s evening already; the bushes and
the flowers, after the day's heat, were breathing out perfume; the birds
had started their evensong.

"Are you tired of sitting for your portrait, Fraulein Christian?"

Christian shook her head.

"I shall get something into it that everybody does not see--something
behind the surface, that will last."

Christian said slowly: "That's like a challenge. You were right when you
said fighting is happiness--for yourself, but not for me. I'm a coward.
I hate to hurt people, I like them to like me. If you had to do anything
that would make them hate you, you would do it all the same, if it helped
your work; that's fine--it's what I can't do. It's--it's everything. Do
you like Uncle Nic?"

The young painter looked towards the house, where under the veranda old
Nicholas Treffry was still in sight; a smile came on his lips.

"If I were the finest painter in the world, he wouldn't think anything of
me for it, I'm afraid; but if I could show him handfuls of big cheques
for bad pictures I had painted, he would respect me."

She smiled, and said: "I love him."

"Then I shall like him," Harz answered simply.

She put her hand out, and her fingers met his. "We shall be late," she
said, glowing, and catching up her book: "I'm always late!"

VII

There was one other guest at dinner, a well-groomed person with pale,
fattish face, dark eyes, and hair thin on the temples, whose clothes had
a military cut. He looked like a man fond of ease, who had gone out of
his groove, and collided with life. Herr Paul introduced him as Count
Mario Sarelli.

Two hanging lamps with crimson shades threw a rosy light over the table,
where, in the centre stood a silver basket, full of irises. Through the
open windows the garden was all clusters of black foliage in the dying
light. Moths fluttered round the lamps; Greta, following them with her
eyes, gave quite audible sighs of pleasure when they escaped. Both girls
wore white, and Harz, who sat opposite Christian, kept looking at her,
and wondering why he had not painted her in that dress.

Mrs. Decie understood the art of dining--the dinner, ordered by Herr
Paul, was admirable; the servants silent as their, shadows; there was
always a hum of conversation.

Sarelli, who sat on her right hand, seemed to partake of little except
olives, which he dipped into a glass of sherry. He turned his black,
solemn eyes silently from face to face, now and th