Outside the hours when Nell sat to him, he purposely saw but little of her, leaving her to nestle under Sylvia’s wing; and this she did, as if she never wanted to come out.  Thus he preserved his amusement at her quaint warmths, and quainter calmness, his aesthetic pleasure in watching her, whose strange, half-hypnotized, half-hypnotic gaze, had a sort of dreamy and pathetic lovingness, as if she were brimful of affections that had no outlet.

Every morning after ‘sitting’ she would stay an hour bent over her own drawing, which made practically no progress; and he would often catch her following his movements with those great eyes of hers, while the sheep-dogs would lie perfectly still at her feet, blinking horribly—­such was her attraction.  His birds also, a jackdaw and an owl, who had the run of the studio, tolerated her as they tolerated no other female, save the housekeeper.  The jackdaw would perch on her and peck her dress; but the owl merely engaged her in combats of mesmeric gazing, which never ended in victory for either.

Now that she was with them, Oliver Dromore began to haunt the house, coming at all hours, on very transparent excuses.  She behaved to him with extreme capriciousness, sometimes hardly speaking, sometimes treating him like a brother; and in spite of all his nonchalance, the poor youth would just sit glowering, or gazing out his adoration, according to her mood.

One of these July evenings Lennan remembered beyond all others.  He had come, after a hard day’s work, out from his studio into the courtyard garden to smoke a cigarette and feel the sun on his cheek before it sank behind the wall.  A piano-organ far away was grinding out a waltz; and on an hydrangea tub, under the drawing-room window, he sat down to listen.  Nothing was visible from there, save just the square patch of a quite blue sky, and one soft plume of smoke from his own kitchen chimney; nothing audible save that tune, and the never-ending street murmur.  Twice birds flew across—­starlings.  It was very peaceful, and his thoughts went floating like the smoke of his cigarette, to meet who-knew-what other thoughts—­for thoughts, no doubt, had little swift lives of their own; desired, found their mates, and, lightly blending, sent forth offspring.  Why not?  All things were possible in this wonder-house of a world.  Even that waltz tune, floating away, would find some melody to wed, and twine with, and produce a fresh chord that might float in turn to catch the hum of a gnat or fly, and breed again.  Queer—­how everything sought to entwine with something else!  On one of the pinkish blooms of the hydrangea he noted a bee—­of all things, in this hidden-away garden of tiles and gravel and plants in tubs!  The little furry, lonely thing was drowsily clinging there, as if it had forgotten what it had come for—­seduced, maybe, like himself, from labour by these last rays of the sun.  Its wings, close-furled, were glistening; its eyes seemed closed.  And the piano-organ played on, a tune of yearning, waiting, yearning. . . .