“Am I saved?” asked Joanna, with her broad, half-malicious smile. She might have been listening to a story about some one else, except that her heart felt like a fruit ripening on a south wall when the sun is strong.

“Not quite, perhaps. But one feels a beginning has been made. And now, Madame Joanna, if you would turn the head just a little – Na! Too much! I said a little – to the left. So, is good. For one moment, till the kettle shall boil for our tea.”

She sat quite still for him, keeping her head in the position he wanted, and sunning herself in his talk. There was something so genuine in the man that his interest was very sweet. It was good that he should think her worth while.

But Joanna’s too self-satisfied reverie was interrupted by the noise of quick steps in the passage which led from the street to the studio. Both quick, they were, and heavy-sounding like the steps of a child. And next moment the flap of the letter-box was vigorously rattled, and a high, gladsome voice called “Coo-ee!” through the slit.

Nilsson threw aside his pencil, and a smile of extraordinary pleasure spread over his ruddy face. He was a short man, beginning to get stout, and though the hair on his head was all gone grey, his beard and moustache still held the colour of bright rust. To Joanna at this moment he looked suddenly boyish.

“Now you shall meet my Phemie!” he exclaimed with delight. “She is the pearl of Glasgow. How glad I am that you should meet her!”

As he skipped across to the door, Joanna’s heart contracted in a spasm of mortification. What a fool she had been to imagine Nilsson especially interested in herself!

But with her first glance at the newcomer – a glance of keenest curiosity – some of hastily discarded complacence was reinstalled. How could Nilsson be so delighted with this silly, common little over-dressed person who came marching blithely into the room? Why, she spoke with a villainous South Side accent, and had a runaway chin!

“Miss Euphemia Pringle – Signora Rasponi!” sang out Nilsson. And as he took the kettle off the gas-ring for tea, he kept a sidelong eye on the meeting between the two young women.

When she had put her own firm, square little hand into Joanna’s, Phemie tilted back her face, and looked with eyes that brimmed with laughter from Joanna to her host.

“You never told me you were having a lady friend to tea!” she rallied him. “It’s a real shock to find I’m not the One and Only!”

Though Joanna at this thought her more than ever common, she could not help watching Nilsson’s visitor with that fascinated envy we feel when suddenly confronted with an embodiment of all the qualities in which we ourselves are lacking.