"Well, you must do it. I'm going to have the class here, some day, as
soon as I get the place in _perfect_ order. I must have a suit of
Japanese armor for that corner, over there; and then two or three of
those queer-looking, old, long, faded trunks, you know, with eastern
stuffs gaping out of them, to set along the wall. I should be ashamed
to have anybody see it now; but you have an eye, you can supply every
thing with a glance. I'm going to have a bed made up in the alcove,
over there, and sleep here, sometimes: just that broad lounge, you
know, with some rugs on it--I've got the cushions, you see,
already--and mice running over you, for the crumbs you've left when
you've got hungry sitting up late. Are you afraid of mice?"
"Well, I shouldn't care to have them run over me, much," said Cornelia.
"Well, I shouldn't either," said Charmian, "but if you sleep in your
studio, sometime you _have_ to. They all do. Just put your hat in
here," and she glided before Cornelia through the studio door into one
that opened beside it. The room was a dim and silent bedchamber,
appointed with the faultless luxury that characterized the rest of the
apartment. Cornelia had never dreamt of anything like it, but "_Don't_
look at it!" Charmian pleaded. "I hate it, and I'm going to get into
the studio to sleep as soon as I've thought out the kind of hangings.
Well, we shall have to hurry back now," but she kept Cornelia while she
critically rearranged a ribbon on her, and studied the effect of it
over her shoulder in the glass. "Yes," she said, with a deep sigh of
satisfaction, "perfectly Roman! Gladys wouldn't have done for you.
Cornelia was a step in the right direction; but it ought to have been
Fulvia.
"'I should have clung to Fulvia's waist and thrust
The dagger through her side,'"
she chanted tragically; and she flung her arms about Cornelia for
illustration. "_Dream of Fair Women_, you know. What part are you going
to play, today?"
"What part?" Cornelia demanded, freeing herself, with her darkest frown
of perplexity. "You're not going to have theatricals, I hope." She
thought it was going pretty far to receive company Sunday afternoon,
and if there was to be anything more she was ready to take her stand
now.
Charmian gave a shout of laughter. "I wish we were. Then I could be
_natural_. But I mean, what are you going to be: very gentle and mild
and sweet and shrinking; or very philosophical and thoughtful; or very
stately and cold and remote? You know you have to be _something_. Don't
you always plan out the character you want them to think you?"
"No," said Cornelia, driven to her bluntest by the discomfort she felt
at such a question, and the doubt it cast her into.
Charmian looked at her gloomily. "You strange creature!" she murmured.
"But I love you," she added aloud. "I simply idolize you!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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