"_Michel_!" she cried imperatively from her post in the doorway,--Michael objected strongly to the harsher p.r.o.nunciation of his name; and the two seldom spoke English when alone. "Is it necessary to fire a salute before you will deign to be aware that one has come back?"

At that he turned quickly about, and treated her to a burlesque bow of apology.

"_Mais non, cherie_ . . . a thousand pardons! But it is no fault of mine that you have the footfall of a bird!"

She laughed in spite of herself.

"Keep those sort of speeches for Miss Mayhew. She may possibly believe them. It would be all the same if I had the footfall of an elephant!

Nothing short of siege-guns would distract your mind from that picture.

It has bewitched you."

"_Eh bien_! When it is complete it will be a masterpiece," he a.s.sured her loftily.

"No doubt! But, in the meanwhile, it may interest you to know that except for a genuine miracle, I should not be here at all."

"_Mon Dieu_! But what happened? Tell me."

Flinging aside palette and brushes, he caught her hands in his, and it cost her an effort to preserve her lightness of tone.

"Nothing blood-curdling, since you see me without bruise or scratch.

Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch of Indian corn'!"

Maurice frowned. "Don't be gruesome, Quita."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to be. I was only quoting that uncannily clever Kipling boy at Lah.o.r.e. Yorick and I were slithering over, just like the loathly Tertium Quid on the Mushobra Road; and there is plenty of Indian corn in the valley! I thought of it, all in a flash, and it wasn't enlivening, I a.s.sure you."

"That is enough," Maurice protested hastily. Tragedy oppressed him to the verge of annoyance. "But tell me--who was the knight-errant, that I may at least shake hands with him."

The blood tingled in Quita's cheeks, and she went quickly forward into the room.

"I doubt if you will want to do that when you know his name," she said.

"It was--Captain Lenox."

"_Nom de Dieu_! That fellow!" Michael flung out his hands with a dramatic gesture of despair. "What is he doing here, _par exemple_, instead of poking about among his glaciers? _Now_ I suppose he will not rest till he has taken you from me again."

The frank selfishness of the man's first thought was so characteristic that Quita smiled. But her smile had an edge to it.

"Set your mind at rest on that point," she said. "He is no more anxious to claim--his property, than I am to be claimed."

"Curse him! Did he dare to tell you so?"

Quita lifted her head; a spark of anger flashed in her eyes.

"You seem to forget that he is a gentleman, and--my husband." Then, recovering herself, she added more gently, "There are ways and ways of telling things, _mon cher_, and since I have relieved your anxiety, we need not mention him again. The subject is distasteful to me. Now, I want to see how you have got on with the masterpiece!"

She went to the easel; and Maurice, following, stood at her elbow antic.i.p.ating the sweet savour of praise. For the picture was a notable bit of work, daringly simple in colouring and design, yet arresting, convincing, alive.

It represented a young girl, with the promise of womanhood on her gravely sweet lips, and in the depths of her eyes, half-sitting upon the crossed rails of the verandah. An ivory-white dress of Indian silk fell in shimmering folds to her feet. A dawn of clear amber made a tender background to the dull gold of her hair. Trailing sprays of the rose that ran riot over the house drooped towards her; and a pine branch, striking in abruptly, made an effective splash of shadow in an atmosphere palpitating with the promise of fuller light. The only intense bit of colour in the picture was the violet blue of Elsie Mayhew's eyes--eyes that looked into you and through you to some dream-world unsullied by the disconcerting realities of life, which seemed only awaiting the given moment to rush in and dispel the dream.

For, as the sky gave promise of fuller light, so did the girl's spirit seem hovering on the verge of fuller knowledge.

Such at least was Quita's thought, as she stood silently appraising her brother's work; and it brought a contraction to her throat, a stinging sensation to her eyeb.a.l.l.s.

"I congratulate you, Michel," said she softly. "You have never done anything to equal that. It is more than a portrait. It is an interpretation, or will be, when it is complete. Her hopeless little 'b.u.t.ton Quail' of a mother won't understand it in the least, but Colonel Mayhew will. I wonder if you know yourself how much you have put into it?"

"I know that I have put some superlative workmanship into it," he answered, looking upon the creation of his hand and brains with critical grey-green eyes, curiously out of keeping with an ill-formed and unrestrained mouth.

"Indeed you have. The thing is full of atmosphere, and your flesh tints are worthy of Perugino. You mean to give it to her?"

"_Cela va sans dire_. She wants it as a present for her father."

"Why not hang it first, at Home?"

"Afterwards, perhaps. If she permits."

"It is a big gift, Michel. It would fetch a high price; and we need money."

Michael shrugged his shoulders with all an artist's scorn of "the common drudge."

"Since when have you turned commercialist, _pet.i.te soeur_? If it is a question of starving, I can always paint another. I do not sell this one, _voila tout_. If it were only mine, I would have five lines of Swinburne under it for t.i.tle. They express her to perfection. Listen--

'Her flower-soft lips were meek and pa.s.sionate, For love upon them like a shadow sat, Patient, a foreseen vision of sweet things, A dream with eyes fast shut and plumeless wings, That know not what man's love or life shall be.'"

On the last line his voice deepened to an impa.s.sioned tone that brought an anxious crease to Quita's forehead.

"I wonder which you are most in love with," she said on a forced note of lightness. "The girl herself, or your picture of her? Do you ever treat her to such rhapsodies in the flesh? They must be a little embarra.s.sing for a child of twenty!"

"Your 'child of twenty' is already very much a woman, and I have the right to say to her what I please."

"Not altogether, _mon ami_--unless----"

But Michael dismissed criticism as serenely as he dismissed consequences. The episode of the Countess was as though it had never been.

"I have no concern with 'unless.' Such uncomfortable words are wiped out of my vocabulary. They affect me like a false note in music."

Quita laughed. "No one knows that better than I do! But speaking simply as a woman, I know also that the man who opens our eyes to the pa.s.sionate side of things involves himself in a big moral responsibility. And even _you_ cannot shelve the moralities altogether."

"_Dela depend_. If the moralities hamper one's art, the shelf is the best place for them in my opinion."

His sister did not answer at once. Michael's confession of faith was not a matter to be lightly dismissed; for the simple reason that he lived up to it in so far as human inconsistency will allow any man to live up to his faith, however ign.o.ble.

"I sometimes wonder whether one's art really does gain by that form of freedom," she said thoughtfully, "or only--one's consuming egotism."

But the suggestion was rank heresy, and Michael would have none of it.

"Really, Quita, you are as enlivening as a Lenten service! Upon my soul, I'd sooner you turned vegetarian than developed a conscience!

But believe me, I am devoted to Miss Mayhew. She is enchanting. A wild rose, half-open, with the dew still on her petals.

Metaphorically, I am at her feet. Does that satisfy you, _ma belle_?"