r feet.

A stout woman, fashionably dressed, made her appearance from the willow
path.

"What have you been doing all this while?" she said querulously. "Not
sketching, I hope," she added, with a suspicious glance at the book.
"You know your professor expressly forbade you to do so in your
holidays."

The young girl shrugged her shoulders. "I've been looking at the
fountains," she replied evasively.

"And horrid looking pagan things they are, too," said the elder woman,
turning from them disgustedly, without vouchsafing a second glance.
"Come. If we expect to do the abbey, we must hurry up, or we won't catch
the train. Your uncle is waiting for us at the top of the garden."

And, to Potter's intense relief, she grasped the young girl's arm and
hurried her away, their figures the next moment vanishing in the tangled
shrubbery.

Potter lost no time in plunging with his cramped limbs into the water
and regaining the other side. Here he quickly half dried himself with
some sun-warmed leaves and baked mosses, hurried on his clothes, and
hastened off in the opposite direction to the path taken by them, yet
with such circuitous skill and speed that he reached the great gateway
without encountering anybody. A brisk walk brought him to the station
in time to catch a stopping train, and in half an hour he was speeding
miles away from Domesday Park and his half-forgotten episode.

*****

Meantime the two ladies continued on their way to the abbey. "I don't
see why I mayn't sketch things I see about me," said the young lady
impatiently. "Of course, I understand that I must go through the
rudimentary drudgery of my art and study from casts, and learn
perspective, and all that; but I can't see what's the difference between
working in a stuffy studio over a hand or arm that I know is only a
STUDY, and sketching a full or half length in the open air with the
wonderful illusion of light and shade and distance--and grouping and
combining them all--that one knows and feels makes a picture. The real
picture one makes is already in one's self."

"For goodness' sake, Lottie, don't go on again with your usual
absurdities. Since you are bent on being an artist, and your Popper
has consented and put you under the most expensive master in Paris, the
least you can do is to follow the rules. And I dare say he only wanted
you to 'sink the shop' in company. It's such horrid bad form for you
artistic people to be always dragging out your