r glad."

"Why?" asked Paul.

She raised a piteous face.

"Yes, tell me," he insisted. "Tell me why you agree with that cad
Higgins?"

"I don't agree with him."

"You must."

They fenced for a while. At last he pinned her down.

"Well, if you want to know," she declared, with a flushed cheek, "I
don't think it's a man's job."

He bit his lip. He had asked for the truth and he had got it. His own
dark suspicions were confirmed. Jane glanced at him fearful of offence.
When they had walked some yards he spoke. "What would you call a man's
job?"

Jane hesitated for an answer. Her life had been passed in a sphere
where men carpentered or drove horses or sold things in shops. Deeply
impressed by the knowledge of Paul's romantic birth and high destiny
she could not suggest any such lowly avocations, and she did not know
what men's jobs were usually executed by scions of the nobility. A
clerk's work was certainly genteel; but even that would be lowering to
the hero. She glanced at him again, swiftly. No, he was too beautiful
to be penned up in an office from nine to six-thirty every day of his
life. On the other hand her feminine intuition appreciated keenly the
withering criticism of Higgins. Ever since Paul had first told her of
his engagements at the Life Schools she had shrunk from the idea. It
was all very well for the boy; but for the man--and being younger than
he, she regarded him now as a man--there was something in it that
offended her nice sense of human dignity.

"Well," he said. "Tell me, what do you call a man's job?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said in distress; "something you do with your
hands or your brain."

"You think being a model is undignified."

"Yes."

"So do I," said Paul. "But I'm doing things with my brain, too, you
know," he added quickly, anxious to be seen again on his pedestal. "I
am getting on with my epic poem. I've done a lot since you last heard
it. I'll read you the rest when we get home."

"That will be lovely," said Jane, to whom the faculty of rhyming was a
never-ceasing wonder. She would sit bemused by the jingling lines and
wrapt in awe at the minstrel.

They sat on a bench by the flower-beds, gay in their spring charm of
belated crocus and hyacinth and daffodil, with here and there a
precocious tulip. Paul, sensitive to beauty, discoursed on flowers. Max
Field had a studio in St. John's Wood opening out into a garden, which
last summer was a dream of delight. He des