it would not shock him beyond power to disguise. But
Miss Desprey was frightfully in earnest, and worked until her eyes
glowed with excitement and her cheeks burned. Strong and vigorous and
(Bulstrode over and over again said) "young, so young!" she never
evinced any signs of fatigue, but stood when his limbs trembled under
him and looked up radiant when he was ready to cry "_Grace!_" In her
enthusiasm she would have given him two sittings a day, but this his
worldly relations would not permit. As she painted, painted, her head
on one side sometimes, sometimes thrown back, her eyes half closed, he
studied her with pleasure and delight.

"What a pity she paints so dreadfully ill! What a pity she paints at
all! What difference, after all, does it make _what_ she does? She's
so pretty and feminine!" She was a clinging, sweet creature, and the
walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours
of companionship with this lovely girl in the _atelier_, illumined,
accentuated, and intensified Bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation
of the spring in Paris.

During Bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the
studio a magic to which he was not insensitive. Whether or not it came
with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the
studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of
_nonchalance_ he was more and more charmed by his painter. The spell
he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the
slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times
completely in his view.

For years Bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case
of intent, _to love again_--to love anew! Neither of these statements
is the correct way of putting it. He tried with good faith to prove
himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his
friends--susceptible; alas, he knew better!

As he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to
its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her,
shutting Idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth
and position could of life and the world. He grew tender at the
thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition. It
fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her
gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy
intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts