“The father,” he cried, “is the bulwark of paradox. See that you never strive to take him by storm. He is of those who would undermine the Church while confessing to the priest. He clings to the old formulæ of honour that, in others, he pronounces out of date. He advocates free thought as a eunuch might advocate free love, without an idea of what it implies. His advance is all within his own ring-fence--round and round like a squirrel in its cage. He will go any distance you like there, only he must not be ousted from his patrimony. The world for all men thinks he, but his farm for Jack Lambertine. Popped into his pet seed-crusher, he would bleed a vat of oil. But he is an estimable husbandman; oh yes, he is that, certainly.” “He gives you a better character, it seems, than you him.” “Why, what have I said to his discredit? He has made the whole human race his debtor in one respect.” “What, for example?” “M. Murk, _mon ami_, he has produced a Théroigne.” Ned, paint-box in hand, presented himself at the lodge-door. A sound of low singing led him through a very lavender-blown passage to the rear of the cottage. Here he came upon Nicette in a little bricked dairy dashed cool with recent water. She was skimming cream from a broad pan with her fingers. The tips of these budded through the white, like nibs of rhubarb through melting snow. “Behold her as she stands!” said the intruder. “Here is the milk-washed Madonna for my picture.” He put down his box and approached the maid. She stood startled, her hands poised above their work. Ned took her by the wrists, and, conducting his captive with speechless decorum to a sink, pumped water over the sheathed buds till they flushed pink with the cold. “Now,” said he, “dry your hands on that jack-towel, Nicette, and we will get to work.” The girl’s eyes floated in a little backwater of tears. Crescents of hot colour showed under them on her cheek-bones. “Monsieur will make a jest of me,” she said, in a rather drowned whisper. “I will make a Madonna of you, Nicette, if you will pose yourself as I wish.” Her lips quivered. She looked down, twiddling her wet thumbs. “I am established at the chateau, Nicette. I am a friend of M. de St Denys, who would have me dispose of my time to my best entertainment.” “And that monsieur seeks of the poor lodge-keeper?” “Truly, for I am an artist above all things.” This cold fellow had a coaxing way with him. After not so long an interval he was busily at work, with the girl seated to his satisfaction. The sweet coolness of the dairy received, through a wide-flung window, the scent of innumerable flowers that thronged the little garden without. To look thereon was like gazing on the blazing square of a stage from the sequestered gloom of an auditorium. There was an orchestra, moreover, all made up of queer Æolian harmonics. “What is that voice, Nicette, that never ceases to moan and quarrel?” “It tells the wind, monsieur.”