n the sketch-book.
John had talked quite frankly about Madame de Pastourelles--not like
a man beguiled; making no mystery of her at all, answering all
questions. But his restlessness to get back to London had been
extraordinary. Was it merely the restlessness of the artist?

This was Tuesday. To-morrow Madame de Pastourelles was to come to a
sitting. Phoebe sat picturing it; while the curtain of rain descended
once more upon the cottage, blotting out the pikes, and washing down
the sodden fields.

CHAPTER VI

'I must alter that fold over the arm,' murmured Fenwick, stepping
back, with a frown, and gazing hard at the picture on his easel--'it's
too strong.'

Madame de Pastourelles gave a little shiver.

The big bare room, with its Northern aspect and its smouldering fire,
had been of a polar temperature this March afternoon. She had been
sitting for an hour and a half. Her hands and feet were frozen, and
the fur cloak which she wore over her white dress had to be thrown
back for the convenience of the painter, who was at work on the velvet
folds.

Meanwhile, on the further side of the room sat 'propriety'--also
shivering--an elderly governess of the Findon family, busily knitting.

'The dress is coming!' said Fenwick, after another minute or two.
'Yes, it's coming.'

And with a flushed face and dishevelled hair he stood back again,
staring first at his canvas and then at his sitter.

Madame de Pastourelles sat as still as she could, her thin, numbed
fingers lightly crossed on her lap. Her wonderful velvet dress, of
ivory-white, fell about her austerely in long folds, which, as they
bent or overlapped, made beautiful convolutions, firm yet subtle, on
the side turned towards the painter, and over her feet. The classical
head, with its small ear, the pale yet shining face, combined with
the dress to suggest a study in ivory, wrought to a great delicacy and
purity. Only the eyes, much darker than the hair, and the rich brown
of the sable cloak where it touched the white, gave accent and force
to the ethereal pallor, the supreme refinement, of the rest--face,
dress, hands. Nothing but civilisation in its most complex workings
could have produced such a type; that was what prevailed dimly in
Fenwick's mind as he wrestled with his picture. Sometimes his day's
work left him exultant, sometimes in a hell of despair.

'I went to see Mr. Welby's studio yesterday,' he said, hastily, after
another minute or two,