"I am," she told Milly in her precise speech, "what you call the 'show wife.' I go to parties, to court--all rigged up,--you say rigged, no?--dressed then very grand with my jewels. And I have children, see!" She pointed to the healthy little Saratoffs playing in the garden. "My husband goes away on his business--makes long journeys. He amuses himself. When he comes back, I have a child,--_voilà_." She laughed and showed her white teeth. "But I have my vacations sometimes, too, like this." Milly thought that the Russian type of marriage must be much inferior to the American, at least the Chicago variety, where if there was any going away from home, it was usually the wife who went, and she confided this opinion to Jack, who said with a laugh:-- "Oh, you can never understand these foreigners. She's probably like every one else.... But I'd like to paint her and get that smile of hers." "Why don't you ask her?" "Perhaps I will one of these days." * * * * * The hotel gradually filled up. The great painter had come and with him his satellites, chiefly young American women, who "painted all over the place," as Bragdon put it. The long _table d'hôte_ under the plane trees was a cheerful if somewhat noisy occasion these summer nights, with the black, star-strewn canopy above. They all drank the bottled cider and talked pictures and joked and sang when so moved. Even if the spirit was somewhat cheaply effervescent, like the cider, there was plenty of talk, clashing of eager ideas, and Milly liked it even more than Bragdon. He seemed older than the other artists, perhaps because he was married and less given to idle chatter. The great man singled him out for companionship after the first week, and gave patronizing praise to his work. "You are still young," he said, with a sigh for his own sixty years. "Wait another ten years and you may find something to say." Jack, repeating these words to his wife, added,--"And where do you suppose we'd be if I should wait another ten years? On the street." Tell an American to wait ten years in order to have something to say! "He's jealous," Milly pronounced. "You're going to do something stunning this summer, I just know it." "How do you know it?" he asked teasingly. "Because we can't wait ten years!" "Um," the artist sighed, "I should think not." VIII THE PICTURE Just how it came about Milly never remembered, but in the weeks that followed it was arranged that Jack should do the Russian lady's portrait. Milly flattered herself at the time that she had produced this result. Madame Saratoff came rarely to the hotel after she was installed in her old _manoir_, but she often drove to the beach for her bath and took Milly home with her for luncheon. And Jack would join them late in the long afternoon for tea. On one of these occasions the affair was settled.