a face which
affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was, and yet was
not, in front of her.

"My name is Lavendie," the painter said; "my wife and I live here," and
he gave her a card.

Noel could not help answering: "My name is Noel Pierson; I live with my
father; here's the address"--she found her case, and fished out a card.
"My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him? He loves
music and painting."

"It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to paint
you. Alas! I have no studio."

Noel drew back. "I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and--and
I don't want to be painted, thank you. But, Daddy would like to meet
you, I'm sure."

The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.

"Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter," she said quickly;
"only--only--I don't want to, you see. Perhaps you'd like to paint
Daddy; he's got a most interesting face."

The painter smiled. "He is your father, mademoiselle. May I ask you one
question? Why do you not want to be painted?"

"Because--because I don't, I'm afraid." She held out her hand. The
painter bowed over it. "Au revoir, mademoiselle."

"Thank you," said Noel; "it was awfully interesting." And she walked
away. The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and the
foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that
French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely. Beauty, and the
troubles of others, soothed her. She felt sorry for the painter, but his
eyes saw too much! And his words: "If ever you act differently from
others," made her feel him uncanny. Was it true that people always
disliked and condemned those who acted differently? If her old
school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat her?
In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny picture in the
Louvre, a "Rape of Europa," by an unknown painter--a humorous delicate
thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted on a prancing white
bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the bank all her white
girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces away
from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid
desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow. The face of
the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own. She
thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng of
shocked an