After he had begun to haunt my studio Miss Saunt quite gave it up, and I finally learned that she accused me of conspiring with him to put pressure on her to marry him.  She didn’t know I would take it that way, else she would never have brought him to see me.  It was in her view a part of the conspiracy that to show him a kindness I asked him at last to sit to me.  I dare say moreover she was disgusted to hear that I had ended by attempting almost as many sketches of his beauty as I had attempted of hers.  What was the value of tributes to beauty by a hand that could so abase itself?  My relation to poor Dawling’s want of modelling was simple enough.  I was really digging in that sandy desert for the buried treasure of his soul.

CHAPTER VI

It befell at this period, just before Christmas, that on my having gone under pressure of the season into a great shop to buy a toy or two, my eyes fleeing from superfluity, lighted at a distance on the bright concretion of Flora Saunt, an exhibitability that held its own even against the most plausible pinkness of the most developed dolls.  A huge quarter of the place, the biggest bazaar “on earth,” was peopled with these and other effigies and fantasies, as well as with purchasers and vendors haggard alike, in the blaze of the gas, with hesitations.  I was just about to appeal to Flora to avert that stage of my errand when I saw that she was accompanied by a gentleman whose identity, though more than a year had elapsed, came back to me from the Folkestone cliff.  It had been associated on that scene with showy knickerbockers; at present it overflowed more splendidly into a fur-trimmed overcoat.  Lord Iffield’s presence made me waver an instant before crossing over, and during that instant Flora, blank and undistinguishing, as if she too were after all weary of alternatives, looked straight across at me.  I was on the point of raising my hat to her when I observed that her face gave no sign.  I was exactly in the line of her vision, but she either didn’t see me or didn’t recognise me, or else had a reason to pretend she didn’t.  Was her reason that I had displeased her and that she wished to punish me?  I had always thought it one of her merits that she wasn’t vindictive.  She at any rate simply looked away; and at this moment one of the shop-girls, who had apparently gone off in search of it, bustled up to her with a small mechanical toy.  It so happened that I followed closely what then took place, afterwards recognising that I had been led to do so, led even through the crowd to press nearer for the purpose, by an impression of which in the act I was not fully conscious.