"Well! I will." She seemed to have taken a desperate step. Miss Jane
Marston, Della's sister-in-law, had always been the superfluous member of
her family. Such unenviable tasks as amusing or teaching the younger
children, sewing, or making up whist sets, had, as is usual with the odd
members in a family, fallen to her share. All this Miss Marston hated in a
slow, rebellious manner. From always having just too little money to live
independently, she had been forced to accept invitations for long visits
in uninteresting places. As a girl and a young woman, she had shown a
delicate, retiring beauty that might have been made much of, and in spite
of gray hair, thirty-five years, and a somewhat drawn look, arising from
her discontent, one might discover sufficient traces of this fading beauty
to idealize her. All this summer she had watched the wayward young artist
with a keen interest in the fresh life he brought among her flat
surroundings. His buoyancy cheered her habitual depression; his eagerness
and love of life made her blood flow more quickly, out of sympathy; and
his intellectual alertness bewildered and fascinated her. She was still
shy at thirty-five, and really very timid and apologetic for her
commonplaceness; but at times the rebellious bitterness at the bottom of
her heart would leap forth in a brusque or bold speech. She was still
capable of affording surprise.

"Won't I spoil the inspiration?" she ventured, after a long silence.

"Bother the inspiration!" groaned Clayton. "I wish I were a blacksmith, or
a sailor, or something honest. I feel like a hypocrite. I have started out
at a pace that I can't keep up!"

Miss Marston felt complimented by this apparent confidence. If she had had
experience in that kind of nature, she would have understood how
indifferent Clayton was to her personally. He would have made the same