meekly closed the book.

During the following weeks there was a "sitting" nearly every afternoon.
Miss Naylor usually attended them; the little lady was, to a certain
extent, carried past objection. She had begun to take an interest in the
picture, and to watch the process out of the corner of her eye; in the
depths of her dear mind, however, she never quite got used to the vanity
and waste of time; her lips would move and her knitting-needles click in
suppressed remonstrances.

What Harz did fast he did best; if he had leisure he "saw too much,"
loving his work so passionately that he could never tell exactly when to
stop. He hated to lay things aside, always thinking: "I can get it
better." Greta was finished, but with Christian, try as he would, he was
not satisfied; from day to day her face seemed to him to change, as if
her soul were growing.

There were things too in her eyes that he could neither read nor
reproduce.

Dawney would often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and lying on
the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar between his
lips, would gently banter everybody. Tea came at five o'clock, and then
Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel, for she was proud of
her literary knowledge. The sitting was suspended; Harz, with a
cigarette, would move between the table and the picture, drinking his
tea, putting a touch in here and there; he never sat down till it was all
over for the day. During these "rests" there was talk, usually ending in
discussion. Mrs. Decie was happiest in conversations of a literary
order, making frequent use of such expressions as: "After all, it
produces an illusion--does anything else matter?" "Rather a poseur, is
he not?" "A question, that, of temperament," or "A matter of the
definition of words"; and other charming generalities, which sound well,
and seem to go far, and are pleasingly irrefutable. Sometimes the
discussion turned on Art--on points of colour or technique; whether
realism was quite justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites? When
these discussions started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and
clearer, with a sort of shining reasonableness; as though they were
trying to see into the depths. And Harz would stare at them. But the
look in those eyes eluded him, as if they had no more meaning than Mrs.
Decie's, which, with their pale, watchful smile, always seemed saying:
"Come, let us take a little intellectual ex