“My good girl, you know nothing about John Carey, or you’d rule that out. Have you ever seen him? I thought not. And yet you _have_ seen him. All day. Every day. When you talk of the man in the street, whom do you mean? What utterly common-place face is in your mind? Shall I tell you what is in mine? John Carey. Ordinary! Ordinary! The apotheosis of the uninspired! Oh, I haven’t any words. Look for yourself.” She rummaged furiously in the half-opened desk and flung out a fading snapshot on a mount. “There he is! That’s the thing she married!” “What’s he doing in your holy of holies?” Mr. Flood’s eyes seemed to bore into her desk. Anita, still thrusting down the overflowing papers, answered coldly— “Madala sent it to Mother. She said that it wasn’t good enough but that it would give her an idea.” “It certainly gives one an idea,” said the blonde lady languorously. “And then she put in a post-script that it didn’t do him justice because the sun was in his eyes. Defiantly, as it were. Isn’t that significant? She’d never own to a mistake. Pride! She had the devil’s own pride. Look at the way she took her reviews! And in this case she would be bound to defend him. She’d defend anything she’d once taken under her wing.” “Well, you know,” drawled the blonde lady, her eyes on the photograph, “according to this he topped her by two inches. I don’t somehow see him _under_ Madala’s wing.” And then—“After all, there’s something rather fascinating in bone and muscle.” “Yes, and I don’t see,” the Baxter girl hurried into defiance, “honestly I don’t see, Miss Serle, why she shouldn’t have been in love with him. Of course, it’s not a clever face, but it’s good-tempered, and it’s good-looking, and there’s a twinkle. Madala loved a twinkle. And I don’t see——” Anita crushed her. “We’re discussing the standards of Madala Grey.” “That’s not the point either, Anita.” Mr. Flood would sometimes rouse himself to defend the Baxter girl. “You know something. You own to it. What do you know?” “Simply that she was in love with someone else. I’ve papers that prove it. Now it was either some man whom none of us know, whom for some reason she wouldn’t let us know, or——” she hesitated. Then she began again—“Mind you, I don’t commit myself, but—has the likeness never struck you? _Hugh Barrington_ in _The Resting-place_ and——?” Her eyes flickered towards Kent Rehan. Mr. Flood whistled. “Be careful, Anita.” “He?” Miss Howe laughed, but kindly. “He’s lost to the world. He’ll be worse than ever now.” “There!” Anita dropped upon the sentence like a hawk upon a heather bird. “You see! You say that! And yet you tell me there was nothing—nothing—between them? Didn’t she rave about him? his talents? his personality? his charm? And then she goes and writes the story of an artist’s model!” Miss Howe laughed again. “When a thing’s as obvious as that, it probably isn’t so. Besides, the artist’s model marries the artist.”