ttle
squares of canvases. To Milly this ceaseless effort to comment on nature
had something of the ridiculous,--perhaps supererogatory would be a
better word. It was so much pleasanter to look at the landscape, and
easier! Offshore the dun-colored sails of the fishing fleet dipped and
fluttered where the sturdy men of Douarnenez were engaged in their task
of getting the herring from the sea. That seemed to Milly more real and
important in a world of fact. Such a view betrayed the _bourgeois_ in
her, she suspected, but according to the Hawaiian all women were
_bourgeois_ at heart.

After a time her feet turned into one of the lanes, and she followed
unconsciously the well-known path until the gray wall of the ruined
_manoir_ came in sight. She paused for a moment--she had not meant to go
there--then impulsively went forward, crossed the empty courtyard, and
finding the garden door ajar pushed it open. The drowsy midsummer
silence seemed to possess both house and garden. The place was deserted.
In the corner stood the painter's large canvas on the easel, with the
brushes and palette on the bench by its side, as if just abandoned, and
one of Madame Saratoff's large hats of coarse straw.

Milly went over and examined the picture. It was almost finished, in
that last stage where the artist can play with his creation, fondly
touching and perfecting infinitesimal details, knowing that the thing
has really been "pulled off." And it was triumphantly done! Even to
Milly's untutored eyes, the triumph of it was indubitable. There the
Russian stood on her thin, lithe haunches, her head tipped a little back
disdainfully as in life, the open mouth about to emit some cold
brutality, the long curving lip daringly drawn up over the teeth,--the
look of "one who eats what she wants," as she herself had said one day.
Milly shuddered before the insolence of the painted face. She felt that
this was one of the few creatures on the earth whom she feared and
hated. Instinctively she made a gesture as if she would deface the
portrait. The face seemed to answer her with a sneer,--"Well, and if you
did, what good would that do? Would he love _you_ any more for that?" it
said, and she paused.

Even the background and all the details were admirably conceived and
rendered,--the crumbling, lichened wall, in cold gray, with the gnarled
root of the creeper and the wreath of purple blossoms, in sharp contrast
to the pallor of the face and the bold assu