Colonel Mayhew will. I wonder if you know yourself how much you have
put into it?"

"I know that I have put some superlative workmanship into it," he
answered, looking upon the creation of his hand and brains with
critical grey-green eyes, curiously out of keeping with an ill-formed
and unrestrained mouth.

"Indeed you have. The thing is full of atmosphere, and your flesh
tints are worthy of Perugino. You mean to give it to her?"

"_Cela va sans dire_. She wants it as a present for her father."

"Why not hang it first, at Home?"

"Afterwards, perhaps. If she permits."

"It is a big gift, Michel. It would fetch a high price; and we need
money."

Michael shrugged his shoulders with all an artist's scorn of "the
common drudge."

"Since when have you turned commercialist, _petite soeur_? If it is a
question of starving, I can always paint another. I do not sell this
one, _voila tout_. If it were only mine, I would have five lines of
Swinburne under it for title. They express her to perfection. Listen--

'Her flower-soft lips were meek and passionate,
For love upon them like a shadow sat,
Patient, a foreseen vision of sweet things,
A dream with eyes fast shut and plumeless wings,
That know not what man's love or life shall be.'"

On the last line his voice deepened to an impassioned tone that brought
an anxious crease to Quita's forehead.

"I wonder which you are most in love with," she said on a forced note
of lightness. "The girl herself, or your picture of her? Do you ever
treat her to such rhapsodies in the flesh? They must be a little
embarrassing for a child of twenty!"

"Your 'child of twenty' is already very much a woman, and I have the
right to say to her what I please."

"Not altogether, _mon ami_--unless----"

But Michael dismissed criticism as serenely as he dismissed
consequences. The episode of the Countess was as though it had never
been.

"I have no concern with 'unless.' Such uncomfortable words are wiped
out of my vocabulary. They affect me like a false note in music."

Quita laughed. "No one knows that better than I do! But speaking
simply as a woman, I know also that the man who opens our eyes to the
passionate side of things involves himself in a big moral
responsibility. And even _you_ cannot shelve the moralities
altogether."

"_Dela depend_. If the moralities hamper one's art, the shelf is the
best place for them in my opinion."

His sister d