“How could I?  Three motor-loads arrived from Iron Hill before I was half dressed, and ever since I’ve been doing my traditional duty; and,” in a lower voice, “I was perfectly crazy to go to the beech-tree all the time.  Did you wait long, you poor boy?”

“Man is born to wait.  I came back just now to find you....  I told Kathleen,” he added, radiant.

“What?” she whispered, flushing deliciously.  “Oh, pooh!  I told her about it this morning—­the very first thing.  We both snivelled.  I didn’t sleep at all last night....  There’s something I wish to tell you——­”

The gay smile suddenly died out in her eyes; a strange, wistful tenderness softened them, touching her lips, too, which always gave that very young, almost childish pathos to her expression.  She put out her hand instinctively and touched him.

“I want to be alone with you, Duane—­for a little while.”

“Shall I go to the beech-tree and wait?”

She glanced around with a hopeless gesture: 

“You see?  Other people are arriving and I’ve simply got to be here.  I don’t see how I can get away before luncheon.  Where were you going just now?”

“I thought I’d step over to the studio to see what sort of a shake-down you’ve given me to repose on.”

“I wish you would.  Poor child, I do hope you will be comfortable.  It’s perfectly horrid to send you out of the house——­”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” he nodded, laughing, and she gave him a shy glance of adieu and turned to receive another guest.

In his extemporized studio at Hurryon Lodge he found that old Miller had already provided him with a washstand and accessories, a new tin tub and a very comfortable iron bed.

The place was aromatic with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in turpentine and black soap.

Confronting him on a big improvised easel was the full-length, half-reclining portrait of Rosalie Dysart—­a gay, fascinating, fly-away thing after the deliberately artificial manner of the French court painters who simpered and painted a hundred and fifty years ago.  Ribbons fluttered from the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade.  A silken parody of a shepherdess—­a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a dark-blue sky—­this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as delicate as her small, bare foot, dropping below the flowered petticoat.