"Wouldn't it be better for you not to talk?" He took her at her word, and soon beat a retreat. The others did not notice until he was gone; and Mrs. Keith drew her lips together. "At it again!" was written on her face. "Had she really not seen?" wondered Phyllys. CHAPTER XII COLIN AND HIS WORK COLIN did not appear next morning till breakfast was ended; and a cup of tea met his wants. Mrs. Keith was short in manner, as if still offended; but her vexation seemed powerless to ruffle him. Phyllys wondered whether he felt it more than he showed. She scanned him with interest. A gift to delve below the surface was hers, but as yet it had not been developed; and while he interested, he baffled her. Everything in this new world claimed attention: Colin not least. The contrast was great between his slender outlines and dilettante ease, and the muscular vigour of Giles. That she would like Colin she felt sure; not as she liked Giles, yet perhaps not less. The intellectual development of his face, the dreamy abstraction which seemed a part of himself, laid hold on her imagination. He resembled no one she had hitherto come across. It would be difficult, she thought, to view him with indifference. He might be liked or disliked; he could not be ignored. Her eyes were again and again drawn in his direction; and each time she found herself to be the object of his study. The night before he had seen a pretty girl in a neat frock, hazily indistinct. Things were apt to grow hazy, when overpowering headache had him in its grasp. He would often talk on, while unable to see across the room. To-day, though not at his best, he could use his faculties, and he recognised that Phyllys was out of the common. The rounded outlines of her slim figure, the flow of hair about her well-shaped head, the subtleties of moulding in cheek and chin, the sweet expressiveness of eyes half hidden under dense fringes, the changeful suggestions of light and shade—these found their way to his brain, touching him as artist, not as man. He scrutinised her, not as a girl of flesh and blood, but as a subject for statuary. Breakfast over, he strolled through the French window, and indulged in a cigarette; but when Mrs. Keith disappeared, Phyllys heard at her side the soft dragging voice, which at first she had supposed to mean physical weakness, but which she found to be habitual. "Will you come with me?" he said. On reaching the room, lately transformed into a studio, she gave one of her little gasps of pleasure. It appealed to her artistic instincts—hers by inheritance and early cultivation, not slain by ten years of systematic asphyxiation.