ing expectancy.
"And is that all?" she asked. "Is that all?"

"No," he replied slowly; "there is yet a further stage. It is
unfinished." And he pointed to the easel.

"I don't mean that. Is that all you have to say of these?"

"I think so. Yes."

"Look at me!"

Julian turned wonderingly to Lady Tamworth. She watched him with a
dancing sparkle of her eyes. "Now look at the pictures!" Julian obeyed
her. "Well," she said after a pause, with a touch of anxiety. "What do
you see now?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" she asked. "Do you mean that?"

"Yes! What should I see?" She caught him by the arm and stared
intently into his eyes in a horror of disbelief. He met her gaze with
a frank astonishment. She dropped his arm and turned away.

"What should I see?" he repeated.

"Nothing," she echoed with a quivering sadness in her voice. "It is
late, I must go."

The white figure in each of those four pictures wore her face,
idealised and illumined, but still unmistakably her face; and he did
not know it, could not perceive it though she stood by his side! The
futility of her errand was proved to her. She drew on her gloves and
looking towards the easel inquired dully, "What stage is that?"

"The last; and it is the last picture I shall paint. As soon as it is
completed I shall leave here."

"You will leave?" she asked, paying little heed to his words.

"Yes! The experiment has not succeeded," and he waved a hand towards
the wall. "I shall take better means next time."

"How much remains to be done?" Lady Tamworth stepped over to the
easel. With a quick spring Julian placed himself in front of it.

"No!" he cried vehemently, raising a hand to warn her off. "No!"

Lady Tamworth's curiosity began to reawaken. "You have shown me the
rest."

"I know; you had a right to see them."

"Then why not that?"

"I have told you," he said stubbornly. "It is not finished."

"But when it is finished?" she insisted.

Julian looked at her strangely. "Well, why not?" he said reasoning
with himself. "Why not? It is the masterpiece."

"You will let me know when it's ready?"

"I will send it to you; for I shall leave here the day I finish it."

They went down stairs and back into the Mile-End road. Julian hailed a
passing hansom, and Lady Tamworth drove westwards to Berkeley Square.

The fifth picture arrived a week later in the dusk of the afternoon.
Lady Tamworth unpacked it herself with an odd foreboding.

It represented a