Whereas, in the Alps, I always feel myself "a worm and no man"!'

'I have never been abroad,' said Nelly shyly.

For once he found an _ingenue_ attractive.

'Then you have it to come--when the world is sane again. But some things
you will have missed for ever. For instance, you will never see
Rheims--as it was. I have spent months at Rheims in old days, drawing
and photographing. I must show you my things. They have a tragic value
now.'

And taking out a portfolio from a rack near him, he opened it and put it
on a stand before her.

Nelly, who had in her the real instincts of the artist, turned over some
very masterly drawings, in mingled delight and despair.

'If I could only do something like that!' she said, pointing to a study
of some of the famous windows at Rheims, with vague forms of saint and
king emerging from a conflagration of colour, kindled by the afternoon
sun, and dyeing the pavement below.

'Ah, that took me some time. It was difficult. But here are some
fragments you'll like--just bits from the facade and the monuments.'

The strength of the handling excited her. She looked at them in silence;
remembering with disgust all the pretty sentimental work she had been
used to copy. She began to envisage what this commonly practised art
may be; what a master can do with it. Standards leaped up. Alp on Alp
appeared. When George was gone she would _work_, yes, she would work
hard--to surprise him when he came back.

Sir William meanwhile was increasingly taken with his guest. She was
shy, very diffident, very young; but in the few things she said, he
discerned--or fancied--the stirrings of a real taste--real intelligence.
And she was prettier and more fetching than ever--with her small dark
head, and her lovely mouth. He would like to draw the free sensuous line
of it, the beautiful moulding of the chin. What a prize for the young
man! Was he aware of his own good fortune? Was he adequate?

'I say, how jolly!' said Sarratt, coming up to look. 'My wife, Sir
William--I think she told you--has got a turn for this kind of thing.
These will give her ideas.'

And while he looked at the drawings, he slipped a hand into his wife's
arm, smiling down upon her, and commenting on the sketches. There was
nothing in what he said. He only 'knew what he liked,' and an unfriendly
bystander would have been amused by his constant assumption that Nelly's
sketches were as good as anybody's. Entirely modest for himself, h