The lesson which he had set for Joan Tregenza's learning taught John Barron something also. Eight-and-forty hours he stayed in Newlyn, and was astounded to find during that period what grip this girl had got upon his mind, how she had dragged him out of himself. His first thought was to escape all physical excitement and emotion by abandoning his picture almost upon the moment of its completion and abandoning his model too; but various considerations cried out against such a course. To go was to escape no difficulty, but to fly from the spoils of victory. The fruit only wanted plucking, and, through pleasure, he believed that he would proceed to speedy, easy and triumphant completion of his picture. No lasting compunction colored the tenor of his thoughts. Once, indeed, upon the day when he returned to Gorse Point and saw Joan again, some shadow of regret for her swept through his brain; but that and the issue of it will be detailed in their place.

Time went heavily for him away from Joan. He roamed listlessly here and there and watched the weather-glass uneasily; for this abstention from work was a deliberate challenge to Providence to change sunshine for rain and high temperature for low. Upon the third day therefore he returned at early morning to his picture in the shed. The greater part was finished, and the masses of gorse stood out strong, solid and complete with the slender brown figure before them. The face of it was very sweet, but to Barron it seemed as the face of a ghost, with no hot blood in its veins, no live interests in its eyes.

"'Tis the countenance of a nun," he said sneeringly to himself. "No fire, no love, no story—a sweet virgin page of life, innocent of history or of interest as a new-blown lily." The problem was difficult, and he had now quite convinced himself that solution depended on one course alone. "And why not?" he asked himself. "Why, when pleasures are offered, shall I refuse them? God knows Nature is chary enough with her delights. She has sowed death in me, here in my lungs. I shall bleed away my life some day or die strangled, unless I anticipate the climax and choose another exit. Why not take what she throws to me in the meantime?"

He walked down to the Point, set up his easel and waited, feeling that Joan had certainly made two pilgrimages since his last visit and little doubting that she would come a third time. Presently indeed she did, scarcely daring to raise her eyes, but flushing with great waves of joy when she saw him, and crying "Mister Jan!" in a triumphant ripple of music from a full heart. Then the artist rose very boldly and put his arms round her and looked into her face, while she nestled close to him and shut her eyes with a sigh of sheer content and thankfulness. She had learned her lesson thoroughly enough; she felt she could not live without him now, and when he kissed her she did not start from the caress, but opened her eyes and looked into his face with great yearning love.

"Oh, thank the good God you'm comed back agin to me! To think it be awnly two lil days! An' the time have seemed a hunderd years. I thot 'e was lost or dead or killed, an' I seed 'e, when I slept, a tossin' over down in the zawns [Footnote: Zawns—Sea caves.] where the sea roars an' makes the world shake. Oh, Mister Jan, an' I woke screamin', an' mother comed up, an' I near spoke your name, but not quite."

"You need not have feared for me, Joan, though I have been very miserable too, my little sweetheart; I have indeed. I was overworked and worried and wretched, so I stopped in Newlyn, but being away from you had only taught me I cannot exist away from you. The time was long and dreary, and it would have been still worse had I known that you were unhappy."

"'Tweer wisht days for me, Mister Jan. I be such a poor lass in brains, an' I could awnly think of trouble 'cause I loved 'e so true. 'Tedn' like the same plaace when you'm away. Then I thot you'd gone right back to Lunnon, an' I judged my heart 'ud break for 'e, I did."

"Poor little blue-eyed woman! Could you really think I was such a brute?"

"'Twas awnly wan thot among many. I never thot so much afore in my life. An' I looked 'bout tu; an' I went up to the lil byre, where your things was, an' peeped in en. But I seed naught of 'e, awnly a gashly auld rat in a trap. But 'e won't gaw aways like that ag'in, will 'e?"

"No, no. It was too bad."

"Coorse I knawed that if all was well with 'e, you'd a done the right thing, but it 'peared as if the right thing couldn' be to leave me, Mister Jan—not now, now you be my world like; 'cause theer edn' nothin' or nobody else in the world but you for me. 'Tis wicked, but t'others be all faded away; an' faither's nort, an' Joe's nort, alongside o' you."

He did not answer, and began to paint. Joan's face was far short of looking its best; there were dark shadows under her eyes and less color than usual brightened her cheeks. He tried to work, but circumstances and his own feelings were alike against him. He was restless and lacked patience, nor could his eye see color aright. In half an hour he had spoiled not a little of what was already done. Then he took a palette-knife, made a clean sweep of much previous labor and began again. But the music of her happy voice was in his blood. The child had come out of the valley of sorrow and she was boisterously happy and her laughter made him wild. Mists gathered in his eyes and his breath caught now and again. Passion fairly gripped him by the throat till even the sound of his own voice was strange to him and he felt his knees shake. He put down his brushes, turned from the picture, and went to the cliff-edge, there flinging himself down upon the grass.

"I cannot paint to-day, Joan; I'm too over-joyed at getting you back to me. My hand is not steady, and my Joan of paint and canvas seems worse and feebler than ever beside your flesh and blood. You don't know—you cannot guess how I have missed you."

"Iss fay, but I can, Mister Jan, if you felt same as what I done. 'Tweer cruel, cruel. But then you've got a many things an' folks to fill up your time along with; I abbun got nothin' now but you."

"I expect Joe often thinks about you."

"I dunnaw. 'Tis awful wicked, but Joe he gone clean out my mind now. I thot I loved en, but I was a cheel then an' I didn't 'sackly knaw what love was; now I do. 'Twadden what I felt for Joe Noy 'tall; 'tis what I feels for you, Mister Jan."

"Ah, I like to hear you say that. Nature has brought you to me, Joan, my little jewel; and she has brought Jan to you. You could not understand that last time I told you; now you can and you do. We belong to each other—you and I—and to nobody else."

"I'd be well content to belong to 'e, Mister Jan. You'm my good fairy, I reckon. If I could work for 'e allus an' see 'e an' 'ear 'e every day, I shouldn' want nothin' better'n that."

Then it was that the shade of a compunction and the shadow of a regret touched John Barron; and it cooled his hot blood for a brief moment, and he swore to himself he would try to paint her again as she was. He would fight Nature for once and try if pure intellect was strong enough to get the face he wanted on to the canvas without the gratification of his flesh and blood. In which determination glimmered something almost approaching to self-sacrifice in such a man. He did not answer Joan's last remark, but rose and went to his picture, and she, thinking herself snubbed by his silence after her avowal, grew hot and uncomfortable.

"The weather is going to change, sweetheart," he said, allowing himself the luxury of affectionate words in the moment of his half-hearted struggle; "the weather-glass creeps back slowly. We must not waste time. Come, Joan; we are the children of Nature, but the slaves of Art. Let me try again."

But she, who had spoken in all innocence and with a child's love, was pained that he should have taken no note of her speech. She was almost angry that he had power to conjure such words to her lips; and yet the anger vanished from her mind quickly enough and her thoughts were all happy as she resumed her pose for him.

The past few days had vastly deepened and widened her mental horizon; and now Barron for the first time saw something of what he wanted in her eyes as she gazed away over the sea and did not look at him as usual. There, sure enough, was the soul that he knew slept somewhere, but had never seen until then. And the sight of it came as a shock and swept away his sophistries and ugly-woven ideas. Inclination had told him that Nature, through one channel only, would bring the mystery of hidden thought to Joan's blue eyes, and he had felt well satisfied to believe it was so; but now even the plea of Art could not excuse the thing which had grown within him of late, for experiences other than those he dreamed of had glorified the frank blue eyes and brought mind into them. Now it only remained for him to paint them if he could. Not wholly untroubled, but never much more beautiful than that morning, Joan gazed out upon the remote sea. Then the thoughtful mood passed, and she laughed and babbled again, and the new-born beauty departed from her eyes for a season, and the warm blood raced through her veins, and she was all happiness. Meanwhile nothing came of his painting and he was not sorry when she ended the ordeal.

"The bwoats be comin' back home along, Mister Jan. I doan't mark faither's yet, but when 'tis wance in sight he'll be to Newlyn sooner'n me. So I'd best be gwaine, though it edn' more than noon, I s'pose. An' my heart's a tidy sight lighter now than 'tweer issterday indeed."

"I'm almost afraid to let you go, Joan."

She looked at him curiously, waiting for his bidding, but he seemed moody, and said no more.

"When be you comin' next?"

"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, my pearl above price. It is so hard, so very hard," he answered. "Fine or wet I shall be here to-morrow, for I am not going back to Newlyn again till my work is done. Three more sittings, Joan, if you have enough patience—"

"In coorse, Mister Jan."

She did not explain to him what difficulties daily grew in the way of her coming, how rumor was alive, and how her stepmother had threatened more than once to tell Gray Michael that his wayward daughter was growing a gadabout. Joan had explained away her roaming with a variety of more or less ingenious lies, and she always found her brain startlingly fertile where the artist and his picture were concerned. She felt little doubt that three more visits to Gorse Point might be achieved—ay, and thirty more if necessary. But afterward? What would follow the painting of the picture? She asked herself the question as he kissed her, with a kiss that was almost rough, while he bid her go quickly; and the former reply to every doubt made answer. Her fears fled as usual before the invigorating spectacle of this sterling, truth-loving man. With him all the future remained and with him only. Hers was the pleasant, passive task of obedience to one utterly trusted and passionately loved. Her fate lay hidden in his heart, as the fate of the clay lies hid in the brain of the potter.

And so home she went, walking in a sunshine of her own thoughts. The clouds were gone; they massed gloomily on the horizon of the past; but looking forward, she saw no more of them. All time to come was at the disposition of the wisest man she had ever met. She did not know or guess at the battle which this same wise man had fought and lost under her eyes; she gathered nothing of the truth from his gloom, his silence, his changed voice, his sudden farewell. She did not know passion when she saw it; and the ugly visible signs thereof told no tale to her.