“And doubtless Maryon will remember it,” retorted Penelope tartly.

“I think,” pursued Fenton, “it’s not unlike inserting a match into a powder barrel.  Rooke”—­reflectively—­“always reminds me somewhat of a powder barrel.  And Nan is by no means a safety match—­warranted to produce a light from the legitimate box and none other!”

“I wish,” observed Nan plaintively, “that you wouldn’t discuss me just as if I weren’t here.”

They all laughed, and then, as the car slowed down to a standstill at Maryon’s door, the conversation came to an end.

Rooke had established himself in one of the big and comparatively inexpensive houses in Westminster, in that pleasant, quiet backwater which lies within the shadow of the beautiful old Abbey, away from the noisy stream of general traffic.  The house had formerly been the property of another artist who had built on to it a large and well-equipped studio, so that Rooke had been singularly fortunate in his purchase.

Nan looked about her with interest as the door swung open, admitting them into a fair-sized hall.  The thick Eastern carpet, the dim, blue-grey hangings on the walls, the quaint brazen lamps—­hushing the modern note of electric light behind their thick glass panes—­spoke eloquently of Maryon.  A faint fragrance of cedar tinged the atmosphere.

The parlourmaid—­unmistakably a twentieth-century product—­conducted them into a beautiful Old English room, its walls panelled in dark oak, while heavy oaken beams traversed the ceiling.  Logs burned merrily on the big open hearth, throwing up showers of golden sparks.  Above the chimneypiece there was a wonderful old plaster coat-of-arms, dating back to the seventeenth century, and the watery gleams of sunshine, filtering in through the diamond panes of latticed windows, fell lingeringly on the waxen surface of an ancient dresser.  On the dresser shelves were lodged some willow-pattern plates, their clear, tender blue bearing witness to an early period.

“How like Maryon it all is!” whispered Nan.

And just then Rooke himself came into the room.  He had altered very little.  It was the same supple, loose-limbed figure that approached.  The pointed Van Dyck beard was as carefully trimmed, the hazel eyes, with their misleading softness of appeal, as arresting as of old.  Perhaps he bore himself with a little more assurance.  There might have been a shade less of the Bohemian and a shade more of the successful artist about him.

But Rooke would never suffer from the inordinate complacency which spoils so many successful men.  Always it would be tempered by that odd, cynical humour of his.  Beautiful ladies who gushed at him merely amused him, and received in return some charming compliment or other that rang as hollow as a kettle-drum.  Politicians who came to him for their portraits were gently made to feel that their favourite oratorical attitude—­which they inevitably assumed when asked to pose themselves quite naturally—­was not really overwhelmingly effective, while royalties who perforce condescended to attend his studio—­since he flatly declined to paint them in their palaces—­found that he was inclined to overlook the matter of their royal blood and to portray them as though they were merely men and women.