At her wish, laughingly assented to by one who for his part had nobody to tell, the engagement was kept secret for the time being. Special care was taken that it should not be guessed at the school, where engagements were painfully common, and of a brazen character invariably. On the other hand, Sapphira's duenna (and she alone) was told outright, being tame enough to trust, and for reasons of obvious expediency besides. Her sleep it spoilt for many a summer's night; and a frightened, sorrowful look which would shadow her plain old face under the young man's eyes, now aglow with a fearful fervour, worried him also in the end; until, little as it mattered to him personally, the clandestine element began to interfere with his happiness by galling his self-respect. So one day as they sat together in Kensington Gardens, which were conveniently close to the flat, and talked over her approaching holiday (Sapphira was going home for August at least), Saumerez said impulsively, though with the exceeding tenderness which he could not separate from his lightest word to his mistress: "Dearest heart, if only your people knew!" "If only your picture were painted!" answered Sapphira. After which you can hardly need telling that he had already conceived a masterpiece, and talked it over with Sapphira, who had latterly become hotly impatient for its production. "Ah," he said, "don't hurry me over that! I didn't intend to touch it for years and years. Heaven knows I mean no reproach to you, dearest; yet if it wasn't for my love I wouldn't think of it even now. Oh, don't look like that! I am grateful to you--I am, indeed, for hurrying me up; I was just as likely to go to the other extreme. But you must give me till next spring, sweetheart, and then----" His eyes strayed far away into the cool, dark shadows beneath the trees, but in a flash came back to burn themselves into hers. "My picture's painted already," he said with a smile and a meaning stare of love and worship--"the best I shall ever do. I could never love anything I did as I love my poor libel on you! Oh, but if you knew how you watch over me all the time I am at work! If you knew how one good look at you gives me fresh heart, fresh hope, fresh energy when my own stock runs out! For it is you sometimes, though I made it. And yet, now I am with you, I see it is no more you than a smear of blue paint is the sky--my darling heart!"