His knowledge of young girls, their instability, their hot and cold fits, their tempers, their fluctuating emotions, had been derived from books. So his theories on the subject were mainly worthless. But men who in after days rival neither Thackeray nor Balzac, do often, during one phase of their own experience, make keen enough guesses as to the source of female weakness. Geoffrey felt, with an instinct’s force, that Marjorie Bartrand’s blanched cheeks, her quivering lip, her passionate tones, were not the outcome of childish anger. He felt, with an instinct’s force, that the girl herself was a child no longer. Whither must this altered state of things tend? The question was complex; and Geoffrey willingly let it rest. As he walked the warm air was briar-scented, the birds murmured lazy midday nothings to each other amidst the lush hedges, the voice of Marjorie Bartrand filled his heart. What need to hope or fear for the future when one is twenty-four years old, and the actual living hour has a hold, delicious as this, upon the senses! Dinah and her husband were alone together, a quiet little picture of domestic still life, when Geff reached the hotel. A vine-trellised slip of courtyard lay outside the north window of Mrs. Arbuthnot’s sitting-room. Here, during the sunny forenoons, Gaston, picturesquely bloused, found it pleasant to work, when he was sufficiently in the vein to work at all. He wore his blouse, was in the vein, now. That which two days ago was a mass of rough clay, showed the airy outlines of a baby-girl, seated on a Brobdingnagian shell, one small foot neatly shoed and socked, the other clasped, naked, between her dimpled hands, in an attitude of inimitable, three-year-old dismay. ‘We label this work of genius “The Lost Shoe,” or “Dodo’s Despair,” or some equally pathetic and unhackneyed title,’ remarked the sculptor as Geff entered upon the scene. ‘We get our so many guineas for it, from our masters, and solicit further orders, do we not, Dinah?’ ‘You should have no master but your art,’ was Dinah’s answer. ‘That is easily said. My wife, as usual, Geff, is urging upon me to fulfil my mission, to deliver messages, to begin big and serious work. But I fancy I gauge my own depths justly. I have no messages whatever to deliver to anybody. These trickeries of Philistine sentiment,’ Gaston pointed with a shapely clay-stained hand to his model, ‘are always a success. In the first place, they draw tears from Mr. and Mrs. Prud’homme. In the second, the dealers approve them. What more can an artist’s heart desire?’ ‘Everything,’ replied Dinah. But she spoke in parenthesis, and under her breath. ‘Am I anatomical, Geoffrey? This must always be important, whether a man work with or without a mission. How about this bend in the left knee-joint? Are my muscles right?’