“You must forgive my ignorant praise,” he said, and smiled.  “I have always thought it beautiful:  But I can understand that an artist is never satisfied.”

She turned to him, and suddenly their eyes met and held in a momentary, electric intensity that left him warm and agitated.  There was nothing coquettish in the glance, but it was the first distinct manifestation that he was of consequence.  She returned his smile, without levity.

“Is a clergyman ever satisfied?” she asked.

“He ought not to be,” replied Hodder, wondering whether she had read him.

“Although you were so considerate, I suppose you must have thought it presumptuous of me to criticize your, profession, which is religion.”

“Religion, I think, should be everybody’s,” he answered quietly.

She made no reply.  And he entered, as into another world, the circular arbour in which the pergola ended, so complete in contrast was its atmosphere to that of the house.  The mansion he had long since grown to recognize as an expression of the personality of its owner, but this classic bower was as remote from it as though it were in Greece.  He was sensitive to beauty, yet the beauty of the place had a perplexing quality, which he felt in the perfect curves of the marble bench, in the marble basin brimming to the tip with clear water,—­the surface of which, flecked with pink petals, mirrored the azure sky through the leafy network of the roof.  In one green recess a slender Mercury hastily adjusted his sandal.

Was this, her art, the true expression of her baffling personality?  As she had leaned back in the corner of the automobile she had given him the impression of a languor almost Oriental, but this had been startlingly dispelled at the lunch-table by the revelation of an animation and a vitality which had magically transformed her.  But now, as under the spell of a new encompassment of her own weaving, she seemed to revert to her former self, sinking, relaxed, into a wicker lounge beside the basin, one long and shapely hand in the water, the other idle in her lap.  Her eyes, he remarked, were the contradiction in her face.  Had they been larger, and almond-shaped, the illusion might have been complete.  They were neither opaque nor smouldering,—­but Western eyes, amber-coloured, with delicately stencilled rays and long lashes.  And as they gazed up at him now they seemed to reflect, without disclosing the flitting thoughts behind them.  He felt antagonism and attraction in almost equal degree —­the situation transcended his experience.

“You don’t intend to change this?” he asked, with an expressive sweep of his hand.

“No,” she said, “I’ve always liked it.  Tell me what you feel about it.”

He hesitated.

“You resent it,” she declared.

“Why do you say that?” he demanded quickly.

“I feel it,” she answered calmly, but with a smile.

“‘Resent’ would scarcely be the proper word,” he contended, returning her smile, yet hesitating again.