Morton laughed, the conversation paused, and the water-colour progressed. Suddenly Mildred said: 'What did you think of me the first time you saw me? What impression did I produce on you?' 'Do you want me to tell you, to tell you exactly?' 'Yes, indeed I do.' 'I don't think I can.' 'What was it?' Mildred asked in a low affectionate tone, and she leaned towards him in an intimate affectionate way. 'Well--you struck me as being a little dowdy.' 'Dowdy! I had a nice new frock on. I don't think I could have looked dowdy, and among the dreadful old rags that the girls wear here.' 'It had nothing to do with the clothes you wore. It was a little quiet, sedate air.' 'I wasn't in good spirits when I came down here.' 'No, you weren't. I thought you might be a bore.' 'But I haven't been that, have I?' 'No, I'm damned if you're that.' 'But what a charming sketch you're making. You take that ordinary common grey from the palette, and it becomes beautiful. If I were to take the very same tint, and put it on the paper, it would be mud.' Morton placed his sketch against a rock, and surveyed it from a little distance. 'I don't call it bad, do you? I think I've got the sensation of the lonely lake. But the effect changes so rapidly. Those clouds are quite different from what they were just now. I never saw a finer sky, it is wonderful. It is splendid as a battle'... 'Write underneath it, "That night the sky was like a battle."' 'No, it would do for my sketch.' 'You think the suggestion would overpower the reality.... But it is a charming sketch. It will remind me of a charming day, of a very happy day.' She raised her eyes. The moment had come. He threw one arm round her, and raised her face with the other hand. She gave her lips easily, with a naturalness that surprised and deceived him. He might marry her, or she might be his mistress, he didn't know which, but he was quite sure that he liked her better than any woman he had seen for a long time. He had not known her a week, and she already absorbed his thoughts. And, during the drive home, he hardly saw the forest. Once a birch, whose faint leaves and branches dissolved in a glittering light, drew his thoughts away from Mildred. She lay upon his shoulder, his arm was affectionately around her, and, looking at him out of eyes whose brown seemed to soften in affection, she said: 'Elsie said you'd get round me.' 'What did she mean?' 'Well,' said Mildred, nestling a little closer, and laughing low, 'haven't you got round me?' Her playfulness enchanted her lover, and, when she discreetly sought his hand, he felt that he understood her account of Alfred's brutality. But her tenderness, in speaking of Ralph, quickened his jealousy. 'My violets lay under his hand, he must have died thinking of me.' 'But the woman who wrote to you, his mistress, she must have known all about his love for you. What did she say?'