"You will bring home a picture which the Academy will not reject. I may be on the hanging-committee myself next year, in which case I promise you your landscape shall not be skied. Be sure there's human interest in your picture, by-the-bye. You paint the figure better than any landscape-painter I know; and mind you make good use of your power. That barefooted girl with the pitcher would not have crossed the brook so often if your crack landscape-painters didn't know the value of human interest. Let us have something fresher and stronger than the barefooted girl for Trafalgar Square next May." There was a walnut-wood davenport in the room, before which the painter seated himself. He took a cheque-book from one of the drawers, and wrote his cheque while he talked to Philip. "If you take that to my bankers they'll give you circular notes," he said; "and now good-night and good-bye. Start by the next boat, work your hardest, and look forward to next May. I mean you to be a great man." For the second time Philip grasped the great painter's hand, and that hearty pressure of palm to palm was the only expression which he gave to his gratitude. Nor did William Crawford give him any opportunity for grateful protestations. Before the young man had put the cheque into his pocket, his benefactor had returned to the drawing-room, where his guests were perpetually being surprised, and delighted, and unspeakably obliged by instrumental and vocal performances, during the progress of which they had appeared agreeably occupied by animated conversation. After putting the painter's cheque into his pocket, Philip went out into the garden, and paced slowly up and down a broad gravel-walk that led away from the house, and was over-shadowed by trellis-work and creeping plants. He wanted to linger just for a few minutes within the precincts of his paradise before he turned his back upon it for ever. "When I come back here _she_ will be married to that cub, and the mistress of some fine bran-new house in South Kensington or Tyburnia. And I can remember her walking by my side in this shaded alley, looking up in my face with grave earnest eyes, and pretending to be interested in my art. As if _she_ cared for art, or for any thing upon this earth except fine dresses and diamonds, and a three-hundred-guinea barouche in which to display herself when she drives in the park. If I painted a good picture, and made a success, would she be sorry then, I wonder?" After two or three rapid turns up and down this dark alley, where the sound of voices and music came to him through the open windows of Mr. Crawford's drawing-room, Philip went back to the house, and made his way through the crowded apartment. He would have left the Fountains without seeing Florence, but that young lady happened to be standing in his way to the door. She looked at him with a bright surprised face.