"What a pity she paints so dreadfully ill! What a pity she paints at all! What difference, after all, does it make _what_ she does? She's so pretty and feminine!" She was a clinging, sweet creature, and the walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours of companionship with this lovely girl in the _atelier_, illumined, accentuated, and intensified Bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation of the spring in Paris. During Bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the studio a magic to which he was not insensitive. Whether or not it came with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of _nonchalance_ he was more and more charmed by his painter. The spell he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times completely in his view. For years Bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case of intent, _to love again_--to love anew! Neither of these statements is the correct way of putting it. He tried with good faith to prove himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his friends--susceptible; alas, he knew better! As he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her, shutting Idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth and position could of life and the world. He grew tender at the thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition. It fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts wandered as pilgrims whose feet stray back in the worn ways and find their own old footprints there, ... and after a few moments Miss Desprey was like to be farther away from his meditations than Centreville is from Paris, and the personality of the dream-woman was another. Once Miss Desprey's voice startled him out of such a reverie by bidding him, "_Please_ take the pose, Mr. Bulstrode!" As he laughed and apologized he caught her eyes fixed on him with, as he thought, a curious expression of affection and sympathy--indeed, tears sprang to them. She reddened and went furiously back to work. She was more personal that day than she had yet been. She seemed, after having surprised his absent-mindedness, to feel that she had a right to him--quite ordered him about, and was almost petulant in her exactions of his positions. Her work evidently advanced to her satisfaction.