"Well, it seemed to affect you. You frowned and growled, and stared and bit the ends of your brushes. Am I going to be stuck up on a platform to be growled at and stared at? I don't think I could stand it; I should laugh." Evelyn nodded his head in strong approval. "That will be what I want," he said. "I will growl to any extent if it will make you laugh. I shall paint you laughing, laughing at all the ups and downs of the world. I promise you you shall laugh. With sad eyes, too," he added. "Did you know you had sad eyes?" Madge slightly entrenched herself at this. "I really haven't studied my own expression," she said. "Women are supposed to use mirrors a good deal, but they use them, I assure you, to see if their hair is tidy." "Your's never is quite," said he. "And it suits you admirably." Again the gravel sounded crisply below their feet, without the overscore of human voices. Then he spoke again. "And please accept my portrait of you as my wedding present to you--and Philip," he said with boyish abruptness. Madge for the moment was too utterly surprised to speak. "But, Mr. Dundas," she said at length, "I can't--I--how can I?" He laughed. "Well, I must send it to Philip, then," he said, "if you won't receive it. But--why should you not? You are going to marry my oldest friend. I can't send him an ivory toothbrush." This reassured her. "It is too kind of you," said she. "I had forgotten that. So send it to him." "Certainly. But help me to make it then as good as I can." "Tell me how?" she asked, feeling inexplicably uneasy. "Why, laugh," he said. "That is how I see you. You laugh so seldom, and you might laugh so often. Why don't you laugh oftener?" Then an impulse of simple honesty came to her. "Because I am usually bored," she said. "Ah, you really mustn't be bored while I am painting you," he said. "I could do nothing with it if you were bored. Besides, it would be so uncharacteristic." "How is that, when I am bored so often?" she asked. "Oh, it isn't the things we do often that are characteristic of us," said he. "It is the things we do eagerly, with intention." She laughed at this. "Then you are right," she said. "I am never eagerly bored. And to tell you the truth, I don't think I shall be bored when I sit to you. Ah, there is Philip. He does not see us; I wonder whether he will?" Philip's white-fronted figure had appeared at this moment at the French window leading out of the drawing-room, and his eyes, fresh from the bright light inside, were not yet focussed to the obscurity of the dusk. At that moment Madge found herself suddenly wishing that he would go back again. But as soon as she was conscious she wished that, she resolutely stifled the wish and called to him. "Evelyn there, too?" he asked. "Evelyn, you've got to go in and take my place." "And you will take mine," said he with just a shade of discontent in his voice. "No, my dear fellow," said Philip. "I shall take my own." He laughed.