But Harz went on his way.  A cart drawn by cream-coloured oxen was passing slowly towards the bridge.  In front of the brushwood piled on it two peasant girls were sitting with their feet on a mat of grass—­the picture of contentment.

“I’m wasting my time!” he thought.  “I’ve done next to nothing in two months.  Better get back to London!  That girl will never make a painter!” She would never make a painter, but there was something in her that he could not dismiss so rapidly.  She was not exactly beautiful, but she was sympathetic.  The brow was pleasing, with dark-brown hair softly turned back, and eyes so straight and shining.  The two sisters were very different!  The little one was innocent, yet mysterious; the elder seemed as clear as crystal!

He had entered the town, where the arcaded streets exuded their peculiar pungent smell of cows and leather, wood-smoke, wine-casks, and drains.  The sound of rapid wheels over the stones made him turn his head.  A carriage drawn by red-roan horses was passing at a great pace.  People stared at it, standing still, and looking alarmed.  It swung from side to side and vanished round a corner.  Harz saw Mr. Nicholas Treffry in a long, whitish dust-coat; his Italian servant, perched behind, was holding to the seat-rail, with a nervous grin on his dark face.

‘Certainly,’ Harz thought, ’there’s no getting away from these people this morning—­they are everywhere.’

In his studio he began to sort his sketches, wash his brushes, and drag out things he had accumulated during his two months’ stay.  He even began to fold his blanket door.  But suddenly he stopped.  Those two girls!  Why not try?  What a picture!  The two heads, the sky, and leaves!  Begin to-morrow!  Against that window—­no, better at the Villa!  Call the picture—­Spring...!

IV

The wind, stirring among trees and bushes, flung the young leaves skywards.  The trembling of their silver linings was like the joyful flutter of a heart at good news.  It was one of those Spring mornings when everything seems full of a sweet restlessness—­soft clouds chasing fast across the sky; soft scents floating forth and dying; the notes of birds, now shrill and sweet, now hushed in silences; all nature striving for something, nothing at peace.

Villa Rubein withstood the influence of the day, and wore its usual look of rest and isolation.  Harz sent in his card, and asked to see “der Herr.”  The servant, a grey-eyed, clever-looking Swiss with no hair on his face, came back saying: 

“Der Herr, mein Herr, is in the Garden gone.”  Harz followed him.

Herr Paul, a small white flannel cap on his head, gloves on his hands, and glasses on his nose, was watering a rosebush, and humming the serenade from Faust.

This aspect of the house was very different from the other.  The sun fell on it, and over a veranda creepers clung and scrambled in long scrolls.  There was a lawn, with freshly mown grass; flower-beds were laid out, and at the end of an avenue of young acacias stood an arbour covered with wisteria.