One winter morning the monotony of the studio in which Evarne was posing was broken by the unannounced entrance of a young man.

Mr. Towning, the owner of the domain, threw down his palette, and greeted the newcomer heartily.

"Why, it's Hardy! Haven't seen you for ages, old chap."

"Up to my eyes in work. And I see you're hard at it too. Don't let me interrupt business."

Thus adjured, Towning recommenced his interrupted occupation, while his visitor stood by and scrutinised his labours.

"You're making a fine thing of that," was the verdict. "The colour scheme is delightful—absolutely. That touch of blue just there—splendid! I say, what a splendid model you've got."

Towning lowered his voice a trifle.

"Yes, and that touch of blue was her suggestion, if you please. What do you think of that? Have you not seen her before—Evarne Stornway?"

"Oh, is that who it is? Of course I've heard of her. Only last week some chap was in to see Geoff, and he fairly raved over her. By Jove, he wasn't far wrong either."

"She's quite uncommon, isn't she? It's not often one finds a glorious shape like that, more's the pity. By the way, what's Geoff Danvers working at now?"

"He's off to Venice at the end of March. He's going to paint abroad till next winter."

"Lucky dog. It's all right to have plenty of money, isn't it?"

"But there are not many who use it as Geoff does. Heaven knows what I should do without him, and now he is not going alone to Venice."

"No?"

"He's taking two young chaps, Melcarp and Thorpe, with him. It will be the time of their lives. They haven't got a spare penny piece between them, and could as easily have taken themselves to study in the moon as in Italy. Geoff is paying all their expenses, and making out that it's a favour on their part that they're coming. Vows he would die of dulness without company. Melcarp and Thorpe are half off their heads with excitement."

"Lucky beggars. What will you do when he's gone?"

"Oh, plod along in the studio as usual. I have got a fine idea for a picture, and I am hunting for a model. The subject is a couple of lines of Keates's 'Belle Dame sans Merci,' and I want a girl with reddish-golden hair and a palish face; gleaming eyes, deep set; and cruel red lips—all curves. Not a fine bouncing wench at all, but one of those weird, fascinating, fragile sort of women—you know what I mean."

"But you surely don't expect to find exactly what you want?"

"Scarcely. But if I could only get the right coloured hair with the pale face it would be something. To tell the truth, Towning," the young artist avowed, with a moment's outburst of confidence," I haven't got as much imagination as an artist really wants. I don't get a clear vision of things in my mind; I just get a shadowy sort of notion. But unless I can have some degree of reality before me, very similar to my vague fancy—well, I am nowhere. My idea just dies away."

"Paint portraits. There's more money in that than in anything else, you know."

"Oh, that reminds me of a bit of real luck. When Lord Winborough returns to England in the autumn, he has promised to let me do a bust of him to exhibit. Splendid chance, isn't it? But I am awfully set on doing that 'Belle Dame' picture."

"Perhaps Miss Stornway knows of a girl with red-gold hair and all the rest of it. By the way, it's time."

He ceased working, and slightly nodded to Evarne. She stood up, stretched her arms over her head, gave a couple of tiny kicks to take the stiffness from one of her knees, then slipped behind the screen that formed a temporary dressing-room. She reappeared, clad in a loose crimson wrapper, and sat down by the fire.

The young men joined her.

"You heard what we were talking about, of course, Miss Stornway?" questioned Towning. "Is there a 'Belle Dame' among your friends?"

But Evarne was unable to render assistance. She knew of two models with red-gold hair, but the accompanying round, rosy faces and retroussÉ noses of both were in no way mystic and interesting. All she could do was to promise to remember the requirement, and to send any likely damsel along for inspection.

"Thank you. But you're about the fiftieth person who's on the lookout," returned Jack Hardy ruefully.

When he finally took his departure, he walked slowly back to Kensington, a cloud of discontent upon his brow. His mind was full of his picture, the great work he was longing to commence, yet—morbidly conscious of his own limitations—he was resolutely determined not to start without having found a suitable model for the central figure.

"I must get on! I must make headway! All my youth is passing!"

He almost snarled these words aloud. Earnest, enthusiastic, patiently hard-working, Jack Hardy was devoid of one spark of divine inspiration, and knew it but too well for his peace of mind. He saw his own handiwork without gloss or glamour; viewed it as it was in stern reality, good in composition, in technique, but commonplace—oh! Phoebus Apollo and all ye Muses—how sadly commonplace! Not a man or woman, trained and practised as he was, but could have done equally well. In the ripest fruit of his hand and brain there was absolutely nothing individual; scarce a trace of originality; no magnetism, no grip. Never had Jack Hardy completed a work, and looking upon it said within himself: "None but I could have produced just this result. Only the combination of heart and brain and soul and knowledge that makes Me could have evolved this picture. I myself am in it."

As a student, a great future had been prophesied for him, and in those days he had believed in himself. But time had glided by, his thirtieth year was past, his powers had matured without enlarging their scope, and with bitter reluctance he commenced to realise that he now saw the full extent to which his capacity would ever attain. He might become more certain, more facile, but nothing else. No longer could he still look forward and upward, confident in what would be revealed when the summit of the hill he so laboriously climbed was reached. He was there, and lo! it was but the crowded tableland of mediocrity!

His thoughts were bitter as he walked through the streets that day. Why had Nature so utterly denied him that divine "something" that no industry can give, no study can acquire? "I can but despise my own men and women," he thought. "I am no creator! I make forms in paint, but I cannot give them the breath of life. I make them beautiful—strictly speaking—yet there is no beauty in them. I am a craftsman, a mechanic—not an artist."

But he had a stout heart and a dogged obstinacy that refused to yield. Surely this fervid ambition to abandon himself to imaginative work must be the outcome of some fire of inspiration, however small and smouldering. Let him only find that woman with the gleaming pale face and the sunlike hair, and he surely could and would produce his masterpiece.

He looked around as he walked. Even if he discovered his personified dream out of the ranks of professional models, he meant to leave no stone unturned to persuade her to sit for his great picture.

He shivered somewhat as the chill winter blasts rushed by. Money was far from plentiful in Jack's pockets. In true artistic style he inhabited a garret in Bohemia, and it was only by the strictest economy that he was enabled to exist on the work he sold, aided by the small sum of money he had inherited from his mother.

Yet the studio belonging to the top suite in the handsome block of flats that he entered, and in which he was obviously quite at home, bore every sign of ample wealth. A spacious and lofty apartment, it was obviously no makeshift, but had been destined by its architect to behold artistic labours. This was clearly shown by its top-lights, and its one very huge window, unusually wide and deep.

From the front entrance of the flat of which it formed part, this studio was reached by crossing a wide hall, on the left side of which opened the living-rooms of the suite. But the entire right-hand half of the flat, looking north, was devoted to the requirements of Art. At the farther end of the studio itself a door opened on to a short passage on each side of which was a quite small room. That on the right was the model's dressing-room; it communicated also directly with the studio, but the other little room had its only opening into the short corridor. It was destined for the storing of plaster and other materials used in modelling, and possessed the useful addition of a tiny sink with hot and cold water. A door at the farther end of the dividing passage gave access to a flight of stairs which ultimately led out to Langthorne Place, where was the back entrance of the block of flats.

The studio itself was verily a fascinating spot, with its exquisite replicas of classical statues; its curious swords and armour; its plaques; its Damascus shawls and Eastern draperies; divans and lavishly carved chairs and tables. Vases of curious build, harmonious outline, or rich colour stood around, several—despite the wintry season—filled with pink and crimson roses.

But for all this luxury, it was obviously a workshop. The scent of the flowers struggled feebly through the stronger odour of oils and turpentine, while a couple of the vases were utilised to hold spiky clusters of innumerable paint-brushes. The statue of Venus was next to the life-sized lay figure; the Salviati mirror reflected, besides a bronze Mercury, a grim skeleton and a plaster cast of a head with the outer skin removed to show the facial muscles. Numerous studies and unfinished sketches decorated or defaced the walls, while heavy-looking books on anatomy and perspective were to be found by the side of daintily-bound poets and some of the newest novels. There was quite enough of dust and disorder to show this atelier to be the haunt of earnest workers, and the young man, clad in a much-besmeared painting overall, who stood before a large canvas, scarcely glanced aside as Jack entered.

In this industrious artist Jack beheld his best and truest friend. It was to the good-nature of Geoffrey Danvers that he owed the privilege of working in this splendid studio from morning to evening, and making it practically his home; it was Geoff's generosity that freed him from any difficulties concerning the cost of canvas, colours and models.

Meeting at an Art school in Paris, a close comradeship had sprung up between the two young Englishmen, and when Geoff returned to London and took up his abode in this flat with its fine studio, he was not slow in suggesting that Jack Hardy should continue to be his brother-in-art.

He knew his friend's poverty, knew that without some such help he would be condemned to waste many of his days turning out "pot-boilers," and was heartily glad to be able to save him from this embittering employment. For the present, at all events, Jack was quite freed from every expense connected with his work. He procured all his materials from Geoff's colour dealer, and never even saw the bills, while each week the fee for his model got itself paid in the same convenient manner.

But money was indeed scarcely an object to Geoff. He was possessed of far more than enough for the simple life that was his choice. He really could not see that any unusual kindliness or generosity lay in his favourite diversion of playing "fairy godfather" to other young artists, clever yet needy. All his aspirations for the future, all his interest in the present, lay in Art—his life's occupation—and he pursued it with a devotion, an ardour, that could not have been surpassed had he known his whole ultimate welfare to depend upon his success.

And surely the gods loved Geoffrey Danvers! Not only did he bring to his labours a brain in which the capacity for unwearying endeavour co-existed with ever-active enthusiasm and alert intelligence; more than that—to him had been given an imaginative soul that swam easily and always in a boundless sea of fantasy and dreams. His good right hand followed instincts, obeyed emotions and upwelling thoughts, all unguessed-at and undreamed-of by plodding, heavy-minded Jack Hardy. Thus came forth work pulsating with that power, that appeal, that life, for which Jack yearned, that he struggled for, prayed for—in vain—all in vain.

An hour later the two young men sat down to lunch. Jack's opening statement was startling.

"I've seen the most beautiful woman alive."

"That's a big order. Your 'Belle Dame'? No, you couldn't have kept that great fact to yourself for so long."

"I should think not. No, it's that Miss Stornway whom Flinders spoke of. You remember—the 'Diana' of Montford's last year's Academy picture. She's sitting for Towning now. She is lovely—really. She looks as strong and lithe and graceful as the goddess herself. Never worn corsets in her life, I understand. Her face is perfectly exquisite too—pure Greek. Her hair waves back from halfway down her forehead, like that of Venus there."

"Dark, is she?"

"Almost black hair, big brown eyes, quite a brunette really; but one might think she was fair, she has such a clear complexion, such a smooth, satin-like skin. Go out to Towning's and see her. It's really worth while."

"We'll have her to sit here. I can see you are anxious to paint from her."

"I must confess I am."

"You had better write at once then. Since she is such a paragon of beauty I expect she has a waiting list of engagements."

A couple of days later proved Geoffrey to be a true prophet.

"We have indeed got to wait our turn, it seems. Miss Stornway can't come until the middle of March," announced Jack, studying the response to his letter. "Ten weeks ahead. Why, that is about when you'll be going away."

"That doesn't matter at all. If I have got my 'Death of Orpheus' finished I might make a few studies of her, to use up my last few days here; but she is coming for you, you know."