s like
black smudges. And she danced as though it were more natural to her than
walking. I got her to pose for me at the foot of a tree. The picture
of her was my first real success. So you see, I've good reason to be
grateful to one dancer!"

Magda caught her breath. She knew now why the man's face had seemed so
familiar! He was the artist she had met in the wood at Coverdale the day
Sieur Hugh had beaten her--her _"Saint Michel"_! She was conscious of a
queer little thrill of excitement as the truth dawned upon her.

"What was the picture called?" she asked, forcing herself to speak
composedly.

"'The Repose of Titania.'"

She nodded. The picture was a very well-known one. Everybody knew by
whom it had been painted.

"Then you must be Michael Quarrington?"

"Yes. So now, we've been introduced, haven't we?"

It seemed almost as if he had repented of his former churlish manner,
and were endeavouring to atone for it. He talked to her about his work
a little, then slid easily into the allied topics of music and books.
Finally he took her into an adjoining room, and showed her a small,
beloved collection of coloured prints which he had gathered together,
recounting various amusing little incidents which had attended the
acquisition of this or that one among them with much gusto and a certain
quaint humour that she was beginning to recognise as characteristic.

Magda, to whom the study of old prints was by no means an unknown
territory, was thoroughly entertained. She found herself enthusing,
discussing, arguing points, in a happy spirit of _camaraderie_ with her
host which, half an hour earlier, she would have believed impossible.

The end came abruptly. Quarrington chanced to glance out of the window
where the street lamps were now glimmering serenely through a clear
dusk. The fog had lifted.

"Perhaps it's just as well," he said shortly. "I was beginning--" He
checked himself and glanced at her with a sudden stormy light in his
eyes.

"Beginning--what?" she asked a little breathlessly. The atmosphere had
all at once grown tense with some unlooked-for stress of emotion.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes--tell me!"

"I was beginning to forget that you're the 'type of woman I hate,'" he
said. And strode out of the room, leaving her startled and unaccountably
shaken.

When he came back he had completely reassumed his former non-committal
manner.

"There's a taxi waiting for you," he announced. "It's perfectly