'Do you really think you ought to do things like that at the eleventh hour ?' I asked, but Dora smiled at a glance, the hypocrisy out of my face.
'What does anything matter ?' she demanded.
I knew perfectly well the standard by which nothing mattered, and there was no use, of course, in going on pretending that I did not.
'I assured him that you didn't paint,' I said, accusingly.
'Oh, I had to--otherwise what was there to go upon?
He would have been found only to be lost again.

You did not contemplate that ?' Miss Harris inquired sweetly.
'I should have thought it was the surest way of losing him.' 'I can't think why you should be so rude.

He observes progress already.' 'With a view to claiming and holding him, would it be of any use,' I asked, 'for me to start in oils ?' Miss Harris eyed me calmly.
'I don't know,' she said, 'but it doesn't seem the same thing somehow.

I think you had better leave it to me.' 'Indeed, I won't,' I said; 'there is too much in it,' and we smiled across the gulf of our friendly understanding.
I crossed to the mantelpiece and picked up one of the little wet panels.
There was that in it which explained my friend's exultation much more plainly than words.
'That is what I am to show him tomorrow,' she exclaimed; 'I think I have done as he told me.

I think it's pretty right.' Whether it was pretty right or pretty wrong, she had taken in an extraordinary way an essence out of him.