“You remember that?  It is just a small canvas.”

“You said you’d show it to me.”

Colin, rummaging in a second room, called back, “I’ve found it, and here’s another, of a woman who seemed to fit in with a Botticelli scheme.  She was the long lank type.”

Porter was not interested in the Botticelli woman, nor in Colin’s experiments.  He wanted to see Roger Poole’s wife, so he gave scant attention to Colin’s enthusiastic comments on the first canvas which he displayed.

“She has the long face.  D’you see?  And the thin long body.  But I couldn’t make her a success.  That’s the joy of Delilah Jeliffe.  She has the temperament of an actress and simply lives in her part.  But this woman couldn’t.  And lobster suppers and lovely lank ladies are not synonymous—­so I gave her up.”

But Porter was reaching for the other sketch.

With it in his hand, he surveyed the small creature with the angel face.  In her dress of pure clear red, with the touch of gold in the halo, and a lyre in her hand, she seemed lighted by divine fire, above the earth, appealing.

“I fancy it must have been the man’s fault if marriage with such a wife was a failure,” he ventured.

Colin shrugged.  “Who can tell?” he said.  “There were moments when she did not seem a saint.”

“What do you mean?” Porter’s voice was almost irritable.

“It is hard to tell,” the little artist reflected—­“now and then a glance, a word—­seemed to give her away.”

“You may have misunderstood.”

“Perhaps.  But men who know women rarely misunderstand—­that kind.”

“Did you ever hear Roger Poole preach?” Porter asked, abruptly.

“Several times.  He promised to be a great man.  It was a pity.”

“And you say she married again.”

“Yes, and died shortly after.”

The subject ended there, and Porter went away with the vision in his mind of Roger’s wife, and of what the picture of the little saint in red would mean to Mary Ballard if she could see it.

The thought, having lodged like an evil seed, grew and flourished.

Of late he had seen comparatively little of Mary.  He was not sure whether she planned deliberately to avoid him, or whether her work really absorbed her.  That she wrote to Roger Poole he knew.  She did not try to hide the fact, but spoke frankly of Roger’s life in the pines.

The flames of his jealous thought burned high and hot.  He refused to go with his father and mother to the northern coast, preferring to stay and swelter in the heat of Washington where he could be near Mary.  He grew restless and pale, unlike himself.  And he found in Leila a confidante and friend, for the General, like Mr. Jeliffe, was held in town by the late Congress.