‘Rahnee Thorne idealised!’ Gaston’s rejoinder was made with the unruffled temper that characterised him. ‘My clay infant has flesh upon her bones, and an infant’s face. Rahnee, though I love the child, is but a poor little wizened Bengalee, at her best.’ ‘Will the portrait of Rahnee’s mamma, the model you have on hand at The Bungalow, need to be idealised also?’ ‘Dinah, you should be magnanimous.’ And with a movement that in a less composed man might have been a shrug of the shoulders, Mr. Arbuthnot prepared to clean the clay from his hands. ‘A pretty woman--well, if you shake your head, an exceedingly beautiful woman--need never utter a sarcasm about a plain one.’ At the negative compliment a colour, soft as the pure pink veining of a shell cameo, stained Dinah’s face. Her breast throbbed. And all the time the speech, delicious in sound, signified nothing. Gaston had been engaged for days past to escort plain Mrs. Linda to the rose-show, and felt not the smallest temptation to break his engagement. Dinah must be magnanimous! Dinah’s husband, after two or three hours’ facile work on ‘Dodo’s Despair,’ needed relaxation, and would have it. ‘You ought to take me to the show, Geff,’ she pleaded, turning round half jestingly, half in earnest, to Geoffrey. ‘What would Linda Thorne, what would Gaston think, if I suddenly made my appearance among all the fine ladies of Guernsey?’ ‘Linda Thorne might have her own views,’ said Gaston. ‘When Dinah Arbuthnot shows her face, every fine lady, in Guernsey, or elsewhere, must be on the spot eclipsed.’ Whatever Dinah thought, Geff knew that a certain insincerity underlay the speech, and controlled a pungent remark with effort. The friendship of the Arbuthnot trio was never more sharply paradoxical than at this moment. CHAPTER XII YELLOW-BACKED NOVELS The June rose-show stands second only to Her Majesty’s Birthday among the big events of the Channel Islands’ calendar. By three o’clock the road between Petersport and the Arsenal plateau was filled with a growing stream of men and women. Simple rose lovers many of them, but some lovers of another kind. And some roses themselves! What buoyant young figures fluttered past the window whence Dinah Arbuthnot, shrouded from view, undreaming of her own future, watched the crowd! What ruddy fine complexions were here, what well-shapen noses and mouths, what dark Norman eyes! Why, you might scour half a dozen English counties before you could bring together as many handsome girls as would soon be within the Guernsey Arsenal’s four walls. Must not excuse be made--the thought was Dinah’s--for an artist who should long to stock his brain’s tablets with so much beauty, even though an idle tear or two, a little discontent in some one left at home, must be the price of his experience?