“I’m glad you do, for—that’s my way. Please sit straight up in that chair, and look at me, so—yes, that’s it. I shan’t keep you in that pose long at a time, and I shan’t do much this morning, just rough in the head and figure if I can—if I’m in the mood. I never know whether I am or not till I begin to work.” “May I talk?” “Not for a few minutes—just look straight at me—so.” For some ten minutes he worked rapidly and surely, pausing every now and again to examine her face intently. Only in the eyes lay anything of character, and from them looked out, so he thought, not only the struggling soul he expected to see, but a rebellious discontent. “Now you can do what you like for a time, Mrs. West, and talk to me if you’ll be so good—but you mustn’t expect me to answer much—I’ll go on working.” She did not, however, leave the chair, but relaxing her upright attitude, sank back, and watched him steadily. “Have you known Phil long, Mr. Maddison?” she asked suddenly. “Yes, off and on, for years.” “Has he changed much since you first knew him?” “No, I don’t think so. He was always much the same.” “He seems to me to have changed a lot since—we were married. Or perhaps I knew nothing of him then—and am only getting to know him now. I suppose everybody knows all about me the minute they meet me. I know you won’t want to answer—but isn’t that so?” “It’s a common mistake to think that one can know much about anyone until one has known them intimately a long time—and then the much—isn’t much. I’ve sometimes thought—at least I used to do so—that I had put all a sitter’s character upon my canvas, but now I know better. The face tells everything, if only one can read all its lines.” “I wonder what you read in my face?” “What I think I see there, I shall try to paint—and then, why, then, no one may be able to see in my painting what I have tried to put there.” “Not even I?” “Probably you least of all.” “Perhaps you’re right. I do fancy I don’t know much about myself. I used to think everybody liked me—” she hesitated and then turned toward the window, keeping silent for a time. “I suppose you look at people’s faces in quite a different way to what other people do, Mr. Maddison?” she said after a while. “At any rate I think I do. If a face seems to have a story to tell, I like to read it. But most faces are masks to empty heads.” She again kept silent, then stood up. “May I come and see how you’re getting on?” “Not yet, please—I’d rather you waited until I’ve finished; I can’t work if I’m watched.” She wandered aimlessly about the room, her thoughts evidently intent upon something of which she desired but hesitated to speak. “Is Alice Lane’s face a mask to an empty head?” she asked suddenly, looking at him keenly. The question startled him, and he hesitated how he should answer it, making absorption in his work his excuse for not immediately replying. “Miss Lane’s—eh? Oh—no, I should say she has a very decided character.”