“Exactly. She leaves them, and us, cloyed with love in a cottage. I repeat, the artist’s model marries the artist because Madala Grey didn’t. It’s the merest shadow of a solution as yet, but—isn’t that a living portrait in _The Resting-place_? Oh, I know it by heart— “Maybe it was his height that gave you the impression, less of weakness than of vagueness, as if his high forehead touched cloud-land, and were obscured by dreams; for his cold eyes guarded his mind from you, and his dark beard hid his mouth.” “You _do_ know it by heart!” said Miss Howe. “Of course I know it by heart. It was the first clue. Can anybody read those lines without recognizing him?” The Baxter girl persisted— “But I don’t see it. Oh, of course it is like him—but because she borrowed his face, the story needn’t be about him. Why couldn’t she just imagine the story? If she was a genius?” “That remains the point,” said Mr. Flood. “She was,” insisted Anita stubbornly. Miss Howe smiled and said nothing. He continued— “The mere fact that she was a genius would prevent such a descent into milk and sugar, unless she were money-making or love-sick.” The blonde lady spoke— “Just so! Love-sick—sick of love—savage with love—savaging her holy of holies. A parody. Lila’s right.” But Miss Howe shook her head. “No, no. I didn’t mean that sort of parody. Madala may have had her emotions, but she’d always be good-tempered about them. She’s laughing at herself in _The Resting-place_ as well as at us.” “But why do you cavil at it so?” said the Baxter girl slowly. “Only at its plain meaning. Grant the parody and——” “But why can’t you just read it as it stands? Why do you say sentimental? I—I liked it.” Anita took the book from her hand. “But, my dear child, _any_body can write this sort of thing. Where’s the passage the ladies’ papers rave about, where they have a day on the river together?” She whipped over the pages while I said to the Baxter girl— “What is it? What’s it about? What’s the plot?” “Oh, there isn’t any. That’s what they complain of. It’s just a little artist’s model who sits to an elderly, broken-down dreamer, and thinks him a god. The duke and door-mat touch. It’s just how two people fall in love and find it out. It’s as simple as A, B, C. But people ate it when it came out.” “Treacle, I tell you,” insisted Mr. Flood. Anita overheard him. “Exactly! Listen to this— ... and they landed at last in a meadow of brilliant, brook-fed grass. She had no words in which to say a thousand times ‘How beautiful!’ Words? She had never known a country June. She had never seen whole hedges clotted with bloom, she had never in all her life breathed the perfume of the may or heard a lark’s ecstasy. She had never—and to her simplicity there was no break in the chain of thought—she had never before been alone with him, unpaid, not his servant but his equal and companion. How should she have words?