The woman had finish. And that Joanna admired jealously. She had a kittenish charm too, though it was hardening a little, growing a thought brittle. Enviable looks she had, lovely hair and eyes. And under all there was a hard excitable sexuality, for which against her will Joanna was sensible of a certain respect. She believed Mrs. Tullis worlds more attractive to a man like Pender – or for that matter to any man – than she herself could ever hope to be. She felt crude by the side of Mrs. Tullis. Yet in that same instant she denied Mrs. Tullis’s claim to any attraction or beauty whatsoever. Nay, even while she sat trembling with primitive jealousy, she was possessed of the proud and dangerous knowledge of her own intrinsic superiority. She could not have named it, could not even examine into it. But there lay in her a gift for Pender which he could never receive or have received from this other woman. And in this she triumphed.

Within ten minutes, not merely jealousy, but ordinary interest had faded; and Joanna began to look once more at the drawings, now all collected in spite of Urquhart, on her lap.

And by degrees, as the voices of Mrs. Tullis and her hostess sounded alternately, now speaking of Pender’s enforced hasty return to London, now questioning Urquhart politely as to the exact subject of his thesis for a forthcoming fellowship, she found herself entering into the fantasy of the artist.

At first she had been taken aback by the occasional weakness and even faultiness of his drawing. Now, with her sight sharpened by decisive emotion, she realized only that she was entering the country of his desire, and that it was a country which she had longed all her life to visit.

It was a world of elegance passionately felt, of gallantry founded on a perfection of melancholy. Its beauty was full of farewells, at times resigned, at times defiant, but always exquisite. And before one could enter this world one had to learn the idiom of its creator. This was the more difficult, because, unlike so many modems, Pender had imposed on himself severe conventions. It seemed he had to work in fetters. Joanna discovered that he was least sure of himself when confronted by an actual sitter or a real landscape. With any attempt at realism the soul was apt to go out of his work.

When Mrs. Tullis left, Joanna hardly marked her going.

II

During the next week she worked little and carelessly, dividing her time between Panmure Crescent and Sans Souci. She found herself avoiding Carl Nilsson’s inquiring eye on the few occasions when she attended his class, and was thankful that he never persisted to the point of speech.