But Louie neither saw Billy nor heard his grumblings because the knife was not to hand. She was looking past Billy, past the easel with the study upon it, at the man who had entered. For one moment she was wondering that she had not always known, not only that he would come some day, but that he would come that day; the next moment she had told herself that she had always known that. Of her whole body, from the foot near the crochet to the last brown hair of her head, her lips were the only portion that did not receive him with a lightsome, quiet, fair, trusting smile. Absurd ever to have supposed that they would never meet! Wise to have known so perfectly what would happen when they did! What had happened? Oh, every particle of her seemed to sing to every other particle what had happened! Those pittings of her profession? Oh, there they went, washed out, all out, in the baptism of a look! Her fancies--those idle promises to pay drawn on a non-existent bank? Oh, they had gone, and here was payment itself, the solid, actual cash! She was suddenly rich. As she stood there, rich in seeing him, rich in being seen by him, every one of those worthless bills was honoured in full. She could have laughed at her past poverty. She could have cried aloud: "Jim, I'm here--look at me--no, not my eyes only----" And he too seemed to be as she had always known he would be--singled out, down to his very manner of wearing his clothes--among men. Stupid, that of all those times she had thought of him she had never once thought of him as in evening-dress! But that, in all this perfection, was only one more reciprocated perfection: she so--he so---- "Oh, Jim--_not_ my eyes only!" she well-nigh cried again. But the lion's eyes never moved from her own grey ones. "Right, Louie, I've finished," said Billy, looking up from his palette-scraping. And within herself she wailed: "Oh, _so_ soon? Must it be over already? Must I sit for men all these days, and then, when _my_ man comes----? Oh, a moment!... Well, he shall see me move--and I won't look at him--I'll tell myself--oh, just one more fancy!--that he isn't here." She descended from the throne and passed behind the screen.