n't
forgotten his friendly attitude in Paris; and when he answered that he
surely had done very little she broke out, first resting her eyes on
him with a deep, reasonable smile and then springing up quickly; "Ah
well, if I must justify myself I liked you!"

"Fancy my appearing to challenge you!" laughed Nick in deprecation. "To
see you again is to want tremendously to try something. But you must
have an infinite patience, because I'm an awful duffer."

She looked round the walls. "I see what you've done--_bien des choses_."

"She understands--she understands," Gabriel dropped. And he added to
their visitor: "Imagine, when he might do something, his choosing a life
of shams! At bottom he's like you--a wonderful artistic nature."

"I'll have patience," said the girl, smiling at Nick.

"Then, my children, I leave you--the peace of the Lord be with you."
With which words Nash took his departure.

The others chose a position for the young woman's sitting after she had
placed herself in many different attitudes and different lights; but an
hour had elapsed before Nick got to work--began, on a large canvas, to
"knock her in," as he called it. He was hindered even by the fine
element of agitation, the emotion of finding himself, out of a clear
sky, confronted with such a subject and launched in such a task. What
could the situation be but incongruous just after he had formally
renounced all manner of "art"?--the renunciation taking effect not a bit
the less from the whim he had all consciously treated himself to _as_ a
whim (the last he should ever descend to!) the freak of a fortnight's
relapse into a fingering of old sketches for the purpose, as he might
have said, of burning them up, of clearing out his studio and
terminating his lease. There were both embarrassment and inspiration in
the strange chance of snatching back for an hour a relinquished joy: the
jump with which he found he could still rise to such an occasion took
away his breath a little, at the same time that the idea--the idea of
what one might make of such material--touched him with an irresistible
wand. On the spot, to his inner vision, Miriam became a rich result,
drawing a hundred formative forces out of their troubled sleep, defying
him where he privately felt strongest and imposing herself triumphantly
in her own strength. He had the good fortune, without striking matches,
to see her, as a subject, in a vivid light, and his quick attempt was as
exc