Philip paused by the door. "Really, do you mean that?" he said. "And have you got time? I hear you always have more orders than you can ever get through." Evelyn tossed his head with a quick, petulant gesture. "You talk as if I was a tailor," he said. "But you suggest to me the advisability of my getting apprentices to paint the uninteresting people for me, and I will sign them. That would satisfy a lot of them. Yes, I have more than I can do. But I could do Miss Ellington remarkably well. Shall I ask her to sit for me?" "That would be rather original, the first time you saw her." "A good reason for doing it," said Evelyn, hastily drinking another glass of port. "But it would certainly give her a good reason for saying 'No,'" remarked Philip. Madge, it appeared, did not play bridge; her mother, at any rate, said she did not, and Evelyn Dundas, rather to his satisfaction, cut out. That feat happily accomplished, he addressed himself to Madge. "Fancy a hermit playing bridge!" he said. "Does it not seem to you very inconsistent? Patience is the furthest he has any right to go." Madge got up. "Patience, both in cards and in real life, seems to me a very poor affair," she said. "How are we going to amuse ourselves while they play? Will you go out of the room while I think of something, and then you can come in and guess it?" An amendment occurred to Evelyn. "We might both go out," he said. "It is deliciously warm; just out on to the terrace." "And when we come in they can guess where we have been," said Madge. The night, as he had said, was deliciously warm, and the moon, a day or two only from full, shone with a very clear light. Below them lay the dim, huddled woods, and beyond, shining like a streak of silver, slept the Thames. Somewhere far away a train was panting along its iron road, and to the left scattered lights showed where Pangbourne stood. Odours of flowers were wafted from the beds, and pale-winged moths now and then crossed the illuminated spaces of light thrown by the drawing-room window on to the gravel. "Ah, what a pity to be indoors!" said the girl as they stepped out. "I suppose I must be of Gipsy blood; I always want to go somewhere." "Where particularly?" asked he. "That doesn't matter; the going is the point. If you asked me to go to the Black Hole of Calcutta I should probably say 'Yes.' What a pity we can't go on the river!" "Ah, let us do that!" said he. Madge laughed. "It would be quite unheard-of," she said. "I don't live in the New Forest like Mr. Merivale, and cast conventions aside. No, we will walk up and down a little, and then you shall go and play. Do you know, I am really so pleased to have met you I have admired your pictures so. Do you find it a bore having that sort of thing said to you?" Evelyn thought over this for a moment.