"Hilda, I can almost forgive you." Odd stood staring before the canvas; he had put on his eye-glass. "Really this atones." "Isn't it wonderfully simple, wonderfully decorative?" said Katherine, "all those long, sleepy lines. My clever little Hilda!" "My clever, clever little Hilda!" Odd repeated, turning to look at the young artist. Her eyes met his with their wide, sweet gaze that said nothing. Hilda was evidently only capable of saying things on canvas. "It is lovely." "You like it really?" "I really think it is about as charming a picture as I have seen a woman do. So womanly too." Odd turned to Katherine, it was difficult not to merge Hilda in her art, not to talk about her talent as a thing apart from her personality: "She expresses herself, she doesn't imitate." "Perhaps that is rather unwomanly," laughed Katherine: "a crawling imitativeness seems unfortunately characteristic. Certainly Hilda has none of it. She has inspired me with hopes for my sex." "Really cleverer than Madame Morisot," said Odd, looking back to the canvas, "delightful as she is! She could touch a few notes surely, gracefully; Hilda has got hold of a chord. Yes, Hilda, you are an artist. Have you any others?" Hilda brought forward two. One was a small study of a branch of pink blossoms in a white porcelain vase; the other a woman in white standing at a window and looking out at the twilight. This last was, perhaps, the cleverest of the three; the lines of the woman's back, shoulder, _profil perdu_, astonishingly beautiful. "You are fond of dreams and shadows, aren't you?" "I haven't a very wide range, but one can only try to do the things one is fitted for. I like all sorts of pictures, but I like to paint demi-tints and twilights and soft lamplight effects." "'Car nous voulons la nuance encor-- pas la couleur, rien que la nuance,'" chanted Katharine. "Hilda lives in dreams and shadows, I think, Mr. Odd, so naturally she paints them. '_L'art c'est la nature, vue à travers un temperament_.' Excuse my spouting." "So your temperament is a stuff that dreams are made of. Well, Hilda, make as many as you can. Hello! is that another old friend I see?" On turning to Hilda he had caught sight of a dachshund--rather white about the muzzle, but very luminous and gentle of eye--stretching himself from a nap behind the little stove in the corner. He came toward them with a kindly wag of the tail. "Is this Palamon or Arcite?" A change came over Hilda's face. "That is Palamon; poor old Palamon. Arcite fulfilled his character by dying first." "And Darwin and Spencer?" "Dead, too; Spencer was run over."