‘I never saw such beauty as that before,’ said the artist, with emphasis.  ’I must find some one who knows her, and get the chance of seeing that face light up, else I shall go home—­one may as well.  These daubs are not worth the trouble of considering now!’

‘See what it is to be an “ideal painter,"’ said Kendal, laughing.  ’At home one paints river goddesses, and tree-nymphs, and such like remote creatures, and abroad one falls a victim to the first well-dressed, healthy-looking girl—­chaperone, bonnet, and all.’

‘Show me another like her,’ said his friend warmly.  ’I tell you they’re not to be met with like that every day. Je me connais en beaute, my dear fellow, and I never saw such perfection, both of line and colour, as that.  It is extraordinary; it excites one as an artist.  Look, is that Wallace now going up to her?’

Kendal turned and saw a short fair man, with a dry keen American face, walk up to the beauty and speak to her.  She greeted him cordially, with a beaming smile and bright emphatic movements of the head, and the three strolled on.

’Yes, that is Edward Wallace,—­very much in it, apparently.  That is the way Americans have.  They always know everybody it’s desirable to know.  But now’s your chance, Forbes.  Stroll carelessly past them, catch Wallace’s eye, and the thing is done.’

Mr. Forbes had already dropped Kendal’s arm, and was sauntering across the room towards the chatting trio.  Kendal watched the scene from a distance with some amusement; saw his friend brush carelessly past the American, look back, smile, stop, and hold out his hand; evidently a whisper passed between them, for the next moment Mr. Forbes was making a low bow to the beauty, and immediately afterwards Kendal saw his fine gray head and stooping shoulders disappear into the next room, side by side with Miss Bretherton’s erect and graceful figure.

Kendal betook himself once more to the pictures, and, presently finding some acquaintances, made a rapid tour of the rooms with them, parting with them at the entrance that he might himself go back and look at two or three things in the sculpture room which he had been told were important and promising.  There he came across the American, Edward Wallace, who at once took him by the arm with the manner of an old friend and a little burst of laughter.

’So you saw the introduction?  What a man is Forbes!  He is as young still as he was at eighteen.  I envy him.  He took Miss Bretherton right round, talked to her of all his favourite hobbies, looked at her in a way which would have been awkward if it had been anybody else but such a gentlemanly maniac as Forbes, and has almost made her promise to sit to him.  Miss Bretherton was a little bewildered, I think.  She is so new to London that she doesn’t know who’s who yet in the least.  I had to take her aside and explain to her Forbes’s honours; then she fired up—­there is a naive hero-worship about her just now that she is fresh from a colony—­and made herself as pleasant to him as a girl could be.  I prophesy Forbes will think of nothing else for the season.’