“It must be of sheer white, with many flowing flounces, and with faint pink underneath like the almond bloom.  And there must be a bit of heavenly blue in the hat, and a knot of green at the girdle—­and a veil flung back—­you see?—­there’ll be sky and field and flowers and a white cloud—­all the delicate color and bloom——­”

Still explaining, he was at last induced to leave the picture, and have tea.  While Delilah poured, Porter watched the two, interested and diverted by enthusiasms which seemed to him somewhat puerile for a man who could do real things in the world of art.

Yet he saw that Delilah took the little man very seriously, that she hung on his words of advice, and that she was obedient to his demands upon her.

“She’ll marry him some day,” he said to himself, and Delilah seemed to divine his thought, for when at last Colin had rushed back to his sketch, she settled herself in her low chair, and told Porter of their first meeting.

“I’ll begin at the beginning,” she said; “it is almost too funny to be true, and it could not possibly have happened to any one but me and Colin.

“It was last summer when I was on the North Shore.  Father and I stayed at a big hotel, but I was crazy to get acquainted with the cottage colony.

“But somehow I didn’t seem to make good—­you see that was in my crude days when I wanted to be a cubist picture instead of a daguerreotype.  I liked to be startling, and thought that to attract attention was to attract friends—­but I found that I did not attract them.

“One night in August there was a big dance on at one of the hotels, and I wanted a gown which should outshine all the others—­the ball was to be given for the benefit of a local chanty, and all the cottage colony would attend.  I sent an order for a gown to my dressmaker, and she shipped out a strange and wonderful creation.  It was an imported affair—­you know the kind—­with a bodice of a string of jet and a wisp of lace—­with a tulle tunic, and a skirt of gold brocade that was so tight about my feet that it had the effect of Turkish trousers.  For my head she sent a strip of gold gauze which was to be swathed around and around my hair in a sort of nun’s coif, so that only a little knot could show at the back and practically none in front.  It was the last cry in fashions.  It made me look like a dream from the Arabian Nights, and I liked it.”

She laughed, and, in spite of himself, Porter laughed with her.

“I wore it to the dance, and it was there that I met Colin Quale.  I wish I could make you see the scene—­the great ballroom, and all the other women staring at me as I came in—­and the men, smiling.

“I was in my element.  I thought, in those days, that the test of charm was to hold the eyes of the multitude.  To-day I know that it is to hold the eyes of the elect, and it is Colin who has taught me.

“I had danced with a dozen other men when he came up to claim me.  I scarcely remembered that I had promised him a dance.  When he was presented to me I had only been aware of a pale little man with eye-glasses and nervous hands who had stared at me rather too steadily.