Free The Darts of Cupid: Stories by Edith Templeton Page A

error on the scoring pad, thus showing off her famous legs, it was unforgivable that Mrs. H. should expect her guests to work for their tea by making such demands upon them, in her obsessive thriftiness.
    THE PAINTER Miroslav Dalibor was, as my mother said, "not madly entertaining," but, on the other hand, "one knew what stable he came from." Being unmarried, he was also an asset for parties. I had last seen him two years earlier, when I was fifteen, but finding him now at the Haussman villa was a happy surprise. The villa’s reception rooms were on the ground floor, and the moment I entered the first drawing room I could see him in the last, the third one, as the rooms were enfiladed. He was standing in a niche formed where a wall met a bay window, half hidden by the folds of the crimson velvet curtains. This was not astonishing. In whatever drawing room Dalibor happened to be, he would always place himself in a corner and as far away from the main entrance as possible. There he would remain, never milling around, never joining a group.
    Various opinions were given about this behavior. There were those who said that Dalibor always felt at a disadvantage because he earned his living by doing the portraits of the wealthy and sometimes even of the famous. Yet at the same time, because it was vital for him to strike up acquaintances, it was considered that he might be taking up the stance perversely, as though to deny all that.
    Others said that this was nonsense and plunged into further long, delicious conversations about his history and his money. There was no question of his living from hand to mouth: there was still a regular income he could draw on, from the Dalibor estates in the Burgenland. No, he was just plain snooty. True, one uncle of his had been the minister of foreign affairs in the old days. But Dalibor
père
had been nothing but a privy councillor (two a penny in old Austria) and had labored in some obscure ministry, too—railways or possibly pensions, I ask you. No, he was just standoffish. Was he doing us a favor coming to Prague once in a blue moon this way? He was Viennese—need one say more?
    "Dalibor," I said, coming to a halt in front of him. "I am irresistibly drawn to you."
    "So I see," he said. "I can’t very well return the compliment, though, can I? Seeing that I’m standing here, nailed to the spot. Sufficient to say that I watched you wending your way through the throng. Will that satisfy you?"
    "It will," I said, although I was aware of being less than pleased with my dress—pink net, strewn with embroidered forget-me-nots—which was a last year’s bridesmaid gown. But since I was not yet eighteen, I had no claim to anything like a regular evening gown, and also I knew that my presence at this reception had been permitted as a special favor to me. I was grateful to Dalibor for speaking to me in the manner he had, for he was aware of a diffidence I felt not only because of my age and my dress but also because I felt tainted as compared to my schoolmates, who all had fathers at home, whereas I was the only child of a mother who had been twice divorced before the age of thirty—the first time from my father—yet who was socially acceptable everywhere, living sumptuously as she did in her mother’s (my grandmother’s) house in Florence Street.
    Dalibor was in his late thirties—"a lovely age for a man," as my mother would have said. But he had none of the seductive glow that was hinted at by this remark. He was of medium height, and looked shorter than he actually was, owing to his build, which was sturdy, broad-shouldered, wide-chested. His pale blond hair was wavy, but rolled into curls around the temples and at the nape of the neck, where it had been left to grow longer than was usual. The low, very wide, and bumpy forehead and the small, deep-set eyes gave him an air of brooding obstinacy.
    "And why do you find me irresistible?" he asked. "This is so sudden."
    "Because— There must be