ousand six hundred and twenty five francs," I cried.

Blanquette sat down in order to realise the sum. It was difficult for
her to conceive thousands of francs.

"That will make you rich for the rest of your life."

"It is only the beginning," I exclaimed hopefully.

Blanquette shook a reproachful head.

"There are some folks who are never satisfied," she said.

CHAPTER XIX

WHEN I arrived at Melford my head was full of painting and
self-importance; and for the first week or so, Mrs. Rushworth, my
subject, occupied the centre of my stage. She was a placid lady of
sixty, whose hair, once golden, had turned a flossy white, and whose
apple cheeks, though still retaining their plumpness, had grown waxen
and were criss-crossed by innumerable tiny lines. The light blue of her
eyes had faded, and the rich redness of her lips had turned to faint
coral. One could trace how Time had day by day touched her with light
but unfaltering fingers, now abstracting a fleck of brightness, now
lowering by an imperceptible shade a tone of colour, until she had
become what I saw her, still the pink and white beauty, but with rose
all deadened into white, like a sick pink pearl. Her pink and white
character had also suffered the effacement of the years. She was as
dainty and as negative as a piece of Dresden China. She loved to dress
in lilac and old lace: and that is how I painted her, regarding her as a
bit of exquisite decoration to be treated flat like a panel of Puvis de
Chavannes.

My young head, I say, was full of the masterpiece I was about to
execute, and though I found much joy in renewed intercourse with my
beloved lady and my master, I took no particular note of their
relations. We met at meals, sometimes in the afternoons, and always of
evenings, when I played dutiful piquet with Mrs. Rushworth, while Joanna
made music on the piano, and Paragot read Jane Austen in an arm-chair by
the fire. To me the quietude of the secluded English home had an
undefinable charm like the smell of lavender, for which I have always
had a cat-like affection. Not having the Bohemian temperament--I am now
the most smugly comfortable painter in Europe--I was perfectly happy. I
took no thought of Paragot, whose temperament was essentially Bohemian;
and how he enjoyed the gentle monotony of the days it did not occur to
me to consider. Outwardly he shewed no sign of impatience. A dean might
have taken him as a model of decorum, and when he