"Indeed we don't if you go to England."
"That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more."
He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived
long enough in Italy to catch this trick. "Ah, if you've come to
threaten me I prefer my drawing." And he walked back to his table,
where he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and
stood studying it. "I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to
come back," said Isabel.
He turned quickly around, and she could see this movement at least
was not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, "Are you out of
your mind?" he enquired.
"How can it be anything but a rupture?" she went on; "especially
if all you say is true?" She was unable to see how it could be
anything but a rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it
might be.
He sat down before his table. "I really can't argue with you on
the hypothesis of your defying me," he said. And he took up one of his
little brushes again.
She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her
eye his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure;
after which she quickly left the room.
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