She was porcelain but without anything of Meredith's "rogue." Because Peter was strong and burly the contrast of her appealing fragility attracted him all the more. Had she not been so perfectly proportioned her size would have been a defect; but now it was simple that her delicacy of colour and feature demanded that slightness and slenderness of build. Her hair was of so burning a red-gold that its colour gave her precisely the setting that she required. She seemed, as she sat there, a little helpless, and Peter fancied that she was wishing him to understand that she wanted friends who should assist her in rather a rough-and-tumble world. Just as she had once appealed to him to save Crumpet, so now she seemed to appeal for some far greater assistance.

Ah! how he could protect her! Peter thought.

Something in Peter's steady gaze seemed suddenly to surprise her. She stopped--the colour mounted into her cheeks--she bent down over the boy.

They were both of them supremely conscious of one another. There was a moment.... Then, as men feel, when some music that has held them ceases, they came, with a sense of breathlessness, back to Norah Monogue and her dim room.

Peter was conscious that Robin had watched them both. He almost, Peter thought, chuckled to himself, in his fat solemn way.

"Miss Rossiter," Norah Monogue said--and her voice seemed a long way away--"has just come back from Germany and has brought some wonderful photographs with her. She was going to show them to me when you came in--"

"Let me see them too, please," said Peter.

Robin was put on to the floor and he went slowly and with ceremony to an old brown china Toby that had his place on a little shelf by the door.

This Toby--his name was Nathaniel--was an old friend of Robin's. Robin sat on the floor in a corner and told Nathaniel the things about the world that he had noticed. Every now and again he paused for Nathaniel's reply; he was always waiting for him to speak, and the continued silence of a now ancient acquaintance had not shaken Robin's faith.... Robin forgot the rest of the company.

"Photographs?" said Peter.

"Yes. Germany. I have just been there." She looked up at him eagerly and then opened a portfolio that she had behind her chair and began to show them.

He bent gravely forward feeling that all of this was pretence of the most absurd kind and that she also knew that it was.

But they were very beautiful photographs--the most beautiful that he had ever seen, and as each, in its turn, was shown for a moment his eyes met hers and his mouth almost against his will, smiled. His hand too was very near the silk of her dress. If he moved it a very little more then they would touch. He felt that if that happened the room would immediately burst into flame, the air was so charged with the breathless tension; but he watched the little space of air between his fingers and the black silk and his hand did not move.

They were all very silent as she turned the photographs over and there were no sounds but the sharp crackling of the fire as it burst into little spurts of flame, the noise that her hand made on the silk of her dress as she turned each picture and the little mutterings of Robin in his corner as he talked to his Toby.

Peter had never seen anything like this photography. The man had used his medium as delicately as though he had drawn every line. Things stood out--castles, a hill, trees, running water, a shining road--and behind them there was darkness and mystery.

Suddenly Peter cried out:

"Oh! that!" he said. It was the photograph of a great statue standing on a hill that overlooked a river. That was all that could be seen--the background was dark and vague, it was the statue of a man who rode a lion. The lion was of enormous size and struggling to be free, but the man, naked, with his utmost energy, his back set, his arms stiff, had it in control, but only just in control ... his face was terrible in the agony of his struggle and that struggle had lasted for a great period of time ... but at length, when all but defeated, he had mastered his beast.

"Ah that!" Miss Rossiter held it up that Norah Monogue might see it better. "That is on a hill outside a little town in Bavaria. They put it up to a Herr Drexter who had done something, saved their town from riot I think. It's a fine thing, isn't it, and I think it so clever of them to have made him middle-aged with all the marks of the struggle about him--those scars, his face--so that you can see that it's all been tremendous--"

Peter spoke very slowly--"I'd give anything to see that!" he said.

"Well, it's in Bavaria; I wonder that it isn't better known. But funnily enough the people that were with me at the time didn't like it; it was only afterwards, when I showed them the photograph that they saw that there might have been ... aren't people funny?" she ended abruptly, appealing to him with a kind of freemasonry against the world.

But, still bending his brows upon it he said insistently--

"Tell me more about it--the place--everything--"

"There isn't really anything to tell; it's only a very ordinary, very beautiful, little German town. There are many orchards and this forest at the back of it and the river running through it--little cobbled streets and bridges over the river. And then, outside, this great statue on the hill--"

"Ah, but it's wonderful, that man's face--I'd like to go to that town--"

He felt perhaps that he was taking it all too seriously for he turned round and said laughing: "The boy's daft on lions--Robin, come and look at this lion--here's an animal for you."

The boy put down the Toby and walked slowly and solemnly toward them. He climbed on to Peter's knee and looked at the photograph: "Oh! it _is_ a lion!" he said at last, rubbing his fat finger on the surface of it to see of what material it was made. "Oh! for me!" he said at last in a shrill, excited voice and clutching on to it with one hand. "For me--to hang over my bed."

"No, old man," Peter answered, "it belongs to the lady here. She must take it away with her."

"Oh! but _I_ want it!" his eyes began to fill with tears.

Miss Rossiter bent down and kissed him. He looked at her distrustfully.

"I know now I'm not to have it," he said at last, eyeing her, "or you wouldn't have kissed me."

"Come on," said Peter, afraid of a scene, "the lady will show you the lion another day--meantime I think bed is the thing."

He mounted the boy on to his shoulder and turned round to Miss Rossiter to say "Good-bye." The photograph lay on the table between them--"I shan't forget that," he said.

"Oh! but you must come and see us one day. My mother will be delighted.

There are a lot more photographs at home. You must bring him out one day, Norah," she said turning to Miss Monogue.

If he had been a primitive member of society in the Stone Age he would at this point, have placed Robin carefully on the floor and have picked Miss Rossiter up and she should never again have left his care.

As it was he said, "I shall be delighted to come one day."

"We will talk about Cornwall--"

"And Germany."

His hand was burning hot when he gave it her--he knew that she was looking at his eyes.

He was abruptly conscious of Miss Monogue's voice behind him.

"I've read a quarter of the book, Peter."

He wondered as he turned to her how it could be possible to regard two women so differently. To be so sternly critical of one--her hair that was nearly down, a little ink on her thumb, her blouse that was unbuttoned--and of the other to see her all in a glory so that her whole body, for colour and light and beautiful silence, had no equal amongst the possessions of the earth or the wonders of heaven. Here there was a button undone, there there was a flaming fire.

"I won't say anything," Miss Monogue said, "until I've read more, but it's going to be extraordinarily good I think." What did he care about "Reuben Hallard?" What did that matter when he had Claire Elizabeth Rossiter in front of him.

And then he pulled himself up. It must matter. How delighted an hour ago those words would have made him.

"Oh! you think there's something in it?" he said.

"We'll wait," she answered, but her smile and the sparkle in her eyes showed what she thought. What a brick she was!

He turned round back to Miss Rossiter.

"My first book," he said laughing. "Of course we're excited--"

And then he was out of the room in a moment with Robin clutching his hair. He did not want to look at her again ... he had so wonderful a picture!

And as he left Robin in the heart of his family he heard him say--

"_Such_ a lion, Mother, a lady's got--with a man on it--a 'normous lion, and the man hasn't any clothes on, and his legs are all scratched...."