y man, to carry out; still, it could be done. He asked
her abruptly if she would really like to go away for a while.

'I like best to stay here,' she answered. 'Still, I should not mind
going somewhere, because I think I ought to.'

'Would you like London?'

Avice's face lost its weeping shape. 'How could that be?' she said.

'I have been thinking that you could come to my house and make yourself
useful in some way. I rent just now one of those new places called
flats, which you may have heard of; and I have a studio at the back.'

'I haven't heard of 'em,' she said without interest.

'Well, I have two servants there, and as my man has a holiday you can
help them for a month or two.'

'Would polishing furniture be any good? I can do that.'

'I haven't much furniture that requires polishing. But you can clear
away plaster and clay messes in the studio, and chippings of stone,
and help me in modelling, and dust all my Venus failures, and hands and
heads and feet and bones, and other objects.'

She was startled, yet attracted by the novelty of the proposal.

'Only for a time?' she said.

'Only for a time. As short as you like, and as long.'

The deliberate manner in which, after the first surprise, Avice
discussed the arrangements that he suggested, might have told him
how far was any feeling for himself beyond friendship, and possibly
gratitude, from agitating her breast. Yet there was nothing extravagant
in the discrepancy between their ages, and he hoped, after shaping her
to himself, to win her. What had grieved her to tears she would not more
particularly tell.

She had naturally not much need of preparation, but she made even less
preparation than he would have expected her to require. She seemed eager
to be off immediately, and not a soul was to know of her departure. Why,
if she were in love and at first averse to leave the island, she should
be so precipitate now he failed to understand.

But he took great care to compromise in no way a girl in whom his
interest was as protective as it was passionate. He accordingly left her
to get out of the island alone, awaiting her at a station a few miles
up the railway, where, discovering himself to her through the
carriage-window, he entered the next compartment, his frame pervaded by
a glow which was almost joy at having for the first time in his charge
one who inherited the flesh and bore the name so early associated with
his own, and at the prospect of pu