to add that she was not
unpleasing; her features had a symmetry and a mobility, and her eyes
could take any transient charm they chose to endow themselves with;
though there were moments when she compared very badly with the
other young ladies of Simla with their high spirits and their pretty
complexions, very badly indeed. Those were occasions when the gay
monotony of the place pressed, I imagine, a little heavily upon her, and
the dullness she felt translated itself in her expression. But she was
by no means unpleasing.

'I must go and see Lady Pilkey's picture,' I said.

'What is the use?' said Dora. 'It's a landscape in oils--a view of the
Himalayas, near Narkanda. There are the snows in the background, very
thin and visionary through a gap in the trees, and two hills, one hill
on each side. Dark green trees, pine-trees, with a dead one in the
left foreground covered with a brilliant red creeper. Right foreground
occupied by a mountain path and a solitary native figure with its back
turned. Society's silver medal.'

'When did you see it?' I asked.

'I haven't seen it--this year. But I saw the one she sent last, and the
one the year before that. You can trust my memory, really.'

'No,' I said, 'I can't. I'm dining there tonight. I must have an
original impression.'

'Congratulate her on the warm blaze of colour in the foreground. It's
perfectly safe,' urged Miss Harris, but I felt compelled to go myself to
see lady Pilkey's landscape. When I returned I found her still sitting
in grave absorption before the studies that had taken us so by surprise.
Her face was full of a soft new light; I had never before seen the
spring touched in her that could flood it like that.

'You were very nearly right,' I announced; 'but the blaze of colour was
in the middle distance, and there was a torrent in the foreground that
quite put it out. And the picture does take the Society's silver medal.'

'I can not decide,' she replied without looking at me, 'between the
Kattiawar fair thing and those hills in the rain. I can only have
one--father won't hear of more than one.'

'You can have two,' I said bluntly, so deeply interested I was in the
effect the things had on her. 'And I will have a third for myself. I
can't withstand those apricot-trees.'

I thought there was moisture in the eyes she turned upon me, an unusual
thing--a most unusual thing--in Dora Harris; but she winked it back, if
it was there, too quickly for any cer