“I have passed through the gates of the Palace of Art,” she wrote, two days later, from the calmer and sunnier South; “and I have entered its mysterious halls, and I have breathed for a time the hushed atmosphere of wonderland.  Do you remember meeting a Mr. Lemuel at any time at Mrs. Ross’s—­a man with a strange, gray, tired face, and large, wan, blue eyes, and an air as if he were walking in a dream?  Perhaps not; but, at all events, he is a great painter, who never exhibits to the vulgar crowd, but who is worshipped by a select circle of devotees; and his house is a temple dedicated to high art, and only profound believers are allowed to cross the threshold.  Oh dear me!  I am not a believer; but how can I help that?  Mr. Lemuel is a friend of papa’s, however; they have mysterious talks over milk-jugs of colored stone, and small pictures with gilt skies, and angels in red and blue.  Well, yesterday he called on papa, and requested his permission to ask me to sit—­or, rather, stand—­for the heroine of his next great work, which is to be an allegorical one, taken from the ‘Faery Queen’ or the ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ or some such book.  I protested; it was no use.  ‘Good gracious, papa,’ I said, ’do you know what he will make of me?  He will give me a dirty brown face, and I shall wear a dirty green dress; and no doubt I shall be standing beside a pool of dirty blue water, with a purple sky overhead, and a white moon in it.  The chances are he will dislocate my neck, and give me gaunt cheeks like a corpse, with a serpent under my foot, or a flaming dragon stretching his jaws behind my back.’  Papa was deeply shocked at my levity.  Was it for me, an artist (bless the mark!), to baulk the high aims of art?  Besides it was vaguely hinted that, to reward me, certain afternoon-parties were to be got up; and then, when I had got out of Merlin-land, and assured myself I was human by eating lunch, I was to meet a goodly company of distinguished folk—­great poets, and one or two more mystic painters, a dilettante duke, and the nameless crowd of worshippers who would come to sit at the feet of all these, and sigh adoringly, and shake their heads over the Philistinism of English society.  I don’t care for ugly mediaeval maidens myself, nor for allegorical serpents, nor for bloodless men with hollow cheeks, supposed to represent soldierly valor; if I were an artist, I would rather show people the beauty of a common brick wall when the red winter sunset shines along it.  But perhaps that is only my ignorance, and I may learn better before Mr. Lemuel has done with me.”

When Macleod first read this passage, a dark expression came over his face.  He did not like this new project.