e, did not reach Quita's
ears.

"What sort of a man is this Paul?" she asked as Honor returned to her
chair. "I don't know his other name! Is he the sort that would be
likely to understand . . our very incomprehensible position?"

Honor took a leather frame from the table beside her, and put it into
Quita's hands.

"If you are any judge of faces, that's the best answer I can give you."

Quita scanned the picture abstractedly for several seconds.

"Yes. He'll do," was her verdict. Then she flung the thing from her;
and burying her face in the cushions sobbed with the heart-broken
abandonment of a child.

"Oh, what a blind fool I was to come!" she lamented through her tears.
"I don't believe he'll understand my madness. And if he doesn't . . .
he'll never forgive me!"

[1] Account.

[2] Scullery man.

[3] As Memsahib pleases.

[4] Any one there! Bring tiffin.

[5] Not at home.

CHAPTER XXI.

"Here the lost hours the lost hours renew."--Rossetti.

"It progresses, doesn't it?"

"It does more than that. It lives. You've transfigured it in these few
days; and I like your knack of emphasising essentials without jarring the
harmony of the whole. You ought to make your mark as a portrait painter
in time."

"I've done so already . . more or less," Quita answered modestly,
stepping backward, with tilted head, to get a better view of her
achievement. It was the study of Lenox, which, for all her perturbation,
she had packed as tenderly as if it were a live thing; and which alone
had made life endurable for the past three days. Her easel had been set
up in the dining-room, where she could work without fear of chance
intruders, who gravitated either to the drawing-room or the study: and on
this fourth morning after her arrival, she was standing at it with
Desmond, who had looked in for a word with her before starting for the
Lines. "If you were to go home now," she added, after a pause, "you
would find the name Quita Maurice not quite unknown in artistic circles.
But they'll never see this, though it's going to be the best thing I've
done yet; because . . ."

"Yes, naturally, . . because . . ."

"How nice you are!" she said simply. "One needn't dot the i's, and cross
all the t's with you. Of course it's very incomplete still. A
suggestive study is the most one can achieve from memory. So you mustn't
judge it as a portrait,--yet. It's just a daring experiment that no
right-minded