e servants--she could think
of them even then.

"Oh it's all right. I'll come in at five," Nick returned, gallantly
jocular, while she was whirled away.

Gabriel had gone into the studio and Nick found him standing in
admiration before Miriam, who had resumed the position in which she was
sitting. "Lord, she's good to-day! Isn't she good to-day?" he broke out,
seizing their host by the arm to give him a particular view. Miriam
looked indeed still handsomer than before, and she had taken up her
attitude again with a splendid, sphinx-like air of being capable of
keeping it for ever. Nick said nothing, but went back to work with a
tingle of confusion, which began to act after he had resumed his palette
as a sharp, a delightful stimulus. Miriam spoke never a word, but she
was doubly grand, and for more than an hour, till Nick, exhausted,
declared he must stop, the industrious silence was broken only by the
desultory discourse of their friend.

XXVII

Nick went to Great Stanhope Street at five o'clock and learned, rather
to his surprise, that Julia was not at home--to his surprise because he
had told her he would come at that hour, and he attributed to her, with
a certain simplicity, an eager state of mind in regard to his
explanation. Apparently she was not eager; the eagerness was his own--he
was eager to explain. He recognised, not without a certain consciousness
of magnanimity in doing so, that there had been some reason for her
quick withdrawal from his studio or at any rate for her extreme
discomposure there. He had a few days before put in a plea for a snatch
of worship in that sanctuary and she had accepted and approved it; but
the worship, when the curtain happened to blow back, showed for that of
a magnificent young woman, an actress with disordered hair, who wore in
a singular degree the appearance of a person settled for many hours. The
explanation was easy: it dwelt in the simple truth that when one was
painting, even very badly and only for a moment, one had to have models.
Nick was impatient to give it with frank, affectionate lips and a full,
pleasant admission that it was natural Julia should have been startled;
and he was the more impatient that, though he would not in the least
have expected her to like finding a strange woman intimately installed
with him, she had disliked it even more than would have seemed probable
or natural. That was because, not having heard from him about the
matter, th