moments Terry did not answer. He just looked at her, smiling. His smile diffused a warm glow all round her heart as if he were telling her that he understood all about her and rather admired her for not understanding all the stage patter.

36“Suppose you show me your sketches. I don’t know any more about art than you do about the stage, so then we’ll be even,” he said.

36

“There’s nothing here that would interest you—just studies from the life class.”

“I say there’s an idea for a number—chorus of art students in smocks and artists’ caps and a girl with an awfully good figure on a model throne—no, that’s been used. Still there ought to be some sort of an original variation of the theme.” He took out his notebook and wrote something in it.

“Shall I bring tea, Miss Ruth?”

George was standing in the doorway, having appeared suddenly from nowhere.

“Yes, thank you, George—”

“Perhaps if we go on just as if we weren’t waiting for Gloria, she’ll come.”

“I’d forgotten that we were waiting for her,” said Terry. “Do you know, I think that nigger is jealous of me—you know, as dogs are sometimes jealous of their mistress’ friends—and he’s only being civil now because I’m talking to you instead of Gloria. Some day he’s going to put something in my high ball.”

“What a terrible thing to say,” said Ruth. “I’m sure George is perfectly harmless. It’s only that he doesn’t talk like other niggers.”

“Don’t call him a nigger!” exclaimed Terry, pretending to be shocked. “Hasn’t Gloria told you 37that he is a Hindoo—half-caste I imagine, and he came from some weird place, and I heartily wish he’d return to it.”

37

A Hindoo—that explained George’s appearance, but it made him more puzzling as a servant than before. He was not like the imaginations of Hindoos that her reading had built up, but perhaps as Terry said he was a half-caste. Terry’s words, for the moment, surprised her out of speech.

“Here’s Gloria now,” he said. “We must stop talking treason. She thinks she has the best servants in the world.”

Gloria came in, filling the room with cold outer air 

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