has talked to you so much about the matter there's no harm in my talking
to you a little. When she threw me over in an hour it was on a perfectly
definite occasion. That occasion was the presence in my studio of a
dishevelled, an abandoned actress."

"Oh Nick, she has not thrown you over!" Biddy protested. "She has
not--I've proof."

He felt at this direct denial a certain stir of indignation and looked
at the girl with momentary sternness. "Has she sent you here to tell me
this? What do you mean by proof?"

Biddy's eyes, at these questions, met her brother's with a strange
expression, and for a few seconds, while she looked entreatingly into
them, she wavered there with parted lips and vaguely stretched out her
hands. The next minute she had burst into tears--she was sobbing on his
breast. He said "Hallo!" and soothed her; but it was very quickly over.
Then she told him what she meant by her proof and what she had had on
her mind ever since her present arrival. It was a message from Julia,
but not to say--not to say what he had questioned her about just before;
though indeed, more familiar now that he had his arm round her, she
boldly expressed the hope it might in the end come to the same thing.
Julia simply wanted to know--- she had instructed her to sound him
discreetly--if Nick would undertake her portrait; and she wound up this
experiment in "sounding" by the statement that their beautiful kinswoman
was dying to sit.

"Dying to sit?" echoed Nick, whose turn it was this time to feel his
colour rise.

"At any moment you like after Easter, when she comes up. She wants a
full-length and your very best, your most splendid work."

Nick stared, not caring that he had blushed. "Is she serious?"

"Ah Nick--serious!" Biddy reasoned tenderly. She came nearer again and
he thought her again about to weep. He took her by the shoulders,
looking into her eyes.

"It's all right if she knows _I_ am. But why doesn't she come like any
one else? I don't refuse people!"

"Nick, dearest Nick!" she went on, her eyes conscious and pleading. He
looked into them intently--as well as she could he play at sounding--and
for a moment, between these young persons, the air was lighted by the
glimmer of mutual searchings and suppressed confessions. Nick read deep
and then, suddenly releasing his sister, turned away. She didn't see his
face in that movement, but an observer to whom it had been presented
might have fancied it denoted a fo