The Ingredients

THE Model knew the tricks of the trade; so when she noticed that the painter’s gaze had settled itself at the level of the flounce on her petticoat, she straightened her back, raised her bare arms, and indulged in a long, slow stretch and a yawn that made her eyes water. There was no hurry. He’d be working away down there on the lower part of his canvas for some time.

In the corner, behind Burton, was a big mirror, and if she had craned her neck just a little, she might, without interfering with him, have seen the deliberate, infallible brush strokes that were the envy and the despair of so many of his colleagues. For you might quarrel with Burton’s ideas, — or what some people considered his lack of them, — or with the palette he sometimes worked in; but there were no two words about his painting.

The Model did n’t look. If any one had asked her, — which no one did,— she might have discoursed feelingly on the folly of paint ing a picture of a girl washing her hands in a common white porcelain wash-bowl that stood on an imitation mahogany wash-stand, with a cheap porcelain pitcher beside it, and the slop-jar, which completed the set, glaring, without apology, in the foreground. ’Also, she might have had a word to say of the absurdity of hanging a corner of the room, as Burton had done, in a light-blue eight-cent wall paper. And what was the sense, when a girl had come up to the studio in a perfectly new brown suit that was the latest style, — absolutely the latest, — in painting her picture in a common white petticoat and chemise? That was what she wanted to know. At least, it was what she would have wanted to know had her thirst for any sort of knowledge been more than negligible.

Instead, she started another stretch. But, as Burton looked up just then, she checked it hastily and resumed the pose.

‘Tired?’he asked. ‘It’s rather hard, is n’t it?’

‘Well now, it’s harder than you’d think,’ she assented. ‘Bending over just a little like that, puts a sort of crick in your back. I’d rather be all doubled up, or standing on one leg, or something.’

With a little roll of his loaded brush, Burton defined a high light on the rim of the bowl. Then he stepped back for a look.

‘We’ll call it a day,’ he said.

The girl wriggled her shoulders and lounged across to the steam radiator, where she leaned back, folding her arms behind her.

Burton pushed the easel a little farther out into the room, and in doing so, turned it so the girl could see what he had been painting.

She looked at it vaguely, without the slightest change of expression. ‘Well,’ she said encouragingly, ‘that slop-jar certainly does look awfully natural.’ She yawned again, but this time, when she saw that Burton was smiling, she shaded it off into a rather apologetic little laugh. ‘I guess I ain’t much on art,’ she added.

‘ I’m with you there.’ Burton nodded emphatically. ‘I’m not much on art myself.’

She looked round at him, with a momentary flash of interest. She could believe what he said easily enough. He was not like the rest of them. His trimly cut hair was brushed in an ordinary way; his ordinary-looking tweed suit would n’t have disgraced a teller in a bank, and there was not a paint stain on him anywhere, — not even on his hands. But her interest died out as he added, —

‘At least, it’s a question of spelling. Art, with a big A —’

He broke off and went close to the canvas, contemplating the brush work over a patch of it with a thoughtful eye.

The girl was looking at a portrait that stood out at an angle from the wall, as if inviting inspection. It was of a man somewhere about sixty years old, — prosperous, authoritative, restrained, — a formidable, predaciouslooking figure, characteristic of the rapidly passing heroic age of American finance.

‘That’s Kirby, is n’t it?’ she said. ‘Randolph Kirby?’

Burton nodded without looking up.

I think that s fine,’ said the Model.

‘ Why it. might almost be a photograph of him.’

The painter smiled. ‘That’s what Kirby said about it himself. But still, the question arises — I didn’t ask Kirby this — why have a portrait at all? Why not stick to photographs?’

‘I’ve thought of that.’ Evidently the Model found it rather puzzling. ‘Oh, but there’s some class to a portrait,’she concluded.

‘It shows you’ve got the price,’ suggested Burton; and the girl nodded assent.

‘I’ve seen his picture in the papers,’ she went on. ‘That’s how I knew him. I see his daughter’s got her divorce.’ She leaned back comfortably against the radiator and stroked her arms. ‘I guess those foreign counts are a pretty bum lot, even the best of them. She certainly drew down a lemon all right.’

Burton had caught up a brush and was making an imperceptible change in the color of one of the shadows on the face.

‘We’ll finish this to-morrow,’ he said, cheerfully ignoring the topic she had chosen. He fell back for another look and regarded his work with undisguised satisfaction. ‘So you don’t think much of this, eh?’

‘Oh, I suppose it’s all right,’ said the Model, ‘only, — well, I should think you’d paint something pretty.’

‘Like this?’ he questioned. He walked swiftly across the studio to where another easel stood, its canvas turned toward the wall. He wheeled it round and pushed it toward the light.

He heard a little gasp of wonder from the Model. Then came a silence more eloquent than words.

‘ My! ’ breathed the Model at the end of it. ‘My, but ain’t that swell?’ She turned on Burton with sudden vehemence. ‘Who did it?’ she demanded.

He answered with an ironical little bow.

‘You!’ she cried.

‘What’s worse,’ he assented, ‘I’m going to sign it.’

‘Well, why in the world, if you can do things like that, do you — ?’

The Model let the sentence trail away as her look reverted to the picture she had been posing for.

‘I don’t know,’ said Burton thoughtfully. ‘ I ask myself that question every day. I suppose it’s an attempt to demonstrate that it’s possible to serve both God and Mammon.’

He plunged his hands in his pockets and began to move restlessly back and forth across the room.

The girl paid no more attention to him than to the answer he had given her, which she had not understood. She was gazing with round eyes and open mouth at the portrait.

‘Did she really have those furs?’ she asked at last. ‘Or did you just make them up?’

‘Yes, she had the furs and she had the necklace. I’ve painted them pretty well, have n’t I? That necklace, now, — a jeweler could almost identify the pearls.’

The cutting edge of irony in his voice was lost on the girl.

‘I should think he could,’ she wondered.

Burton’s restless pace grew quicker. He was struggling with an overmastering desire to tell the truth for once. The clear absurdity of the impulse made it all the harder to resist. After all, where could he find a safer depository than in the uncomprehending ears of the girl who stood gaping there. He stopped short and faced her.

‘I’m going to tell you a secret,’ he said.

The girl looked round at him, puzzled, — a little uneasy. It was n’t a bit like Burton to get fresh with his models. She’d posed for him long enough to find that out. He never had much to say, and his one concern at the end of a sitting seemed always to be to get rid of her as early as possible. He was looking straight at her, but with an abstracted gaze that saw nothing.

‘That picture over there, the one you’re posing for, is a piece of really honest work. But it’s more than that. It’s really beautiful. Oh, there’s no doubt about it. I know it. And there’ll always be a small class of people in the world who’ll know it. Perhaps after they’ve said so often enough, the others may come to agree with them. Not because they see it themselves, but because they’ll believe what they’ve been told. It may be that some millionaire of the twenty-second century, if there are any millionaires then, will buy it for a quarter of a million dollars; and then people will stand in front of it in the gallery and iook solemn, and check it in their catalogues to convince themselves that they’ve really seen it. Whether that happens or not, — and I’ll be too dead to care before it does, — no amount of silly praise nor ignorant. neglect, nor change of the fashion of the day, can make one grain of difference to that picture. It’ll always be there, and there’ll always be a few that know. In their hearts, the rest will always agree with you.’

The Model had been placidly occupied stroking out the wrinkles in the petticoat about her hips, but she straightened up with a little start on the ‘you,’ and looked at him in vague embarrassment. She wished he’d stop talking and let her go home.

Burton strode over to the other easel and dragged it out farther into the light.

‘Now just look at this thing,’ he commanded. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve used lots of pretty pink and white paint, and I ’ve painted a pretty pink and white face, and the rest to match. And as you say, the furs are expensive and the pearls are real. But look at it. What is her weight resting on? Nothing. Where’s her back-bone? Nowhere. She has n’t any. Where’s her right leg? There was n’t room for it, if she was to taper down like that. Look at the size of that foot! She could n’t stand on it. See how bright her eyes are. That’s because they are n’t in the plane of her face, really, but way out in front of it. They ought to be strung on two strings like beads, to keep them from falling. In four words, the thing is plausibly and consistently and infernally rotten.’

He stepped back from it with a grim laugh. He had forgotten the very existence of the girl beside him. On her part, she was wondering whether she’d come back to-morrow or not. Oh, she supposed he was all right, really. Only she wished he’d shut up and let her go.

‘Of course, in its own way it’s good,’ he went on. ‘It has to be. You have to know how to draw to do a thing as bad as that and get away with it. But the further you can go, without giving yourself away, the better they like it. I guess in that direction, this thing’s about my limit.’

He turned away and strode off on his old patrol across the room.

The girl edged tentatively in the direction of the stairs up to the loft where her clothes were. But he stopped her with a gesture.

‘Why do I go on with it?’ he demanded. ‘That’s the question. It is n’t because I need the money. Lord! I’m rolling in it, from the dozens and scores of these things I’ve done before. Why don’t I turn honest, now I’ve grown rich? Well, I like to be the fashion. I suppose that’s the answer — one answer anyway. As long as these idiots are waiting three or four ahead all the time for stuff like this, I go on turning it out. And they like it. Bless you! They eat it up. There’s a sort of pleasure, I suppose, in seeing how far I can go without giving myself away. Oh, they don’t deserve anything better, I know. I tried it once with one of the best of them —’

He broke off with a little laugh, and, oddly enough, his gaze swung round to the picture of Kirby that stood out on the floor at an angle from the wall.

‘Her father was a real man, and I’d an idea that she was a real girl; that there was something inside her clothes and behind her face.’

The girl was looking at him now with an expression of genuine interest, and her look stopped Burton as suddenly as a dash of cold water in his face. She scented a romance!

‘All right,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m through for the day. Run along and dress.’

Five minutes later he was able to watch her go, with a smile of pure amusement at his own expense. He was enough of a philosopher for that. He realized quite well that everybody, once in a while, had to turn loose and make a blithering fool of himself. He could hardly have chosen a better witness for his outbreak than the Model. She would account for the whole thing with the comfortable adjective ‘ nutty,’ and let it go at that. And, after all, she would probably be nearer right than any of his friends.

Suppose, just suppose, the outbreak had come a little later, before the visitor he was expecting now any minute. Burton straightened up with a grin, turned his picture of the girl at the wash-stand to the wall, and was in the act of turning the portrait of the girl with the necklace, when he checked his hand and left the thing where it was. What’s more, he lied to himself about his reason for doing it.

He said the reason was that it would save explanations, avoid false pretenses, and so on. The real reason was that he hoped that when the girl who used to be Ethel Kirby looked at the portrait of this other young girl with the necklace, she would ask a question and give him a chance to answer it. Then, to show himself how little the visit meant to him, he began setting his palette to rights and cleaning up his brushes. Because, of course, it was altogether likely that she would not come.

It was not until he heard a ring at the bell that he wondered how he should address her. Countess? That would seem like rubbing it in. Oh, well, it was n’t really necessary to call people anything, if one used a little management.

Perhaps that was what made his greeting rather warmer than he had meant it to be.

‘Oh, how do you do?’ he cried, when his opening door revealed her. ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come, after all.’

‘I’m not. interrupting then by being too early?’

It was hard even for his trained eyes to see just where she had changed. She was little, if any, thinner. Certainly there were no wrinkles. Even the bloom on her skin was st ill there. There was a little more definit ion to her features perhaps — more of what he was in the habit of calling edge. But it was not so much the features themselves after all, as the expressions that played across them. Her smile, — ah, that was different. It had come almost instantly with her recognition of him. Certainly before his word of greeting was half spoken. Her old smile used to break through so slowly, unevenly, as if against a shy, reluctant resistance.

All that went through iris head in just the second it took to shut the door after her.

‘Oh, you’re safely after hours,’ he assured her. ‘Let me take your coat. It had to be warm here for the model. Yes, she’s gone home.’

‘Dad said he thought you would n’t mind if I ran in for a look. He’s awfully proud of it. But I really think he keeps you painting portraits of him just for the fun of watching you work. He says he’s never met more than half a dozen men who really knew their business, and you’re one of them.’

Burton was a pretty good stage manager. She did not see the portrait until he had released her from her coat. Then, as she turned, her eye fell on it.

‘There he is,’said Burton.

She nodded and did not speak immediately.

‘Yes, there he is,’ she assented.

It would have been an exaggeration to say she did it raggedly, or even unevenly. But some of the hard, smooth suavity was gone out of her voice.

‘Some of his business friends,’ said Burton, Tike it rather less than the first one I did of him — the one they ’ ve got at the bank.’

She assented with a curt nod that reminded him a little of her father. ‘They would.’ And she took her time about explaining. ‘There’s rather more of him in it than they see.’ She turned and looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I wonder a little that you saw it. I’d an idea that no one ever saw — just that man, but me.’

Burton walked up close to the canvas and began studying a corner of it as if he suspected something wrong in the varnishing.

‘He talked about — you pretty constantly while I was painting it,’ he said quietly; and he didn’t look round at her.

He did not need to. The tension of the little silence that followed his words had as much meaning as any look there could have been in her face. A moment later, he heard her turn away.

‘Oh, Sylvia Herbert!’ she exclaimed. And that released him from his affect ed occupation. ‘She told me you were doing her.’

He watched her face intently, while she gazed in silence for a minute or two at the portrait of the girl with the necklace. Her expressions were well schooled now and, at first, there was nothing to see except a polite simulation of interest. Then, irrepressibly, a cynical little smile flashed across it. And in that same instant, she knew he was watching her.

She turned on him quickly and met his own smile of complete understanding.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s the way I wanted you to paint me. And how disappointed and angry I was when I found you were n’t doing it! ’ Her eyes went back to the portrait. ‘I can see now how silly it is. I did n’t know then — four years ago. I suppose you must always have known. I don’t suppose a man could do that — unless he knew better.’

And then came what was to him the first real reminder of old times her presence had brought, — the lit tie gasp of consternation following the utterance of a remark that had not sounded as she meant it to.

‘You’re quite right about that,’ he said. ‘I said the same thing not ten minutes ago.’

‘Then why —’ But she broke off for a fresh start. ‘You knew this was the sort of thing I wanted—just exactly what you were doing for everybody else. And you had n’t ref— I mean, you meant to go on doing it for other people. You’ve been doing it ever since, have n’t you? Then, why would n’t you do it for me?’

That was the question he had hoped she would ask. He would not have denied, now, that, this was the reason why he had left Sylvia Herbert’s portrait out to stare at them. But he was not ready with his answer. Queerly enough, it was not because she had changed so much from the girl he had known pretty well, four years ago, but because she had changed so little.

With an uncanny little flash of insight she guessed what was making him hesitate. ‘Oh, you can talk frankly enough about Ethel Kirby. I’m — someone else — altogether.’

‘I wonder whether I can’t answer you best by showing you — what I was trying to do then. I’ve got the thing here, just as it was that morning, four years ago, when you —’

She was smiling reminiscently.

‘What a rage she was in! Yes, I’d like to see it very much, if you can find it without too much trouble.’

‘I can find it,’ he said; but for a moment he just stood there looking at her. And at last the mask melted.

‘That’s what I came up for, really. For a look at Ethel Kirby. I wanted to make sure there was such a person — once.’

For a canvas that had been left unfinished four years ago by as busy a man as Burton, it was surprisingly easy to find. But when he came back from his alcove, only a moment later, lugging the big unframed stretcher, she was the woman he had opened his door to, self-possessed, secure in her defenses. And she was looking, in serene amusement, at the still-life for the picture he had been painting that day. The corner he had hung so carefully in eight-cent paper, the imitation mahogany wash-stand, and the dollar-andninety-eight-cent set that adorned it.

‘That is n’t furniture,’ he explained. ‘It’s props for a picture.’

‘A picture! Out of that?’ She laughed. ‘I suppose that’s your way of getting even with Sylvia.’

He leaned the unfinished portrait, still face in, against the wall. It was not quite time for that. Then he turned round the canvas of the model washing her hands. And he took care not to disturb the long, silent scrutiny she bestowed on it even by so much as a glance at her.

‘Somehow, it makes you feel good,’ she admitted, at last. ‘It’s so fresh and true-looking. The light’s so clear, and cool, — like early morning. You feel as if you’d like to splash around in that water yourself. It reflects so beautifully from the girl’s arms. And how you’ve made that awful wall-paper sing! But — but why —’

She turned on him now and her voice was full of protest. ‘Why could n’t it be beautiful as well as true? That — that happens to be an important question to me, just now.’

‘It is beautiful,’ he said quietly.

‘But it’s made up of such ugly — ingredients. Why not a pretty model and pretty French — things, and the petticoat put on straight, instead of all humped around like that. And why pick out that dreadful paper and that fearful wash-stand and that horrible—!’

She nodded indignantly at the slopjar that shone shamelessly white in the foreground.

‘It was the most beautiful thing I could think of to put just there. It needed to be plain and white and just about that size, or your first look at the picture would n’t have satisfied you the way it did. A homely fact — even an ugly fact, out in plain sight in the foreground, does n’t need to spoil the picture.’

She looked up quickly, but if any secondary meaning underlay his words, his face gave no sign. He went on thoughtfully, —

‘Of course, the other sort of thing can be beautiful, too. Laces and brocades and Empire furniture. But what’s the use. Everybody knows pearls are beautiful. So is a wet cake of soap. Beauty’s a matter of relations, not ingredients.’ He pulled up with a shrug. ‘Preaching again! Here endeth the first lesson.’

She ignored his apology. ‘I think I’m beginning to see. She’s just an ordinary girl, putting on her ordinary clothes, and when she’s had her breakfast, she’ll probably go down to some ordinary job in a street-car. And yet she’s doing a beautiful thing, just washing her hands. And she’ll do other beautiful things, in the course of an ordinary day’s work — if only people with the right sort of eyes happen to look at her. And if she has the right sort of eyes herself, she can see beautifill things about her all day long. That’s the moral, is n’t it?’

‘Oh, I don’t pretend to be a missionary,’ he began, a little uncomfortably.

But she cut him short.

‘I know you don’t. You can see the truth for yourself. Why bother about the stupid people who can’t? — I suppose you’ve painted other things like this? All along?’

‘More or less.’

‘So that some day you can show us that you’ve only been laughing.’ She let that sink in with a little silence, and he could think of no way to break it. ‘ But — I ’ve an idea you meant to help me — when I needed it — without knowing — four years ago. And if you had n’t been too afraid of being a missionary, and not being understood — and having to bother — you would have helped. — Well, I need help now, again. And I’m going to ask for it.’

By now, he had no idea of trying to break the silence. Even when she began to speak again he did not fully hear at first. Afraid of being a missionary, — of being misunderstood, — of having to bother ! When he might have helped!

‘You said beauty was a matter of relations, not ingredients. That’s right, is n’t it? Well, how far does that go? How far can I go with it?’

‘How far? Why, all the way, I should think. Certainly truth is n’t a matter of facts, nor goodness a matter of doing certain things and leaving undone certain others. It’s true of everything, I should say, that’s an art rather than a science.’

‘You mean, living itself’s an art?'

He nodded. ‘Praise God!’

‘That’s all very well for you. But there are some of us who can’t feel quite so well satisfied.’

She gave another little gasp at that, and made a quick gesture of appeal to him. ‘Please don’t mind! I should n’t care, — don’t you see? — if you’d just let me go the other time. If you’d painted my portrait as I wanted you to, — a vain, spoiled, young ignorant thing reaching out for a lot of unrealities because they glittered and she wanted them. On her way to be scorched and disillusioned, — oh, and very bitterly unhappy. It was n’t up to you. You were n’t your brother’s keeper. You need n’t have cared. But you knew, and you did care. In a way, you even warned me. You painted me so real and solid, so completely the Ethel Kirby I was getting away from, t he girl who used to manage to gel down to breakfast with dad about three mornings in seven, that you made me homesick. Took the shine off the — Christmas-tree ornaments I was reaching in among the candles for. You cared enough to do that. But when I resented it, because I did n’t understand, — you shrugged your shoulders and washed your hands of me. When you might have tried harder, spoken more plainly.

‘Of course —’ she paused, and her old, slow smile came through — ‘there was no one else who did even as much as you. But there was n’t anyone else who both knew and — cared. Dear old dad — if I wanted anything, that settled it. He might have been unhappy and fearful, but he would n’t let me know it. Do you remember how lie sided with me that morning I brought him in to see the portrait?’

Burton laughed. ‘Remember? It might have been yesterday!'

But at that, the light went out of her face and she shivered.

‘ Yesterday! ’ she echoed.

‘Yes,’ he persisted. ‘You’re Ethel Kirby still. You’ve hardly changed at all. Why I could finish that portrait from you, almost as you sit, if only you were dressed right. For that matter, I’ve still got the frock you posed in. Changed! Why you even smiled in your old way, not a minute ago.’ He went across to the unfinished portrait that leaned, face in, against the wall, and laid a hand on it, ‘ Won’t you look and see for yourself?’

‘No,’ she protested. ‘Not to-day.’

He had a quick way of understanding some things. He did not urge her further, but came back without a word, and stood beside her while she looked meditatively at the picture of the girl at the wash-stand. It was like old times, this long, unembarrassed silence. At last she looked round at him.

‘I said I needed help again and I was going to ask you for it. I think perhaps you’ve helped me already, — given me the clue I needed. But I want to be sure I understand. You said that even an ugly fact, out in plain sight, in the foreground, need n’t spoil the picture. Did you mean that for me?’

She shot the question at him so squarely, her eyes held his so steadily, under those sensitive, mobile brows of hers, that he stammered and flinched away.

‘Of course,’ he began, lamely, ‘I did n’t mean — ’

‘Oh, won’t you help, even now?’ she cried. ‘What’s the use of being polite and pretending? I was a fool, and for a while, a perfect ly eternal while, I stood the consequences rather than admit what a fool I ’d been. And at last, when the consequences grew so — unspeakably degrading that I could n’t stand them, I ran away from them, — and took the world into my confidence. I’ve no secrets any more, — even from the Hearst reporters. There’s my divorce, the first thing any one thinks of when he sees me, — out in plain sight, in the foreground of the picture — the receptacle for — oh, gossip and guesses and a subtle sort of commiserating ridicule. That’s the way it seemed to me. I felt the picture was cheapened, — spoiled. And then you seemed to tell me it was n’t. I wanted to be sure that was what you meant.’

She could have cried, — or laughed, — over the way the man was taking it. Here she was turning out her soul before him, and he — oh, it was like him! How many times, in the old days, had he encouraged her confidences by the same sort of innocent device. He had dropped down, thoughtfully, on a low stool before his brushes, and was wiping them methodically, one by one, on an oily rag.

‘“Cheapened, — spoiled!”’ he echoed. ‘What was Ethel Kirby anyway? A little fool, of course. Every one worth being allowed to grow up is a fool when young, and off and on when old. She was a promising little fool, with an aptitude for discovering that fire would burn her fingers, and that soap-bubbles would burst, and that thin ice would crack, — and that Christmas-tree ornaments run rather low in bullion.’

He dropped his brush, sprang up, and before she could protest had turned the unfinished portrait from the wall.

‘There she is. Look at her. She’s not so much. You ’re worth a dozen of her. You’ve found out all she promised to learn, and a whole lot beside. You’re young —’

‘Young! ’

‘Yes! I know how old you are. I even remember your birthday.’

She smiled, reluctantly, at that.

‘Young,’ he reiterated, ‘and healthy and courageous.’

By now her attention was fastened to the portrait, and for a while she made no comment on what he had said. Just looked and looked, with half-shut, thoughtful eyes. But at last she smiled again, and spoke.

‘I suppose she was n’t so much. I suppose, in rather a silly way, I’ve been idealizing her. But at least, she was young and healthy, and, in her foolish way, courageous. And I suppose that I am still a bit of a fool.'

‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

That surprised her into looking up at him. But there was not a sign of resentment in her face.

‘In general, or in particular?’ she asked.

He took a long breath and held it for a second before he answered. She was enough her father’s daughter to be a bit formidable.

‘I was thinking in particular,’ he said, ‘about your new toy; your toy tragedy.’

Her eyes darkened at that, and her fine expressive brows flattened ominously.

‘Child,’ he cried, ‘there are real troubles in the world — real tragedies! There are branded people, mutilated, broken people, with life on their hands. And many a one of them has made a beautiful thing of it. Yet there you stand with that tragic mask of yours, talking of being cheapened, spoiled. Why you’re intact altogether — all but your pride. That’s been rather badly singed, I’ll admit. But, bless you, it will grow out again. The real things that matter, your energy, and courage, and faith — yes, your faith! Have n’t you shown it this afternoon by coming to me?’

The tension of her body relaxed a little. She turned away rather suddenly and pressed her palms to her eyes. She was not the sort who liked to cry on anybody, and Burton cheerfully ignored the phenomenon of tears.

‘You’ve turned missionary, too,’ he said.

That brought her wet eyes round to him wide open.

‘Missionary!’

‘You’ve convicted me,’ he said, quite seriously, ‘on three counts. Of being a coward, a snob, and a charlatan — a charlatan without the courage of my convictions.’

She laughed rather raggedly. ‘And I’m a fool with a toy tragedy.’ And then suddenly another laugh came, a laugh of pure happiness, that clutched at his throat as even her tears had failed to do. ‘Oh, it’s so good to be back,’ she said, ‘scolding each other and calling awful names. I expect they’re all true, too,’ she concluded more soberly.

His face was sober, too, but there was a sort of smile in behind it somewhere. ‘Shall we both reform?’ he asked. ‘Is it a bargain?’

He was holding out his band now, but she had hers clasped behind her, waiting for terms.

‘If I’ll put a coat of black soap all over Sylvia, will you let me finish the portrait of Ethel Kirby?’

She looked in rather a puzzded fashion at the girl with the necklace. ‘ Black soap! ’ she questioned. ‘ What’s that for?’

‘To make the paint come off. Give me a fresh start.’

The cynical little smile flashed across her face again. ‘ It seems a pity,’ she said. ‘Sylvia will love that down to the ground. — Are you sure you’ve got the frock I posed in?’