"
Hagar turned on her quickly, astonished, eager, his face shining with a
look superadded to his artistic excitement.
She put her finger to her lip, and nodded backward to the other room. He
understood. "Yes, I know," he said, "the light comedy manner." He waved
his hand toward the drawing. "But is it not in the right vein?"
"It is painfully, horribly true," she said. She looked from him to the
canvas, from the canvas to him, and then made a little pathetic gesture
with her hands. "What a jest life is!"
"A game--a wonderful game," he replied, "and a wicked one, when there is
gambling with human hearts."
Then he turned with her toward the other room. As he passed her to draw
aside the curtain she touched his arm with the tips of her fingers so
lightly--as she intended--that he did not feel it. There was a mute,
confiding tenderness in the action more telling than any speech. The
woman had had a brilliant, varied, but lonely life. It must still be
lonely, though now the pleasant vista of a new career kept opening and
closing before her, rendering her days fascinating yet troubled, her
nights full of joyful but uneasy hours. The game thus far had gone against
her. Yet she was popular, merry and amiable!
She passed composedly into the other room.
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