ina understood
exactly what reason had decided the stranger that they should not talk.
Yet now they did. If this were a work of fiction I shouldn't dare to
pretend that the train took more than two hours to get to Mill Vale. But
in a plain record of fact one must speak the truth. The train took
exactly two hours and fifty minutes to cover the eleven miles between
London and Mill Vale. After that first question and reply Nina and the
stranger talked the whole way.

He walked with her to the door of her lodging, and she offered him her
hand without that moment of hesitation which would have been natural to
any heroine, because she had debated the question of that handshake all
the way from the station, and made up her mind just as they reached the
church, a stone's throw from her home. When the door closed on her he
went slowly back to the churchyard to lay his violets on a grave. Nina
saw them there next day when she came out of church. She saw him too,
and gave him a bow and a very small smile, and turned away quickly. The
bow meant: "You see I'm not going to speak to you. You mustn't think I
want to be always talking to you." The smile meant: "But you mustn't
think I'm cross. I'm not--only----"

In the hot, stuffy "life-room" at the Slade next day Molly teased with
ill-judged bread-crumbs an arm hopelessly ill drawn, and chattered
softly to Nina, who in the Saturday solitude had drawn her easel behind
her friend's "donkey." "It's all very well here when you first come in,
but when once you _are_ warm, oh dear, how warm you are! Why do models
want such boiling rooms? Why can't they be soaked in alum or myrrh or
something to harden their silly skins so that they won't mind a breath
of decent air? And I believe the model's deformed--she certainly is from
where I am. Oh, look at my arm! I ask you a little--look at the beastly
thing. Foreshortened like this it looks like a fillet of veal with a
pound of sausages tied on to it for a hand. Oh, my own and only
Nina--save the sinking ship!"

"It ought to go more like _that_," Nina said with indicative brush, "and
don't keep on rubbing out so fiercely. You'll get paralysed with
bread--it's a disease, you know. I heard Tonks telling you so only the
other day----"

"It's rather a good phrase: I wonder where he got it? He was rather nice
that day," said Molly. "Oh, this arm! It's no good--I believe the
model's moved--I tell you I _must_." More bread. Nina re-absorbed in her
ca