and its little
studio-drawing-room was as attractive, as untidy, and as eloquent of
Quita's personality as it had been sixteen months ago. It was late
August now; and a week's break in the rains had given the drenched
hills and those who dwelt upon them a foretaste of that elixir of light
and air which makes September the crowning month of the Himalayan year.
And to Quita it gave promise that her days of waiting were numbered.
In a week she would follow the Desmonds to Dera Ishmael, and remain
with them, at their urgent invitation, till her husband's return. The
friendly smile of the sun after days of downpour and restless mist
lifted her to renewed hope that in spite of the mountains he would
surely reach her in time.

From the open door a stream of afternoon light barred the room with
gold. Passing across her prostrate figure, it fell full upon her
easel, and upon the picture in which she had tried to express her own
solution of the artist's eternal problem--Art or Love. It had been
begun as a subject-picture, inspired by the impassioned cry of Aurora
Leigh: "Oh, Art, my Art! Thou art much; but Love is more!" Then
because her taste leaned always to the actual, and because the picture
was to be a present for her husband, the woman's figure had grown into
a portrait of herself; a thing so living, so eloquent of her new
appealing charm, that even Michael's critical spirit had been roused to
enthusiasm. He had one quarrel only with her achievement, namely, that
it was not to be his own!

In detail, the picture was simplicity itself. Merely the woman beside
her easel, turning eagerly away from it as if at the sound of a
footstep; every line and curve of her athrill with expectancy, her eyes
luminous with the dawn of a new truth, a new ecstasy of heart and
spirit; while at her feet her palette lay broken in a dozen pieces, and
her canvas had fallen, unheeded, to the ground. An open doorway behind
her revealed a glimpse of sunlit verandah, trellis-work and
honeysuckle; revealed also an unmistakable length of shadow,--the head
and shoulders of the man whose large, lonely personality had so taken
possession of her, as to transform her whole vision of life. And below
the canvas, on the gilding of the frame, were graven the words: 'Love
is more.'

For all her delight in this last work of her hands, there were days
when the sight of it pricked her to an anguish of impatience, shadowed
always by the darker anguish of