n the vibrations of her voice;
in the quick response of lips and eyes to her April changes of mood;
and more than all in her unfailing spirit of humour, which broke up the
monotone of days spent in a long chair as a prism breaks white light
into a band of brilliant colours. For Quita's genius was not of the
highly specialised order. It did not inhabit an air-tight compartment
of her brain where pictures grew. It pervaded her whole personality.
It was not merely a genius for art, but for living, for being vital,
for seeing and feeling and doing all that it is possible to see and
feel and do in the sum of man's threescore years and ten. Small wonder
then if Max Richardson enjoyed his convalescence, and was in no hurry
to complete the process.

As for Quita, she was unconsciously slipping back to her favourite
pastime, to that alluring compound of friendship and etherealised
flirtation which she had likened to fencing with the buttons off the
foils. The outcome of her last fencing-bout might have awakened
glimmerings of caution in a less reckless offender. But Richardson was
not to be named in the same day with James Garth; and in his case it
was less a matter of fencing than of 'two heads bending over the same
board till they touch, and the thrill passes between them'; a dangerous
variation of the same amusement. The two heads had not touched as yet.
In all probability they never would. But prophecy is unsafe where the
human heart is in question: and as the month slipped by, and Eldred's
reabsorption in the Battery and the hated articles left them constantly
alone together, Quita grew genuinely fond of this big, fair man, with
his unruffled sweetness of temper, and lazily smiling eyes. He
satisfied the lighter elements in her nature as completely as her
husband satisfied its deeper needs; and in truth, so little did one
man's sphere of influence trench upon the other's, that she had almost
been capable of loving both at once; each with a different set of
faculties:--an achievement only possible to that bewildering creation,
the artist woman!

Not that Quita had yet achieved anything so remarkable. But her
feeling for Richardson, founded upon gratitude and built up by
sympathy, was a real thing; and being singularly free from the taint of
baser clay, she frankly acknowledged the fact, not only to herself but,
on more than one occasion, to her husband, thinking to please him by
her appreciation of his friend.