They entered the hall, and after some searching and fumbling he lighted one of the lamps. His companion shook herself out of her abstraction, and surveyed the place with affectionate interest. He was anxious she should take away with her a very definite impression of his future home, and threw open the various rooms, and led the way into them, as he held the lamp aloft. They went, too, below stairs, and here Lady Betty's eyes beheld the many evidences of domestic comfort and foresight that the Robinsons had established in these regions where they had reigned supreme. Her face lighted in comprehension, though her thought remained unexpressed. At last, after they had completely explored the rest of the house, he led the way up to the studio, and soon had it brilliantly illuminated. Lady Betty refused the chair he wheeled forward for her. She preferred to be moving about, to be examining everything at leisure--his bureau, his great oak worm-eaten armoires, his long, low chests on whose panels Gothic Church dignitaries stood solemnly in high relief, his wonderful easels, his model's throne, his draperies and costumes, and, so far as it was possible by this lamp-light, his old canvasses. She did not ask for Miss Robinson's portrait, as she knew it was at the house in Hampstead, and would remain there till its despatch to the Academy. She saw, however, the large picture; and although she did not love it (for she knew at what a cost it had been brought up to its present pitch, and felt, moreover, that it was too sensational a bid for public attention), she yet recognised that there was much excellence in it, and that it would probably bring him the actual success which was of importance even to genius. Her ideal for him, she repeated, would have been the most absolute "no compromise." "But I agree that we must take a strictly practical view of the situation. It is not really compromise," she added, "but only a surer grasping of the ideal in the future. The idealist who does not know when to make his concessions in practice is just the one who loses his ideal altogether, and never comes down from the realm of abstractions." He seized a favourable moment, whilst her attention was otherwise engaged, to fetch her own portrait from behind the screen and arrange it on one of the smaller easels. Then she turned with some curiosity to see what he had prepared for her, and gave a little cry of delight. "You are pleased with it?" he asked, gratified. "And touched--deeply," she answered. "You have chosen the setting with excellent judgment. But what pleases me most is the absolutely fresh impression I now get of the picture itself. Though I have seen it grow, and have lived with it every day, I am really seeing it for the first time. It is a beautiful piece of work--I speak for the moment as if I were entirely unconnected with it." She stood examining it in silence, and he watched her face and every shade of expression that declared itself.