"Who knows? He was, perhaps, a savage. Yet he may have been tender-hearted. I hope so, if he is going to be fixed in bronze for the ages to stare at." "Did you," Becky asked, deliberately, "ever want to tie a man to a stake and build a fire under him?" He turned and stared at her. "My dear child, what ever put such an idea in your head?" "Well, did you?" He considered it. "There was a time in France when I wanted to do worse than that." "But that was war." "No, it was a brute in my own company. He broke the heart of a little girl that he met in Brittany. He--he--well he murdered her--dreams." "Perhaps he didn't know what he was doing." "He knew. Every man knows." "And you wanted to make him--suffer----" "Yes." She shivered. "Are all men like that?" "Like what?" "Cruel." "It can't be cruelty. It's a sense of justice." "I hope it is." She kept thinking about George rising dank and dripping from the fountain. She hated to think about it. So she changed the subject. "I thought you were painting." "I was. But the moor is fickle. Yesterday she billowed towards the south, all gray and blue. And last night the storm spoiled it; she is gorgeous and gay to-day, and I don't like her." "Oh, why not?" "She is too obvious. Anybody can paint a Persian carpet, but one can't put soul into a--carpet----" He was petulant. "I shall never paint the pictures I want to paint. Life is too short." "Life isn't short. Look at Grandfather. You will have forty years yet in which to paint." And now it was he who changed the subject, quickly, as if he were afraid of it. "My sister is coming to-morrow. I rather think you will like her." "Will she like me, that's more important." "She will love you, as I do, as everybody does, Becky." They had reached that point in ten days that he could say such things to her and win her smile. She did not believe in the least that he loved her. He always laughed when he said it. She liked him very much. She felt that the Admiral and Tristram and Archibald Cope were all of them the best of comrades. Except for Jane, she had had practically no feminine society since she came. And Jane was not especially inspiring, not like Tristram, who seemed to carry one's imagination back to Viking days. Cope was immensely enthusiastic about Tristram. "If I could paint figures as I want to," he said, "I'd do Tristram as 'The Islander.' One feels that he belongs here as inevitably as the moors or the sands or the sea. Perhaps it is he who ought to be in bronze on the bluff, instead of the Indian." "But he'd have to face the sea," said Becky. "Yes," Cope agreed, "he would. He loves it and his ancestors lived by it. I'll stick to my Indian and the moor." Becky gathered up her letters. "It is time for lunch, and Jane doesn't like to be kept waiting. Won't you lunch with us? Grandfather will be delighted." "I shall get to be a perpetual guest. I feel as if I were taking advantage of your hospitality."