"That's not my system," replied Jill, and the curt finality of tone and manner irritated him exceedingly. He felt like saying `Damn your system,' and only refrained by biting fiercely at his moustache, and jerking back his drawing-board with such vehemence that, coming into violent contact with the cast from which he had been working, and which stood on a box in the centre of the table, it upset the whole erection, and with a terrible crash Jill's favourite model was shivered into fragments. Jill, herself, flew into such a rage as baffles description, and, alas to have to record it! springing forward boxed St. John's ears. It was by no means a lady-like thing to do; but it seemed to occasion her some slight relief. She was positively quivering with passion, and stood glaring at the offender as though he had been guilty of a crime. St. John flushed crimson, and as if fearful of further assault dodged behind the model of the Venus de Medici. He could hardly be reproached with taking refuge behind a woman's petticoats; anyone knowing the figure could vouch for the impracticability of that; but he felt decidedly safer screened by the white limbs which had so scandalised his cousin, and betrayed no disposition to emerge again in a hurry; he was very big and Jill was very little but he most certainly felt afraid of her just then. "How clumsy of you!" she cried. "I wouldn't have had it happen for the world--I believe you did it on purpose." "I did not," he protested indignantly. "How can you say such a thing? I am as sorry as you can be that it happened." He was not though, and he knew it. He considered her vexation altogether disproportionate, and absurd to a degree verging on affectation. Had the damage been irreparable he could have understood her loss of self-control; but it was only a plaster cast which she must assuredly know that he would replace. Being a man he did not take sentiment into consideration at all, but merely thought her ill-tempered and ungovernable. "How dare you equal your sorrow to mine?" Jill demanded fiercely. "You can't know how I feel. I don't believe you care." Her lip trembled and she turned quickly away. Never had she looked so forlorn, so little, so shabby, he thought, as at that moment, and perhaps never in his life before had he felt so uncomfortable--such a brute. Vacating his position of safety he approached until he was close behind her where she stood with her back to the debris, and he saw that her hands were picking nervously at the paint-soiled apron. "Don't," he said, and his voice sounded strangely unlike his usual tones. "You make me feel such a beast. You know that I care--you must know it. I would rather anything had happened than have vexed you like this." "It doesn't matter," answered Jill a little unsteadily, and then one of the two big tears which had been welling slowly in her eyes fell with a splash upon the floor, and he started as though she had struck him a second time.