One story about that portrait Jane had heard discussed more than once in circles where both were known. Pauline Lister had come to the first sittings wearing her beautiful string of pearls, and Garth had painted them wonderfully, spending hours over the delicate perfecting of each separate gleaming drop. Suddenly one day he seized his palette-knife, scraped the whole necklace off the canvas with a stroke and, declared she must wear her rose-topazes in order to carry out his scheme of colour. She was wearing her rose-topazes when Jane saw the picture in the Academy, and very lovely they looked on the delicate whiteness of her neck. But people who had seen Garth's painting of the pearls maintained that that scrape of the palette-knife had destroyed work which would have been the talk of the year. And Pauline Lister, just after it had happened, was reported to have said, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders: "Schemes of colour are all very well. But he scraped my pearls off the canvas because some one who came in hummed a tune while looking at the picture. I would be obliged if people who walk around the studio while I am being painted will in future refrain from humming tunes. I don't want him to scoop off my topazes and call for my emeralds. Also I feel like offering a reward for the discovery of that tune. I want to know what it has to do with my scheme of colour, anyway." When Jane heard the story, she was spending a few days with the Brands in Wimpole Street. It was told at tea, in Lady Brand's pretty boudoir. The duchess's Concert, at which Garth had heard her sing THE ROSARY, was a thing of the past. Nearly a year had elapsed since their final parting, and this was the very first thought or word or sign of his remembrance, which directly or indirectly, had come her way. She could not doubt that the tune hummed had been THE ROSARY. "The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one, apart." She seemed to hear Garth's voice on the terrace, as she heard it in those first startled moments of realising the gift which was being laid at her feet--"I have learned to count pearls, beloved." Jane's heart was growing cold and frozen in its emptiness. This incident of the studio warmed and woke it for the moment, and with the waking came sharp pain. When the visitors had left, and Lady Brand had gone to the nursery, she walked over to the piano, sat down, and softly played the accompaniment of "The Rosary." The fine unexpected chords, full of discords working into harmony, seemed to suit her mood and her memories. Suddenly a voice behind her said: "Sing it, Jane." She turned quickly. The doctor had come in, and was lying back luxuriously in a large arm-chair at her elbow, his hands clasped behind his head. "Sing it, Jane," he said. "I can't, Deryck," she answered, still softly sounding the chords. "I have not sung for months." "What has been the matter--for months?"