e was
addressed 'Miss Maurice'! The irony of it cut her to the quick. Tears
of self-pity, flooding her eyes, startled her back to reality; and sent
her stumbling towards her own room. But before she could reach it,
Michael's voice arrested her.

"Come on, Quita," he shouted good-humouredly. "Where _are_ you off to?
I want my breakfast."

She turned upon him a face distorted with grief.

"_Parbleu, cherie, qu'y-a-t'il a maintenant_?" he demanded, with an odd
mingling of irritation and concern.

"Cholera at Dera Ishmael--Eldred's gone down this morning. . . ." Then
tears overwhelmed her, and he turned sharply away. "Oh go, . . . go,
and have your breakfast, Michel; and let me be. I want nothing,
nothing, but to be left alone."

And vanishing into her room, she bolted the door behind her.

Maurice frowned, and sighed. In all his knowledge of her, Quita had
never so completely lost her self-control. It was quite upsetting: and
he disliked being upset the first thing in the morning. It put him out
of tune for the rest of the day. But after all . . one must eat. And
he retraced his steps to the dining-room.

"I wish to heaven she had never discovered this uncomfortable husband
of hers!" he reflected as he went "Since he will neither marry her, nor
leave her alone; and it is we who have to suffer for his heroics!"

For all that, he found speedy consolation in the thought that at ten
o'clock a new 'subject' was coming to sit to him:--a wrinkled hag, whom
he had met on his way back from Jundraghat, bent half double under a
towering load of grass, her neutral-tinted tunic and draped trousers
relieved by the scarlet of betel-nut on her lips and gums, and by a
goat's-hair necklet strung with raw lumps of amber and turquoise,
interset with three plaques of beaten silver;--the only form of savings
bank known to these simple children of the hills.

While hastily demolishing his breakfast, Maurice visualised his picture
in every detail: and with the arrival of his model all thought of Quita
and her woes was crowded out of his mind. Yet the man was not
heartless, by any means. He was simply an artist of the extreme type,
endowed by temperament with the capacity for subordinating all
things,--his own griefs no less than the griefs of others,--to one
dominant, insatiable purpose. And according to his lights he must be
judged.

Quita remained invisible till lunch-time, lying inert, where she had
flung herself,