!_' she said, and began to read:--

'"There in the odorous meadowsweet afternoon,
With the lark like the dream of a song in the dreamy blue,
All the air abeat with the wing and buzz of June,
We met--she and I, I and she," [You and I, I and you.]
"And there, while the wild rose and woodbine deliciousness blended,
We kissed and we kissed and we kissed, till the afternoon ended...."'

Here Rondel at last interrupted--

'Woman!' he said, 'are your cheeks so painted that you have lost all sense
of shame?' But she had her answer--

'Man! are you so _great_ that you have lost the sense of pity? And which
is the greater shame: to publish your sins in large paper and take
royalties for them, or to speak of them, just you and I together, you and
I, as "there in the odorous meadowsweet afternoon"?'

'Look you,' she continued, 'an artist pays his model at least a shilling
an hour, and it is only her body he paints: but you use body and soul, and
offer her nothing. Your blues and reds are the colours you have stolen
from her eyes and her heart--stolen, I say, for the painter pays so much a
tube for his colours, so much an hour for his model, but you--'

'I give you immortality. Poor fly, I give you amber,' modestly suggested
the poet.

But Annette repeated the word 'Immortality!' with a scorn that almost
shook the poet's conceit, and thereupon produced an account, which ran as
follows:--

'Mr. Hyacinth Rondel
Dr. to Miss Annette Jones,
For moiety of the following royalties:--
Moonshine and Meadowsweet, 500 copies.
Coral and Bells, 750 copies.
Liber Amoris, 3 editions, 3,000 copies.
Forbidden Fruit, 5 editions, 5,000 copies.
-------
9,250 copies at 1s.
= L462, 10s.
Moiety of same due to Miss Jones, L231, 5s.'

'I don't mind receipting it for two hundred and thirty,' she said, as she
handed it to him.

Hyacinth was completely awakened by this: the joke was growing serious. So
he at once roused up the bully in him, and ordered her out of his rooms.
But she smiled at his threats, and still held out her account. At last he
tried coaxing: he even had the insolence to beg her, by the memory of the
past they had shared together, to spare him. He assured her that she had
vastly overrated his profits, that fame meant far more cry than wo