n her rose to meet it.

She smiled across at him engagingly.

"I might--perhaps--make an exception."

For a moment there was silence. Quarrington's gaze was riveted on her
slim, supple figure with its perfect symmetry and rare grace of limb.
It was difficult to interpret his expression. Magda wondered if he were
going to reject her offer. He seemed to be fighting something out with
himself--pulled two ways--the artist in him combating the man's impulse
to resist her.

Suddenly the artist triumphed. He rose and, coming to her side, stood
looking down at her.

"Will you?" he said. "_Will you_?"

Something more than the artist spoke in his voice. It held a note of
passionate eagerness, a clipped tensity that set all her pulses racing.

She turned her head aside.

"Yes," she answered, a little breathlessly. "Yes--if you want me to."

CHAPTER XVIII

A READJUSTMENT OF IDEAS

Magda glanced from the divan covered with a huge tiger-skin to Michael,
wheeling his easel into place. A week's hard work on the part of the
artist had witnessed the completion of Lady Arabella's portrait, and
to-day he proposed to make some preliminary sketches for "Circe."

Magda felt oddly nervous and unsure of herself. This last fortnight
passed in daily companionship with Quarrington had proved a considerable
strain. Not withstanding that she had consented to sit for his picture
of Circe, he had not deviated from the attitude which he had
apparently determined upon from the first moment of her arrival at
the Hermitage--an attitude of aloof indifference to which was added a
bitterness of speech that continually thrust at her with its trenchant
cynicism. It was as though he had erected a high wall between them which
Magda found no effort of hers could break down, and she was beginning
to ask herself whether he could ever really have cared for her at all.
Surely no man who had once cared could be so hard--so implacably hard!

And now, alone with him in the big room which had been converted into a
temporary studio, she found herself overwhelmed by a feeling of intense
self-consciousness. She felt it would be impossible to bear the
coolly neutral gaze of those grey eyes for hours at a time. She wished
fervently that she had never consented to sit for the picture at all.

"How do you want me to pose?" she inquired at last, endeavouring to
speak with her usual detachment and conscious that she was failing
miserably. "You haven't told me