Between Friends | Page 2

bounder, sauntered over to
examine the sketch. He was still red from the rebuke he had invited.
Guilder, his senior colleague, got up from the lounge and walked over
also. Drene fitted the sketch into the roughly designed group, where it
belonged, and stood aside, sucking meditatively on his empty pipe.
After a silence:

"It's all right," said Guilder.
Quair remarked that the group seemed to lack flamboyancy. It is true,
however, that, except for Guilder's habitual restraint, the celebrated
firm of architects was inclined to express themselves flamboyantly, and
to interpret Renaissance in terms of Baroque.
"She's some girl," added Quair, looking at the lithe, modeled figure,
and then half turning to include the model, who had seated herself on
the lounge, and was now gazing with interest at the composition
sketched in by Drene for the facade of the new opera.
"Carpeaux and his eternal group--it's the murderous but inevitable
standard of comparison," mused Drene, with a whimsical glance at the
photograph on the wall.
"Carpeaux has nothing on this young lady," insisted Quair flippantly;
and he pivoted on his heel and sat down beside the model. Once or
twice the two others, consulting before the wax group, heard the girl's
light, untroubled laughter behind their backs gaily responsive to Quair's
wit. Perhaps Quair's inheritance had been humor, but to some it seemed
perilously akin to mother-wit.
The pockets of Guilder's loose, ill-fitting clothes bulged with linen
tracings and rolls of blue-prints. He and Drene consulted over these for
a while, semi-conscious of Quair's bantering voice and the girl's easily
provoked laughter behind them. And, finally:
"All right, Guilder," said Drene briefly. And the firm of celebrated
architects prepared to evacuate the studio--Quair exhibiting symptoms
of incipient skylarking, in which he was said to be at his best.
"Drop in on me at the office some time," he suggested to the youthful
model, in a gracious tone born of absolute self-satisfaction.
"For luncheon or dinner?" retorted the girl, with smiling audacity.
"You may stay to breakfast also--"

"Oh, come on," drawled Guilder, taking his colleague's elbow.
The sculptor yawned as Quair went out: then he closed the door then
celebrated firm of architects, and wandered back rather aimlessly.
For a while he stood by the great window, watching the pigeons on
neighboring roof. Presently he returned to his table, withdrew the
dancing figure with its graceful, wide flung arms, set it upon the
squeaky revolving table once more, and studied it, yawning at intervals.
The girl got up from the sofa behind him, went to the model-stand, and
mounted it. For a few moments she was busy adjusting her feet to the
chalk marks and blocks. Finally she took the pose. She always seemed
inclined to be more or less vocal while Drene worked; her voice, if
untrained, was untroubled. Her singing had never bothered Drene, nor,
until the last few days, had he even particularly noticed her blithe
trilling--as a man a field, preoccupied, is scarcely aware of the wild
birds' gay irrelevancy along the way.
He happened to notice it now, and a thought passed through his mind
that the country must be very lovely in the mild spring sunshine.
As he worked, the brief visualization of young grass and the faint blue
of skies, evoked, perhaps, by the girl's careless singing, made for his
dull concentration subtly pleasant environment.
"May I rest?" she asked at length.
"Certainly, if it's necessary."
"I've brought my lunch. It's twelve," she explained.
He glanced at her absently, rolling a morsel of wax; then, with slight
irritation which ended in a shrug, he motioned her to descend.
After all, girls, like birds, were eternally eating. Except for that, and
incessant preening, existence meant nothing more important to either
species.

He had been busy for a few moments with the group when she said
something to him, and he looked around from his abstraction. She was
holding out toward him a chicken sandwich.
When his mind came back from wool gathering, he curtly declined the
offer, and, as an afterthought, bestowed upon her a wholly mechanical
smile, in recognition of a generosity not welcome.
"Why don't you ever eat luncheon?" she asked.
"Why should I?" he replied, preoccupied.
"It's bad for you not to. Besides, you are growing thin."
"Is that your final conclusion concerning me, Cecile?" he asked,
absently.
"Won't you please take this sandwich?"
Her outstretched arm more than what she said arrested his drifting
attention again.
"Why the devil do you want me to eat?" he inquired, fishing out his
empty pipe and filling it.
"You smoke too much. It's bad for you. It will do very queer things to
the lining of your stomach if you smoke your luncheon instead of
eating it."
He yawned.
"Is that so?" he said.