Many such passages of love occupied their time—­though he managed to make a good show of progressive work after the first rough outline drawing of the picture was completed.  He was undeniably a genius in his way, uncertain and erratic of impulse, but his art was strong because its effects were broad and simple.  He had begun Innocent’s portrait out of the mere desire to have her with him constantly,—­but as day after day went on and the subject developed under his skilled hand and brush he realised that it would probably be “the” picture of the Salon in the following year.  As this conviction dawned upon him, he took greater pains, and worked more carefully and conscientiously with the happiest results, feeling a thrill of true artistic satisfaction as the picture began to live and smile in response to his masterly touch and treatment.  Its composition was simple—­he had drawn the girl as though she were slowly advancing towards the spectator, giving her figure all the aerial grace habitual to it by nature,—­one little daintily shaped hand held a dove lightly against her breast, as though the bird had just flown there for protection from its own alarm,—­her face was slightly uplifted,—­the lips smiled, and the eyes looked straight out at the world with a beautiful, clear candour which was all their own.  Yet despite the charm and sweetness of the likeness there was a strange pathos about it,—­a sadness which Jocelyn had never set there by his own will or intention.

“You are a puzzling subject,” he said to her one day—­“I wanted to give you a happy expression—­and yet your portrait is actually growing sad!—­almost reproachful! ... do you look at me like that?”

She opened her pretty eyes wonderingly.

“Amadis!  Surely not!  I could not look sad when I am with you!—­ that is impossible!”

He paused, palette in hand.

“Nor reproachful?”

“How?  When I have nothing to reproach you for?” she answered.

He put his palette aside and came and sat at her feet on the step of the dais where he had posed her.

“You may rest,” he said, smiling up at her—­“And so may I.”  She sat down beside him and he folded her in his arms.  “How often we rest in this way, don’t we!” he murmured—­“And so you think you have nothing to reproach me for!  Well,—­I’m not so sure of that—­ Innocent!”

She looked at him questioningly.

“Are you talking nonsense, my ’Sieur Amadis’?—­or are you serious?” she asked.

“I am quite serious—­much more serious than is common with me,” he replied, taking one of her hands and studying it as the perfect model it was—­“I believe I am involving you in all sorts of trouble—­and you, you absurd little child, don’t see it!  Suppose Miss Leigh were to find out that we make the maddest love to each other in here—­you all alone with me—­what would she say?”

“What could she say?” Innocent demanded, simply—­“There is no harm!—­and I should not mind telling her we are lovers.”