His friend laughed. "Good Lord, Paul," he said, "a pretty sort of an agent you'll make! I was taking him to see his first job," he explained. "Old Morley wants a new roof, or something of that sort. But, of course, it doesn't matter. I was only rotting. We'll walk up with you, Ursula. That'll be the call, and on my own responsibility I'll invite you and my dear aunt in to bridge after dinner this very day." "So he's going to be Mr. Tressor's agent," said Ursula, busy over her painting materials. "Well," said Paul honestly and a little awkwardly, "it's only an excuse, I fear." "Paul's to prove himself a poet," said Manning, "and incidentally to settle the theory and content of revelation. Perhaps you'll help him." "Perhaps," said the girl serenely. "I hope so." They strolled back together, Manning in the middle, and it was Manning who did most of the talking. He chatted on, occasionally asking a question, but for the most part taking it for granted, apparently from experience, that Ursula would listen rather than speak. Paul, too, was not much included in the conversation, which concerned the Manning family and their friends and the girl's work. Thus he gathered from the bantering talk a good deal concerning her life here and in London, her art and her friends. It interested him profoundly. She was a new type altogether in his experience, one of which he had heard rumours, so to speak, at Claxted (where such strange goings-on were occasionally mentioned with scandalised horror), but which one would equally fail to find at Thurloe End or St. Mary's. Glancing past his friend from time to time, he watched her face. She turned her head but little, walking steadily and silently forward. But he noticed how she kept her eyes up, and how she had a trick of staring at a tree or a cloud or a beast in the lush pasture with a kind of untroubled wonder. It was easy to understand that here was an artist. They came then to the cottage and Paul was introduced to the mother and aunt. Ursula stood by while the usual things were said, and then turned to him. "Now, Mr. Kestern," she said, "will you come this way?" Her mother glanced up, but said nothing, and Paul, since no one else moved, followed her alone. She led the way upstairs and into a room over the porch, the room from which she had watched the rain. It was big and airy and light, half studio and half bedroom. The bed itself stood in an alcove, curtained with a vivid cretonne, blue in the main, on which rioted a bold design of orange and yellow and scarlet fruit, with apple-blossom and leaves. The curtain was half drawn, and the still Puritan Paul felt a little that he ought not to look that way. Ursula, quite obviously had no such views at all, for she crossed the room to the alcove, pulled the curtain yet further back, and sought for a portfolio that lay in a little recess near the head of the bed.