ave thought you would write sometimes."

"Yes, sometimes we used to send each other notes."

"Will he never cease talking of her?" Harding said to himself; and,
tempted by curiosity, he got up, lighted another cigarette, and sat
down, determined to wait and see. Owen continued talking for the
next half-hour. "True, he hasn't had an opportunity of speaking to
anybody about her for the last year, and is letting it all off upon
me."

"There is her portrait, Harding; you like it, don't you?"

Harding breathed again under his moustache. The portrait brought a
new interest into the conversation, for it was a beautiful picture.
A bright face which seemed to have been breathed into a grey
background--a grey so beautiful, Harding had once written, that
every ray of sunlight that came into the room awoke a melody and a
harmony in it, and held the eye subjugated and enchanted. Out of a
grey and a rose tint a permanent music had been made... and, being
much less complete than an old master, it never satisfied. In this
picture there were not one but a hundred pictures. To hang it in a
different place in the room was to recreate it; it never was the
same, whereas the complete portraits of the old masters have this
fault--that they never rise above themselves. But a ray of light set
Evelyn's portrait singing like a skylark--background, face, hair,
dress--cadenza upon cadenza. When the blinds were let down, the music
became graver, and the strain almost a religious one. And these
changes in the portrait were like Evelyn herself, for she varied a
good deal, as Owen had often remarked to Harding; for one reason or
for some other--no matter the reason: suffice it to say that the
picture would be like her when the gold had faded from her hair and
no pair of stays would discover her hips. And now, sitting looking at
it, Owen remembered the seeming accident which had inspired him to
bring Evelyn to see the great painter whose genius it had been to
Owen's credit to recognise always. One morning in the studio Evelyn
had happened to sit on the edge of a chair; the painter had once
seen her in the same attitude by the side of her accompanist, and he
had told her not to move, and had gone for her grey shawl and placed
it upon her shoulders. A friend of Owen's declared the portrait to be
that of a housekeeper on account of the shawl--a strange article of
dress, difficult to associate with a romantic singer. All the same,
Evelyn was very proba