o matter-of-fact.
Besides, I don't want a lady; the figure's to be half draped."

Hilary smiled.

Blanca knew quite well that he was smiling at this distinction between
ladies and other women, and understood that he was smiling, not so much
at her, but at himself, for secretly agreeing with the distinction she
had made.

And suddenly she smiled too.

There was the whole history of their married life in those two smiles.
They meant so much: so many thousand hours of suppressed irritation,
so many baffled longings and earnest efforts to bring their natures
together. They were the supreme, quiet evidence of the divergence of two
lives--that slow divergence which had been far from being wilful, and
was the more hopeless in that it had been so gradual and so gentle. They
had never really had a quarrel, having enlightened views of marriage;
but they had smiled. They had smiled so often through so many years that
no two people in the world could very well be further from each other.
Their smiles had banned the revelation even to themselves of the tragedy
of their wedded state. It is certain that neither could help those
smiles, which were not intended to wound, but came on their faces
as naturally as moonlight falls on water, out of their inimically
constituted souls.

Hilary spent two afternoons among his artist friends, trying, by means
of the indications he had gathered, to find a model for "The Shadow." He
had found one at last. Her name, Barton, and address had been given him
by a painter of still life, called French.

"She's never sat to me," he said; "my sister discovered her in the West
Country somewhere. She's got a story of some sort. I don't know what.
She came up about three months ago, I think."

"She's not sitting to your sister now?" Hilary asked.

"No," said the painter of still life; "my sister's married and gone
out to India. I don't know whether she'd sit for the half-draped, but I
should think so. She'll have to, sooner or later; she may as well
begin, especially to a woman. There's a something about her that's
attractive--you might try her!" And with these words he resumed the
painting of still life which he had broken off to talk to Hilary.

Hilary had written to this girl to come and see him. She had come just
before dinner the same day.

He found her standing in the middle of his study, not daring, as it
seemed, to go near the furniture, and as there was very little light,
he could hardly s