so that there were limits, etc.,
etc., etc., using impossible arguments to quieten a lively conscience
that did not approve of this dangerous philandering.

The visit of Miss Greeby awoke him positively to a sense of danger, for
if she talked--and talk she did--other people would talk also. Lambert
asked himself if it would be better to visit The Manor and behave like
a man who has got over his passion, or to leave the cottage and betake
himself to London. While turning over this problem in his mind, he
painted feverishly, and for three days after Miss Greeby had come to
stir up muddy water, he remained as much as possible in his studio.
Chaldea visited him, as usual, to be painted, and brought Kara with his
green coat and beloved violin and hairy looks. The girl chatted, Kara
played, and Lambert painted, and all three pretended to be very happy
and careless. This was merely on the surface, however, for the artist
was desperately wretched, because the other half of himself was married
to another man, while Chaldea, getting neither love-look nor caress,
felt savagely discontented. As for Kara, he had long since loved
Chaldea, who treated him like a dog, and he could not help seeing that
she adored the Gentile artist--a knowledge which almost broke his heart.
But it was some satisfaction for him to note that Lambert would have
nothing to do with the siren, and that she could not charm him to her
feet, sang she ever so tenderly. It was an unhappy trio at the best.

The gypsies usually came in the morning, since the light was then better
for artistic purposes, but they always departed at one o'clock, so that
Lambert had the afternoon to himself. Chaldea would fain have lingered
in order to charm the man she loved into subjection; but he never gave
her the least encouragement, so she was obliged to stay away. All the
same, she often haunted the woods near the cottage, and when Lambert
came out for a stroll, which he usually did when it became too dark to
paint, he was bound to run across her. Since he had not the slightest
desire to make love to her, and did not fathom the depth of her passion,
he never suspected that she purposely contrived the meetings which he
looked upon as accidental.

Since Chaldea hung round the house, like a moth round a candle, she saw
every one who came and went from the woodland cottage. On the afternoon
of the third day since Pine's arrival at the camp in the character of
Ishmael Hearne, the g