linations Grace had
insisted on talking to him. They were none of his business, and if he
wouldn't for the world have let the girl herself suspect he had violent
lights on what was most screened and curtained in her, much less would
he have made Peter a clumsy present of this knowledge. Grace had a queer
theory that Peter treated Biddy badly--treated them all somehow badly;
but Grace's zeal (she had plenty of it, though she affected all sorts of
fine indifference) almost always took the form of her being unusually
wrong. Nick wanted to do only what Biddy would thank him for, and he
knew very well what she wouldn't. She wished him and Peter to be great
friends, and the only obstacle to this was that Peter was too much of a
diplomatist. Peter made him for an instant think of her and of the hour
they had lately spent together in the studio in his absence--an hour of
which Biddy had given him a history full of items and omissions; and
this in turn brought Nick's imagination back to his visitor's own side
of the matter. That general human complexity of which the sense had
lately increased with him, and to which it was owing that any thread one
might take hold of would probably be the extremely wrong end of
something, was illustrated by the fact that while poor Biddy was
thinking of Peter it was ten to one poor Peter was thinking of Miriam
Rooth. All of which danced before Nick's intellectual vision for a space
briefer than my too numerous words.

"I pitched into your treasures--I rummaged among your canvases," Peter
said. "Biddy had nothing whatever to do with it--she maintained an
attitude of irreproachable reserve. It has been on my conscience all
these days and I ought to have done penance before. I've been putting it
off partly because I'm so ashamed of my indiscretion. _Que voulez-vous_,
my dear chap? My provocation was great. I heard you had been painting
Miss Rooth, so that I couldn't restrain my curiosity. I simply went into
that corner and struck out there--a trifle wildly no doubt. I dragged
the young lady to the light--your sister turned pale as she saw me. It
was a good deal like breaking open one of your letters, wasn't it?
However, I assure you it's all right, for I congratulate you both on
your style and on your correspondent."

"You're as clever, as witty, as humorous as ever, old boy," Nick
pronounced, going himself into the corner designated by his companion
and laying his hands on the same canvas. "Your c