And yet his instinct was right which told him that the girl was not a coquette.  She had no thought—­not the least thought—­as yet that anything was possible beyond the existing friendship.  It was pleasant, but Arnold would get tired of her, and go back to his own people.  Then he would remain in her memory as a study of character.  This she did not exactly formulate, but she had that feeling.  Every woman makes a study of character about every man in whom she becomes ever so little interested.  But we must not get conceited, my brothers, over this fact.  The converse, unhappily, does not hold true.  Very few men ever study the character of a woman at all.  Either they fall in love with her before they have had time to make more than a sketch, and do not afterward pursue the subject, or they do not fall in love with her at all; and in the latter case it hardly seems worth while to follow up a first rough draft.

“Checkmate,” said Lala Roy.

The game was finished and the evening over.  “Would you like,” he said, another evening, “to see my studio, or do you consider my studio outside myself?”

“I should very much like to see an artist’s studio,” she replied with her usual frankness, leaving it an open question whether she would not be equally pleased to see any other studio.

She came, however, accompanied by Lala Roy, who had never been in a studio before, and indeed had never looked at a picture, except with the contemptuous glance which the philosopher bestows upon the follies of mankind.  Yet he came, because Iris asked him.  Arnold’s studio is one of the smallest of those in Tite Street.  Of course it is built of red brick, and of course it has a noble staircase and a beautiful painting-room or studio proper all set about with bits of tapestry, armor, pictures, and china, besides the tools and properties of the craft.  He had portfolios full of sketches; against the wall stood pictures, finished and unfinished; on an easel was a half-painted picture representing a group taken from a modern novel.  Most painters only draw scenes from two novels—­the “Vicar of Wakefield” and “Don Quixote;” but Arnold knew more.  The central figure was a girl, quite unfinished—­in fact, barely sketched in.

Iris looked at everything with the interest which belongs to the new and unexpected.

Arnold began to show the pictures in the portfolios.  There were sketches of peasant life in Norway and on the Continent; there were landscapes, quaint old houses, and castles; there were ships and ports; and there were heads—­hundreds of heads.

“I said you might be a great artist,” said Iris.  “I am sure now that you will be if you choose.”

“Thank you, Iris.  It is the greatest compliment you could pay me.”

“And what is this?” she was before the easel on which stood the unfinished picture.

“It is a scene from a novel.  But I cannot get the principal face.  None of the models are half good enough.  I want a sweet face, a serious face, a face with deep, beautiful eyes.  Iris”—­it was a sudden impulse, an inspiration—­“let me put your face there.  Give me my first commission.”