“You are firing my art as it has never been fired--you have given my craft all that it has lacked--yet your beauty, that exquisite thing over which you have no control, which is of no willing of yours, not even your own gift to yourself, is so subtle, so elusive, so wonderful, that all the colours of my art, all my knowledge of their use, cannot give more than a hint of that which you have, and without the asking. You are the living thing--I can at best but paint some poor suggestion of it. And when I have done, what is there in all my effort of the warmth and the sweetness, of the mystic fragrance of you?... Yet”--he played with her fingers--“yet,” he added, “you are giving me that inspiration that will set me above my fellows--the artist has never been anything of moment until fired by the flame of a great passion--and it may be that your beauty will make my art to glow and live.” “I am glad,” she said, “if I--have----” She hesitated prettily, and he kissed her fingers. She was really thinking that this was a doing of the thing handsomely, but young Nick Bellenden of the Guards talked less and made of loving a more exciting affair. After all, the embrace was chief part of the business--not this dandified talk. Thus they played at half-revealed travesties of passion; she keeping back much she would not have had him guess; he himself, perhaps, only half-realizing how little he allowed her glamour to interfere with his art until the light was gone and his craft at rest. The man had not even the excuse of jumping blood, the plea of hot-headedness. He never allowed his intrigues to interfere with his self-ordained task of setting a crown of contemporary fame upon his achievement.... It was dusk when he said inquiringly: “You’ll have some tea?” He rang the bell. She laughed gaily: “You have not turned on the light,” she said. He snapped the trigger of the electric switch, and the room burst into light. An old man-servant flung open the door and entered, bearing a glittering tea-service on a silver salver. As he came into view round the edge of the high screen, Pangbutt beckoned him towards the throne: “Set the tray by her ladyship, Dukes,” said he. The old butler set down the things on the throne at her feet. Lady Persimmon lolled back in her chair: “Nevertheless,” she said, “I should love, just for a little while, to live in Bohemia.” Pangbutt laughed. It had been borne in upon him that this gentle beauty had deft resource and a somewhat confirmed habit in steering awkward corners. He came back to argument: “But Bohemia, too, has its shabby side,” he said--“there is spite even in Bohemia.... I’m afraid I’m watering down some of your illusions, Lady Persimmon.” “Ah, it’s quite easy to see that _you_ were not long in Bohemia--not long enough to be infected with its home-sickness.” The butler passed stealthily out of the room on silent feet--and the catch on the door faintly clicked.