“Don’t tell me that I never showed you my Penders!” she exclaimed. “Is it possible? Mr. Urquhart has just been looking at them. Pass the case, will you, Mr. Urquhart? Or will you sit on the sofa, Joanna?”

Hungering for a sight of Pender’s work, Joanna crossed to where Urquhart was, and sat down by him. As he handed her the uppermost picture, her eyes were so dizzied with excitement that she could scarcely see; but instinctively, with protective deceit, she held it from her in the approved attitude of the student.

Then gradually as her blood subsided and her eyes served her again, she became conscious of disappointment.

Could it be possible that he was only a fan painter? Certainly this that she held in her hand was the design for a fan!

To spare her the weight the drawings would have been upon her knees, Lawrence passed them to her one by one, and she resented his handling of them. More and more burningly she resented his presence, Mildred’s presence, Mildred’s running commentary of explanation and praise. If only she might be alone with Pender’s work!

“That now, that you are looking at!” cried Mildred pointing a forefinger. “It’s early work of course, and one can see that he was under the spell of Veronese. But even then it seems to me he had nothing to learn from Veronese himself in the matter of colour. Just see the red of that dress by the pillar in the fore-ground, with the blue, night sky behind these high-arched windows. Doesn’t it sing? And the composition! All these figures on a small fan: yet the whole is as broad and mellow as a fresco on the wall of a palace. The sense of space is marvellous.”

Under this fire of enthusiasm Joanna felt her every nerve frayed. But at the very point when she believed her endurance was at an end, the drawing-room door opened and Mrs. Tullis was announced.

As soon as she had touched pretty Mrs. Tullis’s hard hand, and heard her little hard laugh which sounded too often, Joanna blamed and despised her.