerless to allure,
slid past it.
"To gain things we must _work_ for them. It's not by merely caring,
yielding, that one wins one's rights. Mama is a very 'sweet, warm,
harmless' person; I see that as well as you do, Jack." So she put him in
his place and he could only wonder if he had any right to feel so angry.
The preparations for the new tableau were at once begun and a few days
after their last uncomfortable encounter, Jack and Imogen were again
together, in happier circumstances it seemed, for Imogen, standing in
the library while her mother adjusted her folds and draperies, could but
delight a lover's eye. Mary, also on view, in her handmaiden array,--Mary's
part was a small one in the picture of the restored Alcestis,--sat gazing
in admiration, and Jack walked about mother and daughter with suggestion
and comment.
"It's perfect, quite perfect," he declared, "that warm, soft white; and
you have done it most beautifully, Mrs.
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