"It's a beautiful picture!" she repeated again and again. "And if you
like I will see if I can sell it for you. But, Henry----"
"Well?"
"Please, please don't bother about money. We shall have _heaps_. There's
no occasion for you to bother, and I won't _have_ you bothering."
"What are you crying for?" he asked in a murmur.
"It's only--only because I think it's so nice of you trying to earn
money like that," she lied. "I'm not really crying."
And she ran away, downstairs, really crying. It was excessively comic,
but he had better not follow her, lest he might cry too....
_A Patron of the Arts_
A lull followed this crisis in the affairs of No. 29 Werter Road. Priam
went on painting, and there was now no need for secrecy about it. But
his painting was not made a subject of conversation. Both of them
hesitated to touch it, she from tact, and he because her views on the
art seemed to him to be lacking in subtlety. In every marriage there is
a topic--there are usually several--which the husband will never broach
to the wife, out of respect for his respect for her. Priam scarcely
guessed that Alice imagined him to be on the way to lunacy. He thought
she merely thought him queer, as artists _are_ queer to non-artists.
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