"I'll be praising you all the long days of my life if you will," he said humbly, continuing to stand. "Sit down, then, while I put on my hat," she said carelessly, quite as she would have spoken to a messenger, and moved toward her bedroom door. "Please"--he took one step after her--"it's riot but your little brown gown would charm the birds off the bush,--and it's not that I'd be mentioning it or asking it for myself, but----" "No," said Jane, and her voice was as bright and dry as her eyes, "one could hardly fancy you asking anything for yourself." "I would not, indeed," he said, grateful for the exoneration, "but I'm wondering ... wouldn't you seem grander to the lad in a--a gayer frock, perhaps?" "Very possibly I would," said Jane, reasonably. "But I shall have to keep you waiting a little longer then." She went into the other room and shut the door slowly and softly to demonstrate the perfect control of her nerves, and proceeded to make her fourth toilet for the hour. She took her time and did her best, which was very good indeed when she put her mind to it, and she hummed a snatch of song all the while, just loud enough to carry to the study, but every time she met her shamed and furious eyes in the glass her face crisped into hotter flame and she stopped singing. She kept him waiting for twenty-five minutes, but his eyes silently acquitted her of having wasted her time. They set off at once, Jane agreeing pleasantly that it would be better to walk. Michael Daragh had never seen her more alert and alive to the things about her. Nothing escaped her darting glance,--the lyrical, first grass in the Square, the stolid and patient tiredness of an Italian crone on a bench, the pictorial quality of a hurdy-gurdy man, and yet, for all her chattiness, the smart young person beside him seemed leagues upon leagues away from him. He supposed, miserably, that she was aghast at him for this preposterous demand upon her, but he was not penitent; he would have done it again. His people's needs were to be met with anything he would buy, borrow, or beg for them, and this radiant creature's beauty and light were only given to her in trust, after all, to be dispensed and diffused. "You've the step of a gypsy boy," he said presently, "for all the foolish shoes you will be wearing. We're here now. 'Tis here he has his little hole of a studio." It was a decent enough place for working and living and Jane had no doubt whatever that Daragh paid the rent. Their host was discovered bending over a chafing dish which gave forth an arresting aroma. He was a sallow youth with quick hands and too-bright eyes and he spoke in nervous jerks. "How-do-you-do? How-do-you-do? Awfully good of you. Daragh says you are interested in drawings--just look round, will you? I'll have this mess ready in a minute. Daragh said he had to go up to town early, so we'll have a combination supper tea." He flew to test the coffee, sputtering in a percolator.