“Cheers, Mary; back to work to-morrow,” he exclaimed, attacking his dessert with vigor. “I've been slacking shamefully, but Felicity is so wrapped up in that store of hers I can't get her half the time. Now she's contrite, and is going to sit to-morrow.” Mary, remembering his remark about McEwan, longed to say, “Why do you call that little vulgarian by her first name?” but retaliatory methods were impossible to her. She contented herself with asking if he would be home the next evening. “Why, yes, I expect so,” he answered, looking vague, “but don't absolutely count on me, Mary. I've been very good this week.” She saw that he was gone again. His return had been more in the body than the spirit, after all. If that had been wooed a little back to her it had winged away again at the first sound of the telephone. She told herself that it was only his work calling him, that he would have been equally eager over any other sitter. But she was not sure. “Brace up, Mary,” he called across at her, “you're not being deserted. Good heavens, I must work!” His impatient frown was gathering. She collected herself, smiled cheerfully, and rose, telling Lily they would have coffee in the sitting room. He spent the evening before the fire, smoking, and making thumbnail sketches on a piece of notepaper. She sang for some time, but without eliciting any comment from him. When they went up to bed he stopped at his own door. “I think I'll sleep alone to-night, dear. I want to be fresh to-morrow. Good night,” and he kissed her cheek. When she came down in the morning he had already gone. Lying on the sitting room table, where it had been placed by the careful Lily, lay the scrap of notepaper he had been scribbling on the night before. It was covered with tiny heads, and figures of mermaids, dancing nymphs, and dryads. All in face or figure suggested Felicity Berber. She laid it back on the table, dropping a heavy book over it. A little later, while she was giving Elliston his bath, it suddenly occurred to Mary that her husband had never once during his stay alluded to her manuscript, and never looked at the baby except when she had asked him to. She excused him to herself with the plea of his temperament, and his absorption in his art, but nevertheless her heart was sore. For the next few weeks Stefan came and went fitfully, announcing at one point that Miss Berber had ceased to pose for his fantastic study of her, called “The Nixie,” but had consented to sit for a portrait. “She's slippery--comes and goes, keeps me waiting interminably,” he complained. “I can never be sure of her, but she's a wonderful model.” “What do you do while you're waiting for her?” asked Mary, who could not imagine Stefan enduring with equanimity such a tax upon his patience. “Oh, there's tremendous work to be done on the Nixie still,” he answered. “It's only her part in it that is finished.” One evening he came home with a grievance.