er for the time by the Colonel's
departure. Lyon hoped for a letter recounting the fictive sequel; but
apparently his brilliant sitter did not operate with the pen. At any
rate he left town without writing; they had taken a rendezvous for three
months later. Oliver Lyon always passed the holidays in the same way;
during the first weeks he paid a visit to his elder brother, the happy
possessor, in the south of England, of a rambling old house with formal
gardens, in which he delighted, and then he went abroad--usually to
Italy or Spain. This year he carried out his custom after taking a last
look at his all but finished work and feeling as nearly pleased with it
as he ever felt with the translation of the idea by the hand--always, as
it seemed to him, a pitiful compromise. One yellow afternoon, in the
country, as he was smoking his pipe on one of the old terraces he was
seized with the desire to see it again and do two or three things more
to it: he had thought of it so often while he lounged there. The impulse
was too strong to be dismissed, and though he expected to return to town
in the course of another week he was unable to face the delay. To look
at the picture for five minutes would be enough--it would clear up
certain questions which hummed in his brain; so that the next morning,
to give himself this luxury, he took the train for London. He sent no
word in advance; he would lunch at his club and probably return into
Sussex by the 5.45.

In St. John's Wood the tide of human life flows at no time very fast,
and in the first days of September Lyon found unmitigated emptiness in
the straight sunny roads where the little plastered garden-walls, with
their incommunicative doors, looked slightly Oriental. There was
definite stillness in his own house, to which he admitted himself by his
pass-key, having a theory that it was well sometimes to take servants
unprepared. The good woman who was mainly in charge and who cumulated
the functions of cook and housekeeper was, however, quickly summoned by
his step, and (he cultivated frankness of intercourse with his
domestics) received him without the confusion of surprise. He told her
that she needn't mind the place being not quite straight, he had only
come up for a few hours--he should be busy in the studio. To this she
replied that he was just in time to see a lady and a gentleman who were
there at the moment--they had arrived five minutes before. She had told
them he was awa