“Do you really want to know, Winnie?” said Clytie. “Perhaps you'll be shocked. However, you'll have to know sooner or later: I am going to make a picture of him on my own account, just a little bit more fantastic than he is, and call him a--an--oh, dear! what shall I call him?” “An elf?” “Good gracious, no. What have I to do with elves and fairies and that sort of thing? He is the son of Cophetua--supposing the king had not married the beggar maid.” “Then why not the son of any other king?” “Why not, indeed?” said Clytie drily. “Or of any other beggar maid?” “Oh!” said Winifred, looking into the fire. And then after a pause: “What makes you think that?” “Did you see his mother? I did. Such a stupid-looking, red-faced woman. I think she said she was a charwoman by profession. There are generations of drudgery in her face, whereas in Jack's there is vigour and intelligence--something so different; he must have some better strain of blood in him than she and a husband of her class can have given him. Don't you think so, dear?” “He's a very pretty boy,” replied Winifred, “but, oh, he is so dirty and”--with a shudder--“so animal.” “Well, he fascinates me,” said Clytie meditatively. “I am going to paint one of my wildest pictures--all for my own self--and a bit for you if you like, Winnie.” Winnie accepted this tribute of affection with a little flush of pleasure, although Clytie's “own” pictures seldom gave her unqualified æsthetic delight, and turned her face towards Clytie, who laughed in her frank way. “Don't look at me with those great eyes of yours, child! You make me angry for you. They are just the sort of eyes that make women miserable. You must not trust in people like that, believe me.” “I trust them when they are good like you, dear.” “Oh, but you mustn't. Don't you know I am the wickedest girl going--always thinking of the most dreadful things? Look at the wall. How can you love anybody that can do these silly things?” She pointed to a series of grotesque charcoal caricatures on the studio wall. She had been dissatisfied a day or two back with a picture she had been engaged on for a month, and in a fit of wilfulness had daubed it out and then proceeded to make a cruel, fantastic travesty of it on the wall. “You wanted your tea, dear, just as you do now,” replied Winifred. This tea hour was Winifred's great delight. At home, on account of the children, they had to sit round the dining table and butter their own thick slices of bread and drink out of substantial breakfast cups. In the studio the girls had provided a dainty little afternoon tea equipage, and Mrs. Gurkins always cut thin bread and butter from a fancy loaf. Generally it was Winifred who poured out the tea, but to-day Clytie busied herself with the cups, thus making some slight amends, perhaps, for having shocked Winifred. Women are full of these odd feminine impulses, and other women understand them. Men don't.