"I do want a model," he said. "I want one bad. By rights I should be painting over yonder,"--his gesture broadly signified Africa,--"but my market, the devil take it! is here. So I'm hunting a model. I have had plenty come who look the part (which you don't) even Arabs from a Wild West show; but I've yet to strike one who has any more imagination than a rabbit. I tell you this frankly because it's easy to see you're not the average model. That is why I asked you to wait. The model I'm looking for must work under certain of the Arab woman's restrictions. Out there"--his hand again swept the Dark Continent--"you never see her face, as you probably know. You glimpse her eyes, if they're not veiled; you try to read their story. If even the eyes are hidden, you find yourself attempting to read the draperies. Do you grasp my difficulty? I want some one who can express emotions not only with the eyes, but without them. Now you," he ended, with a note of enthusiasm, "you have the eyes. Don't tell me you haven't the rest." Jean laughed. "I won't if I can help it," she assured him. He caught up a costume which lay upon a low divan, and ransacked a heap of unframed canvases that leaned backs outward against the wall. "This sketch will give you a notion how the dress goes," he said, and carried his armful into the alcove. When she reëntered the studio, MacGregor was arranging a screen of a pattern Jean had never seen. "It was made from an old lattice," he explained, placing a chair for her behind it. "I picked it up in Kairwan. This little door swings in its original position. You are looking now from a window--a little more than ajar, so--from which generations of women, dressed as you are dressed, have watched an Arab street." He passed round to the front of the screen and studied her intently. "Eyes about there," he said, indicating a rose-water jar upon a low shelf. "Expression," he paused thoughtfully. "How shall I tell you what I want you to suggest from the lattice? Don't think of those women of the Orient. You can't truly conceive their life. Think of something nearer home. Imagine yourself in a convent--no, that won't do at all. Imagine yourself a prisoner, an innocent prisoner, peering through your grating at the world, longing--" "Wait," said Jean. She threw herself into his conception, closed her mental vision upon the studio and its trophies, erased the bustling city from her thoughts. She was again a resentful inmate of Cottage No. 6, lying in her cell-like room at twilight, while the woods called to her with a hundred tongues. There were flowers in the sheltered places; arbutus, violets-- "You've got it!" MacGregor's exultant voice brought her back. "You've got it! We'll go to work to-morrow at nine." "No admission, Mac?" asked a man's voice from the doorway. "I gave the regulation knock, but you seemed--" He stopped and gazed hard into the eyes which met his with answering wonder from the lattice.