"We could get married, and I could come and live here," he suggested brilliantly, "and we could work together; that would be jolly."

Jill smiled at this proposal but shook her head decisively.

"It's no good; it wouldn't answer," she said. "We should fight dreadfully in a month, and then the models would get smashed. And you'd never earn anything at painting, you know; your pictures always require explaining, and your figures are atrocious. I can't think why you will persist in going in for the human form divine; it's most difficult; for any fool can see when a figure's out of drawing except the one who draws it, and you never will learn that green isn't a becoming tint for flesh even in the deep shadows."

St. John heaved a sigh which seemed to proceed from the bottom of his boots. He was too genuinely despondent to resent her slighting criticism of his abilities, or too well aware of its truth perhaps. He rose impatiently, and walked restlessly up and down trying to think.

Jill watched him, her own brows knit in a hopeless attempt to solve the difficulty.

"This is a pretty kettle of fish," he exclaimed swinging round so suddenly that he nearly upset the model. "I'm hanged if I see what we are to do."

"My dear boy," remonstrated Jill in tones of apprehension, "do mind the lay figure. I am trying to finish this canvas with its sole aid,"

pointing to the work that she had been engaged upon at his entry--a female figure rec.u.mbent on a night rainbow. "I can't possibly employ a model, unless perhaps for a final sitting when I know that I shall see so many mistakes it will be a case of repainting it."

Then St. John had a happy inspiration.

"Wouldn't I do?" he asked in all good faith. "I'm bigger, of course; but I'd be better than a lay figure, and I don't mind posing for you a bit."

Jill broke into a laugh, the first laugh of thorough enjoyment that she had had for days.

"Ye G.o.ds!" she cried, "what next I wonder?" Then she got up and put her two arms about his neck.

"Dear old boy," she said gratefully, "I believe you'd stand on your head if I wanted you to. But no, dear, I won't pose you as 'The Shepherd's Delight,' I'm sore afraid you wouldn't do at all."

Well the end of it all was that Jill absolutely refused to marry St.

John on the understanding that they should pick up a precarious livelihood by their combined artistic efforts, though she was quite willing that he should speak to his father again on the subject if he deemed it of any use. She also thought that Miss Bolton should be apprised of what had taken place, and for the rest things would go on just as usual, only he would attend the Art School again, and, as he himself stipulated, pop in as often as he chose. Then Jill went and put her hat on at his request, and they strolled out to lunch somewhere, and afterwards spent the rest of the day as they liked, which wasn't among pictures as one would have imagined from two such lovers of art. In the first place St. John drove to a jewellers and placed a handsome solitaire ring on the third finger of Jill's left hand, then they attended a matinee at one of the theatres, and in the evening he took her to Frascatti's to dinner. There were several men there whom he knew and saluted in pa.s.sing. They bowed back and stared hard at the dowdy little girl he escorted, wondering where he had unearthed her, and why?

That night Jill tasted champagne for the first time, and its effect upon her spirits was decidedly exhilarating. She liked champagne, she said, and St. John laughed at the naivete of both manner and remark. When he asked her where she would like to finish up the evening she suggested a Music Hall; for there one could talk while the performance was going on.

So they drove to Shaftsbury Avenue, and St. John got one of the comfortable little curtained boxes at the Palace where one can enjoy the stage if one wishes to, or sit back and not pay any attention to it at all. Jill liked the Living Pictures best. She almost forgot in the delight of watching that they were actually animate and not marvellously painted canva.s.ses by some master hand. But St. John rather spoiled the effect by remarking that they were 'leggy,' whereat she told him that he was horrid; nevertheless she noticed how very quietly the house received these artistic representations; but it was the quietness of appreciation had she known it--the appreciation which enjoys, yet with a very common mock modesty fears to be detected enjoying. Jill glanced at her lover as he sat back watching her instead of the stage with a smile of quiet amus.e.m.e.nt on his face.

"They are lovely, Jack," she said. "I should like to carry them all home in reality as I shall in my mind's eye. But this is the wrong audience to exhibit such things to."

And St. John agreed with her, though he was by no means certain as to the soundness of her logic, but he would have agreed to anything just then; he was in the idiotic, inconsequent stage of love sickness, and had got it fairly badly.

When the Music Hall was over he suggested a late supper somewhere, but Jill was firm in her refusal; so they drove straight to her lodgings where St. John alighted and opened the door for her, and embraced her several times in the dirty pa.s.sage before he finally allowed her to shut him out and go on up to her room. And that night she fell asleep with her cheek pressed to the diamond ring, and a smile of perfect happiness parting her lips.

The next morning Jill went to work on the sachets again, though it was with the utmost difficulty that she managed to concentrate her thoughts upon anything at all save Jack and the new ring. As it was, her ideas kept wandering, and she caught herself every now and again breaking off into song--s.n.a.t.c.hes of Music Hall choruses that she had heard the night before. And then in the midst of it in walked St. John, and seeing what she was doing he took the satin away from her in his masterful fashion, and crumpled it up in his hands before her horrified gaze.

"You said that the smirking idiot who gave you these to do made love to you," he said. "I won't brook any oily rivals of that description."

Jill laughed. She rather enjoyed the idea of his being jealous.

"I thought you said that that was a hallucination," she retorted. "I was almost prepared to believe you and to think that the next time he chucked me under the chin, or put his arm round my waist that it was only my vivid imagination."

"He did that?" cried St. John fiercely.

"Oh, dear! yes; several times."

"Give me his address," commanded her lover. "I'll stop his love-making propensities. Where does this greasy Lothario hang out?"

But Jill was too discreet to say.

"I forget," she answered lamely; "I never was good at locality. Don't look so savage, Jack; he only chucked me under the chin once, and I washed my face well directly I got back, indeed I did; I scrubbed so hard that I rubbed the skin off, I remember, and it was sore for two days."

"You ought to have returned the work at once," grumbled St. John. "I am surprised at your taking it after that."

"Surprised!" she repeated. "You wouldn't have been so astonished had you lived for a few days on a stale crust, and expected to dine the next off the crumbs if by good luck there happened to be any crumbs left."

"Oh! Jill," he exclaimed, "I'm a brute dear. Has it ever been as bad as that, my poor little girl?"

Jill nodded affirmatively, and then let her head recline contentedly against his shoulder, glad to nestle within the comforting security of his strong arms, and feel that there she could find both shelter and defence.

"Have you told your father yet?" she asked a little nervously.

"No, dear," he answered. Then added quickly, "I will some time to-day, though."

"Yes," she said, "don't put it off any longer; I think that he ought to know; and yet I feel somehow that his knowing will put an end to all this pleasant fooling. Oh! Jack, I'm such a horrid little coward, I know I am."

She lifted her face, and he saw that she was laughing even though the tears stood in her eyes.

"If you feel like that," he said tenderly, kissing the upturned face, "why not get married first and tell him afterwards?"

"Oh! Jack, fie," she cried; "you are turning coward too."

"Not I," he contradicted stoutly, then added with a smile, "I think I am though; I'm so terribly afraid of your slipping through my fingers, you eel."

"Oh, you dear!" whispered Jill softly. "It _is_ nice to have someone wanting you so badly as all that. I won't slip through though; I am far too comfortable where I am."

CHAPTER TEN.

The following day, St. John entered the studio with a face the gravity of which boded no good for their plans, Jill feared. She knew at once that his father had refused to countenance the match, and although she had not dared to hope for his sanction, the knowledge that he had positively denied it came upon her with a sense of shock. Not for one moment did she think of resenting his objection, nor of questioning his right to forbid the marriage, she just crept within the shelter of St.

John's arms and stayed there, her face, with its flush of mortification, hidden against his breast.

"The governor's a silly old fool," St. John exclaimed savagely, thinking less, perhaps, of the girl's discomfort than his own personal grievances. "He's cut me off with nothing--at least five hundred pounds; he gave me a cheque for that amount before giving me the kick out."

"We won't take it," Jill cried wrathfully with the improvident contempt of the penniless, "We won't touch a farthing of it, will we?"

"Oh; yes, we will," he answered. "We'll get married on it in the first place, and then live on the rest for so long as it will last."

"I wouldn't get married on that five hundred pounds for anything," Jill said firmly.

"Well, I'm going to," he replied, "I'm going to see about it now. We'll go before a Registrar--much nicer than Church, you know, doesn't take so long. And then I'm going to invest the rest with a little capital that I have by me in a snug little business--haberdashery, or something of the kind; I'm not quite sure what, though I thought about nothing else all last night."

Jill gave a quiet laugh.

"My dear old boy," she said, "you must allow me a say in that matter if you please. I wouldn't let you have a haberdashery; I'd sooner that you were a pork butcher at once."

"No good," he answered. "I've thought of that too; but I couldn't kill a pig for love or money. I could measure out a yard or two of ribbon though, and sell worsted stockings to old women. I say, Jill, what do you think of a photographic studio?--That's the next best thing to art."

Jill had a fine contempt for photography, and said so, but St. John was rather taken with the new idea, and as he pointed out while he did the mechanical work she could paint portraits and enlargements, and have a kind of Art Gallery as well. He spoke with a cheery confidence that showed that he fully expected her to fall in with his plan immediately and be struck as he was with the brilliance of the idea. But for once Jill's spirit seemed to have deserted her, and she turned away with a catch in her voice, and quite a forlorn expression in the grey eyes which a moment ago had been smiling into his.