Then they were silent again. Roland walked backwards and forwards, brush and palette in hand, looking at his model and at his canvas. Effie stood beside the picture, watching it grow. To one who cannot paint, the growth of a portrait on the canvas is a kind of magic. The bare outline and shape of head and face, the colour of the eyes, the curve of the neck, the lines of the lips--anyone might draw these. But to transfer to the canvas the very soul that lies beneath the features--that, if you please, is different. Oh! How does the painter catch the soul of the man and show it in his face? One must be oneself an artist of some kind even to appreciate the greatness of the portrait painter. 'When this picture is finished,' said Armorel, 'there will be nothing to keep me in London; and we will go then.' 'At the very beginning of the season?' 'The season is nothing to me. My companion, Mrs. Elstree, who was to have launched me so beautifully into the very best society, turns out not to have any friends; so that there is no society for me, after all. Perhaps it is as well.' 'Will Mrs. Elstree go to Scilly with you?' asked Roland. 'No,' said Armorel, with decision. 'On Samson, at least, one needs no companion.' Again they relapsed into silence for a space. Conversation in the studio is fitful. 'I have a thing to talk over with you two,' she said. 'First, I thought it would be best to talk about it to you singly; but now I think that you should both hear the whole story, and so we can all three take counsel as to what is best.' 'Your head a little more--so.' Roland indicated the movement with his forefinger. 'That will do. Now pray go on, Armorel.' 'Once there was a man,' she began, as if she was telling a story to children--and, indeed, there is no better way ever found out of beginning a story--'a man who was, in no sense at all, and could never become, try as much as he could, an artist. He was, in fact, entirely devoid of the artistic faculty: he had no ear for music or for poetry, no eye for beauty of form or for colour, no hand for drawing, no brain to conceive: he was quite a prosaic person. Whether he was clever in things that do not require the artistic faculty, I do not know. I should hardly think he could be clever in anything. Perhaps he might be good at buying cheap and selling dear.' 'Won't you take five minutes' rest?' asked the painter; hardly listening at all to the beginning, which, as you see, promised very little in the way of amusement. There are, however, many ways by which the story-teller gets a grip of his hearer, and a dull beginning is not always the least effective. He put down his palette. 'You must be tired,' he said. 'Come and tell me what you think.' He looked thoughtfully at his picture. Armorel's poor little beginning of a story was slighted. 'You are satisfied, so far?' she asked. 'I will tell you when it is finished. Is the water quite right?'