love her
better than everybody else put together. And now you're off on the other
tack; you're trying to sit on the artist in you that you may develop the
woman. I mean the other way about; you're sitting on the woman that you
may develop the artist."

"Aren't you getting a little mixed?"

"That plan works worse than all. Let me implore you not to go on with
it. If you only knew it, there's nothing that you will ever do that's
lovelier than your own womanhood. Whatever you do, don't kill that.
Don't go on hardening your heart to everything human till there's no
sweetness left in your nature, Kathy. I want my little sister to make
the best of her life. Some day some good man will ask you to be his
wife. If, when that day comes, you don't know how to love, little woman,
all the success in the world won't make up to you for the happiness you
have missed."

"Oh, Vincent, if you only knew how funny you are!" She laughed the laugh
that Vincent loved to hear, and when she looked at him her eyelashes
were all wet with it.

"All right, Sis. Some day you'll own that your elder brother wasn't such
a fool as you think him."

"I--I don't think you a fool. I only wish you knew how frightfully funny
you are! No, I don't, though," she added below her breath.

But Vincent was quite unable to see wherein lay the humour of his
excellent remarks. He considered that his experience gave him a right to
speak with authority on questions of feeling. But it had not made him
understand everything.

* * * * *

The next morning Katherine was sitting before her easel, waiting for
Vincent to come up for the last sitting. It was a raw, cold day, and her
fingers felt numbed as they took up the brushes. Ted had made a promise
to Hardy to do his fair share of the more remunerative work. Before
keeping it, he was giving a few final touches to one of the figures in
his Dante study of Paolo and Francesca, swept like leaves on the wind of
hell. He was in high good humour, and as he worked he talked
incessantly, quoting from an imaginary review. "In the genius of Mr.
Edward Haviland we have a new Avatar of the spirit of Art. Mr. Haviland
is the disciple of no school. He owes no debt either to the past or to
the present. He works in a noble freedom from prejudice and
preconception, uncorrupted by custom as he is untrammelled by tradition.
If we may classify what is above and beyond classification, we should
say that i