lcie's grey eyes never left his. And if she did not quite understand
every word, already the dawning familiarity with his vocabulary and a
general comprehension of his modes of self-expansion permitted her to
follow him.

"A great Queen, a great reign, a great people," he rambled on,
painting away all the while. "And if in that era architecture declined
toward its lowest level of stupidity, and if taste in furniture and in
the plastic, decorative, and textile arts was steadily sinking toward
its lowest ebb, and if Mrs. Grundy trudged the Empire, paramount, dull
and smugly ferocious, while all snobbery saluted her and the humble
grovelled before her dusty brogans, yet, Dulcie, it was a great era.

"It was great because its faith had not been radically impaired; it
was sane because Germany had not yet inoculated the human race with
its porcine political vulgarities, its bestial degeneracy in art....
And if, perhaps, the sentimental in British art and literature
predominated, thank God it had not yet been tainted with the stark
ugliness, the swinish nakedness, the ferocious leer of things
Teutonic!"

He continued to paint in silence for a while. Presently the Prophet
yawned on Dulcie's knees, displaying a pink cavern.

"Better rest," he said, nodding smilingly at Dulcie. She released the
cat, who stretched, arched his back, yawned again gravely, and stalked
away over the velvety Eastern carpet.

Dulcie got up lithely and followed him on little jade-encrusted, naked
feet.

A box of bon-bons lay on the sofa; she picked up Rossetti's poems,
turned the leaves with jewel-laden fingers, while with the other hand
she groped for a bon-bon, her grey eyes riveted on the pages before
her.

During these intervals between poses it was the young man's custom to
make chalk sketches of the girl, recording swiftly any unstudied
attitude, any unconscious phase of youthful grace that interested
him.

Dulcie, in the beginning, diffidently aware of this, had now become
entirely accustomed to it, and no longer felt any responsibility to
remain motionless while he was busy with red chalk or charcoal.

When she had rested sufficiently, she laid aside her book, hunted up
the Prophet, who lazily endured the gentle tyranny, and resumed her
place on the model stand.

And so they worked away all the morning, until luncheon was served in
the studio by Aristocrates; and Barres in his blouse, and Dulcie in
her peacock silk, her jade, and na