'Of course!' said Kauffer, 'but I sink I sell you that Porcha; it is
ze best of ze two.'



Chapter 2.VI.

I ventured for a few days to keep the light which chance had shed
for me upon Armour's affairs to myself. The whole thing considered
in connection with his rare and delicate talent, seemed too
derogatory and disastrous to impart without the sense of doing him
some kind of injury in the mere statement. But there came a point
when I could no longer listen to Dora Harris's theories to account
for him, wild idealizations as most of them were of any man's
circumstances and intentions. 'Why don't you ask him point-blank?'
I said, and she replied, frowning slightly, 'Oh, I couldn't do that.
It would destroy something--I don't know what, but something
valuable--between us.' This struck me as an exaggeration,
considering how far, by that time, they must have progressed towards
intimacy, and my mouth was opened. She heard me without the
exclamations I expected, her head bent over the pencil she was
sharpening, and her silence continued after I had finished. The
touch of comedy I gave the whole thing--surely I was justified in
that!--fell flat, and I extracted from her muteness a sense of
rebuke; one would think I had been taking advantage of the poor
devil.

At last, having broken the lead of her pencil three times, she
turned a calm, considering eye upon me.