Robert William Chambers

Between Friends Robert William Chambers

"And you conclude it to be a rather dreadful business?""Yes, it is.""How?""Oh, I don't know. A girl usually loves the wrong man. To be poor is always bad enough, but to be in love, too, is really very dreadful. It usually finishes us--you know." "Are you in love?" he inquired, managing to repress his amusement. "I could be. I know that much." She went to the sink, turned on the water, washed her hands, and stood with dripping fingers looking about for a towel."I'll get you one," he said. When he brought it, she laughed and held out her hands to be dried. "Do you think you are a Sultana?" he inquired, draping the towel across her outstretched arms and leaving it there."I thought perhaps you'd dry them," she said sweetly."Not in the business," he remarked; and lighted his pipe. Her hands were her particular beauty, soft and snowy. She was much in demand among painters, and had posed many times for pictures of the Virgin, her hands usuaHe was making a full length study in clay now. All day long she sat there enthroned, her eyes partly closed, the head lifted a trifle and fallen back, and her lovely hands resting on her heart--and sometimes she strove to imagine something of the divine moment which she was embodying; pondering, dreaming, wondering; and sometimes, in the stillness, through her trance crept a thrill, subtle, exquisite, as though in faint perception of the heavenly moment. And once, into her halfdreaming senses came the soft stirring of wings, and she opened her eyes and looked up, startled and thrilled.