I wonder, Collaborator, if you are out of humour with Laura? She has been, in the last chapter, a trifle—how shall we say?—touchy—ungracious—narrow-hearted? has shown herself a supercilious chit?

If you thought so, there was one person at least in entire and most penitent agreement with you. Laura, at the evening ceremonial her mother had taught her, that she had never foregone—Laura, with her Bible and her good little books, holding her day in review, had already used every adjective that you offer me, over and over again, in a bewilderment at her own curmudgeonry that I, for one, find a little laughable and still more pathetic. She had her standards of conduct set up like ninepins, and when her adolescence knocked them over, who so puzzled as Laura?

She read at random—

A continual dropping on a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.

“Ah!” thought Laura, heavily.

A gracious woman retaineth honour ... like Mrs. Cloud ... grave and sweet, even when she didn’t like the Seton man a bit.... Now why couldn’t she, Laura, have behaved beautifully like that ... instead of saying what she thought?... Yet wasn’t it hypocritical not to say what one thought? What a muddle it was!... But she was sure she had been wrong, simply because she felt it in her bones. When the moralities failed her she always trusted to her bones. Ah, well, she must make up for it tomorrow!... She could always make people like her if she tried ... and Mr. Seton had really been quite decent.... He might have taken offence, and then Justin would have been furious.... There was no reason but a Dr. Fell reason for disliking Oliver Seton, was there? Or was there?... She went to sleep unsatisfied.

Yet, had she read on a page or two, she would have found her answer, the answer written for her three thousand years ago—

Who is able to stand before jealousy?

If Solomon could not, with all his experience, isn’t there some slight excuse for Laura Valentine?

But she was a good girl in the days that followed and a baffling one to Oliver Seton, who had delightedly foreseen squally weather. He enjoyed quarrelling with a pretty woman. But he soon agreed to agree with a dove-like Laura, and so well that Justin was gratified. For it had seemed to Justin, till she and Oliver between them disturbed him, that Laura was already greatly improved. His idea of a woman, in those dogmatical days, was the ideal of Mr. Edmund Sparkler, and Laura, since the evening in Milan that appeared already far away, was daily more completely fulfilling it. If she had been his favourite armchair, at arm’s length from his bookshelves and the back to the light, she could not have suited him better. And, appreciating her, he was pleased that his friend should appreciate her also, and she his friend. He had been worried by their first inimical encounter. Oliver he knew for a weathercock; but Laura’s opinions, negligible as he felt them to be, had always their effect on him: had, until he accounted for them, a singular and uneasy effect upon him, as of undigested apples. That Laura, with no nonsense about her, had seen fit to withdraw her objections, was a real if unrealized relief. That Laura, chattering nineteen to Oliver’s dozen, with that ardent and enthusiastic young gentleman securely attached to her painting-apron strings, should like him in her own private heart no whit the better, simply could not occur to him.

But then there was so much that did not occur to Justin. There is an incident in the lives of those two friends of his of which he never dreamed; though it took place in the very shadow of his Roman nose; though it rankled a long while, quite three months, in Oliver’s mind and to Laura was a memory that could still make her ears burn when her blushet days had grown as thin and unreal to her as the pressed flowers in her Prayer Book on Sundays.

For Oliver, inevitably, as Justin ought to have known he must, fell in love with Laura. They were always together. There is no doubt that even in winter his emotions were easy, and here was spring herself waking daily in Florence to wantoner life. He could not help feeling poetical when the sun and the bees, and now and then a butterfly, strayed in at the open doors of the galleries and the churches and the monasteries where he and Justin attended to the education of untravelled Laura—Justin olympically, Oliver with a growing conviction that she could, if she chose, have taught them both. She was diffident—Oliver wondered why—but she could be surprised into illuminating criticism, especially when Justin was out of earshot, and Oliver, in this spring mood of his and as impressionable as only the sea or an artist can be, was quickly aware that she was good for him. Justin’s tendency was to classify, to lock doors, to enclose; but she must be ever querying, opening, opening up avenues. She scattered questions like corn while they were garnering their conclusions, and Oliver was amazed to find how constantly those questions took root in him, sprouted into new thoughts, fresh, sturdy, blossom-bearing. In short, she stimulated him: set his fingers itching for his brushes. He always worked better when he had a woman in his head.

He planned a picture of her. He was an impetuous person, and he discovered in her profile and her fine meek lips a resemblance to some perfectly amazing portrait of some absolutely superb woman by that man who knocked every other Florentine into a cocked hat—what’s his name?—Ghirlandaio. He was quite sure it was Ghirlandaio: remembered the picture: remembered its exact position on the left-hand wall of——Lord! didn’t Justin remember? They spent a questing week scouring Florence for the Ghirlandaio before Oliver remembered that it wasn’t a Ghirlandaio at all, but a Botticelli (it was a Botticelli year for Oliver) and that it wasn’t in Florence either, but in London.

“A background, my dear chap! a background—divine! My word, what a blue! Like Shelley’s blue dome! Like Bellini’s doge—the background, not the doge, you chump! Never seen it? My God, and you live an hour from London!”

And then he had raked down Brogi’s for a copy and brought it to them in triumph.

“I told you so! There you are! No, they’d only got a postcard. But if you imagine the colour” (followed the blue doge), “it’s the image. I’ve simply got to paint her. My word, what a blind bat you are!”

But Justin sat and enjoyed him non-committally, as you see a sleepy tom enjoying the permitted onslaughts of a terrier pup.

“Can’t you see it?” Oliver worried at him. He could not be contented by acquiescence. He wanted enthusiasm. “The twin—the absolute twin! It only wants a slight wave in her hair”—(Laura glanced sidelong at Justin) “to be a photograph!”

Justin, goaded into interest, stretched out a hand for the photograph, examined and returned it.

“Don’t see the faintest resemblance,” he pronounced.

Oliver’s gesture implied that he would have torn his hair if he could have afforded it.

“Do you?” said Justin to his Echo.

“No!” said Echo, through her nose, with a clear, contemptuous little laugh that nettled Oliver.

But he didn’t guess how disappointed Echo was. Echo would have been gratified if Justin had perceived that undoubtedly existing resemblance. As it was, she was merely annoyed with Oliver for making the discovery. If Justin didn’t admire Laura’s hair, it was certainly not Oliver’s business to do so.... She didn’t like Oliver.... A wordy man....

But she was obliged to let him paint her. She had begun by being deaf to his persuasions, for she knew what sitting meant: she had always been the sacrifice of her merciless mates in the Rue Honorine when the model had fainted or left them in the lurch. But when Oliver appealed to Justin, and Justin opened his eyes at her, what was she to do?

Sit? Of course she must sit! It would be rather a lark. They were in for a spell of rain and he was sick of churches. He always enjoyed watching Oliver work, and besides, Oliver was so awfully keen to paint her. He thought she ought to be flattered. He would sit himself, like a shot, if his mug were any use to Oliver.

And so she sat for them, in Oliver’s big cool studio that had been a palace pleasure-room once upon a time. The rest of the building, even its name, had vanished out of memory, but this one room still stood, fair and lofty as Marina in the bagnio, amid the vile modern cubbies clustering against its three walls like barnacles upon a shell. The fourth was all windows and a great glass door that opened upon gardens. Its lintel was upheld by columns of pinkish stone, that writhed up in foliated spirals to a crazy capital of fruits and rams’ horns and ribands. In the summer, said Oliver, the vine outside came clambering in to put its tendrils and carved grapes to shame. The whitewashed walls were brilliant with Oliver’s canvases, but on the ceiling there were the flakes and peelings of a fresco, still witnessing that it had once been lovely, as a skeleton leaf cries out to you that once it was green. Laura, perched on her throne, would try to decipher the dim outlines, till Oliver called to her not to pucker her face: and then she would start and lose her pose and twinkle across at Justin, while Oliver swore like a cat in Italian and apologized mellifluously in English and arranged her again to suit his difficult taste. I am afraid she was not a good sitter. She was still enough, but Oliver complained that she would not look at him. He was certainly worth looking at, as he sat in the open doorway, his dark face darker against the light, and the overladen, fantastic column rising beside him. They had an odd air of belonging to the same century. Justin, indeed, had once declared that Oliver looked like an undissipated Medici; which did not quite please Oliver. He was young enough to deprecate the adjective. But despite his wild hair and dynamic neckerchiefs and all the other inevitable little affectations of his temperament and his trade, his good looks were undeniable, and it is possible that he did not often find his sitters unappreciative. But always Laura’s eyes went through him and over him and beyond him to the loggia where Justin lounged or read aloud to them in his shy precise sing-song, while the smoke of his smouldering pipe whorled upwards, to melt into the fine silvery rain that eddied past like ghosts of old Florence, or to the corner where Justin raked his way through Oliver’s stacked canvases and grunted out comments that set Oliver ablaze. And then Laura must jump down to see what it was all about and give her opinion, though Oliver took no notice of it, which nettled her, little as she liked him: and business would be delayed. Mrs. Cloud would come in with a basket and a Murillo’s melon-boy to carry it, and they would all picnic together on the throne. And afterwards, if the sun had come out, Justin would carry them off for a drive and no more painting would be done that day.

Nevertheless the picture progressed apace. Mrs. Cloud thought it very pretty and Justin was enthusiastic, though not sufficiently enthusiastic for Oliver, for nobody’s praise seemed to Oliver to do his work quite such discriminating justice as his own. Even Laura would have owned to a real admiration if Oliver had asked her. But Oliver did not ask her. Laura had protected Justin only too well. He had explained to Oliver in all good faith how well she sketched—oh, water-colour, he supposed, he didn’t really know—and Oliver, with all the water-colours of all the daughters and drawing-rooms of England in his mind’s eye, thought himself wise in evading the subject. His Hebe should not trip if he could help it. Naturally Laura observed his manoeuvres. If she had had more faith in herself she would have been amused by them; as it was, she was humanly annoyed. She might have made up her mind to forgo her painting: she half believed she had; but it was another thing to be ignored, to sit a week watching some one else handling and mishandling the tools of your trade. Because, whatever conceit Oliver might have of himself, he could not draw. She could see all he did reflected in the mirror beside him and—he could not draw. She conceded him colour, an amazing colour; but he had no sense of discipline, of line ... and, shades of Ingres! how he was mangling the shoulder curve! However—this with a twist of her lip—she supposed he would cover it up nicely with drapery.

“Smile, please,” directed Oliver. And then, “Sweeter, my dear girl, sweeter. No, I don’t want your teeth.”

“Oh, I can’t sit any more,” said Laura suddenly, and she jumped down in spite of his outcries. “Aren’t you nearly done?”

“Pretty well.” Oliver stepped back. “Like it?” he enquired politely; but he went off to unpack the luncheon basket without waiting for her answer.

Justin came up and looked over her shoulder. The canvas showed an arrangement of sunshine and white flesh and red hair, with no more than a conventional resemblance to Laura, but delicate and lovely as a bunch of shaded nasturtiums.

“Don’t you like it?” he asked.

She chose her words.

“It’s wonderful colour: like a fire-opal.”

He nodded quickly. She always found the words he wanted.

“That’s why I’ve bought it—at least, I’m going to—for Mother. Just the thing for the yellow parlour, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes.” She was pleased, tremendously pleased, that she was to live in Mrs. Cloud’s drawing-room. If they hung her over the mantelpiece they would see her every evening as they sat by the fire.... She thought—not because it was she herself, of course, but because it was such a good piece of work—that it ought to go over the mantelpiece....

“Wouldn’t you give your ears to draw like that?” There was a wistfulness in Justin’s voice that should have touched her. He was thinking of himself, not of her.

But she, too, was thinking of herself.

“I can,” said Laura absently. And then, as he laughed—“I tell you I can, Justin! I tell you I can!”

“Can what?” Oliver came across to them with his hands full of fruit and green glasses and blue checked table-cloth, and sat himself down to butter rolls.

“Draw,” said Laura stiffly, her eyes on the fire-opal shoulder blade.

“Can you?” said Oliver in the soothing, interested voice that one uses to a child.

“Well, you may laugh,” she began, but ready to laugh herself, if Justin, with a vague notion that she was making herself look foolish and a still vaguer notion that he did not like Laura to look foolish, had not interposed too peremptorily——

“Oh, dry up, Laura! Let’s have lunch,” and so set a match to her discretion.

She flared. It was comical to hear the personal pique and righteous artistic wrath struggling for precedence in her harangue as she dragged out Oliver’s spare easel.

“You eat your lunches! Oliver, where’s the michallet? And charcoal? And a board? You two think you know everything. You think I’m a fool. You think there’s nothing on earth but colour. Oh, I’ll show you!” And then, as the familiar delight of handling familiar tools swept over her, she suddenly added, with complete if abstracted friendliness, “Oliver—keep him quiet, won’t you?”

“I’m hanged if you’re going to immortalize me,” began Justin. “Why not Oliver?”

“Know you better.” She looked him up and down through narrowed lids. “A little more round to the right, please. Talk to him, Oliver.” And she settled herself to work.

Justin chuckled. But Oliver, watching her curiously, noticing the business-like deftness of her preparations, turned, with a touch of discomfort, to Justin.

“I say—I didn’t know——” And then, in an undertone, “Is she really any good?”

Justin held out his plate.

“I always told you she was keen. Cut us another slice. I wish you were not quite so deaf,” for Oliver’s attention had strayed back again to Laura.

But Laura stood and watched them while her hand flashed and hesitated over her paper, with an air so impersonal in its very intentness that in some fashion it removed her from them, till at last they forgot her as one forgets the caged presence of some bright-eyed, all-attentive bird. They sat chatting together over their sandwiches, and, what with the sunshine and the tobacco smoke and the midday stillness, grew at last so drowsy that Justin, for one, jumped when Laura, with a despairing gesture that sent the charcoal flying, abandoned her easel and came to them across the room.

“Well?” Oliver roused himself.

Laura pushed aside her hair with the back of her blackened hand. She had managed in the last half-hour to make herself more dishevelled than Oliver had ever seen her. She was flushed to the eyes and she looked dead tired. But he perceived that whatever spirit had possessed her was departed.

She answered, not him but Justin’s eyes, with a shrug, half deprecating, half defiant.

“I’ve done. I’m afraid I’ve messed up the floor, Oliver. It’s no good, of course. Of course I can’t. Justin, I’m a conceited ass. Any lunch left? I’m starving. It’s—it’s an awfully tiring day.” She flung herself into a chair. “Oliver, get me a glass.”

But Oliver, who, with an air of amused curiosity, had strolled across to the deserted easel, was staring from her sketch to her, and from her to Justin, and so back again to the sketch. Then he whistled—a prolonged and penetrating whistle.

“Here, get up, Justin!” he commanded. “Let’s have a look at you.”

Justin hauled himself out of his chair with a yawn and stood to attention. Oliver looked at him, as Laura had looked, through insolent, narrowed lids: indeed, for an instant, there was the oddest likeness between them, different in type as they were. When at last he addressed her, there was a new and intimate note in his voice—

“I suppose you know what you’ve done?”

“I know what I’ve not done. I don’t want butter, Oliver, I want water. I’m thirsty.”

But he swept on excitedly as he went to fetch her a glass.

“Oh, you’ve justified yourself. I—I’m half afraid of you. How did you see all that? I never saw all that——”

“All what?” struck in Justin, as he considered himself critically, his head on one side. “What are you driving at? I think it’s rather good.”

Laura smiled at them both with her mouth full.

But Oliver continued to hold forth. His eyes danced. He shook a warning forefinger.

“You’ll be a failure, you know. This sort of thing won’t get you into academies. What’s the use of painting what ought to be there? Eh? People want to be photographed. Ask Justin. Isn’t that so, Justin?”

Laura flashed a dubious look at him. She was not quite sure that she approved of the tone in which he said “Ask Justin.” Almost it seemed as if he implied superiority—a mutual acknowledgement of superiority to Justin.... Cheek!...

She waited for Justin to assert himself. But Justin was absorbed in her drawing.

“It’s quite good, isn’t it?” he said to Oliver with an air of gratified surprise.

“Oh, quite good.” And this time the tone was so unmistakable that Laura reddened angrily. She got up abruptly and joined them.

“Though I haven’t got a nose like that. That I’ll swear.” Justin rubbed the original thoughtfully.

Oliver grinned.

“No. That’s CÆsar’s beak. But you could have if you tried. Isn’t that the idea, Laura? No work done, but great works undone. You make her tear it up, Justin. It isn’t fair.” And then, as Laura made a movement to obey him, “Here, what are you doing? This masterpiece is my perquisite.”

“Look here, Oliver, I won’t have Laura ragged.” Justin had caught sight of her vexed face. “Don’t you worry, Laura. It isn’t half bad for a beginner. Tons better than I thought you could.”

Oliver went off into one of his fits of laughter.

“Oh, Waring, what’s to be really be?” he chanted. “And the next article, please? I’m sorry, Justin. It’s Browning’s split infinitive, not mine.”

“Isn’t he a fool?” demanded Justin, beaming at him.

“He’s worse. He’s a clever fool,” said Laura darkly.

Oliver blew her a kiss.