He laughed. "It's the truth," he said; "but to tell you the whole truth, the week before I left Rome, I was cursing my luck in having to leave it, and spent six hours of the day in grumbling."

"And the other six!"

"You are growing inquisitive, Eve! How would you like it if I asked how you have spent the time I have been away?"

"I don't know. I have gone on living." "And I have gone on living, too. It's a habit one gets into," he answered, laughing. "But we can't enter into comparisons of our methods of living to-night. It's too late. Good-night."

Five minutes later, Roland, returning to his hotel, found himself still humming the "Wanderer" to the accompaniment of the cab wheels all the way there.

CHAPTER IV.

"Daffodils,

Which come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."

Winter's Tale.

WELL, Roland, is that the extent of your preparations; tea and daffy-down-dillies?

He who propounded this question was a man of about five-and-thirty, Max Breynton by name, with a thin, finely-cut face, the delicacy of which was much veiled by a large beard.

He was engaged before his picture, working at it in an apparently lazy manner, with pipe in mouth, and now and then glancing round at his companion, Roland

Trench, who was arranging a great mass of yellow Lent lilies in a queer pottery

vase.

"What do you want?" said Roland.

Hang these beggars! They won't stay where one sticks them," as an attempt to place the daffodils to his liking ended in failure, and he thrust them pell-mell into the vase.

"It doesn't seem to me your ideas are very extensive," answered Max, delicately manipulating ultramarine and white together on his palette, and disposing it in a series of dabs, growing small by degrees, preparatory to dashing at a line of sapphire blue sea.

One would think you had never had a girl or a woman in the studio before.”

Never," said Max, impressively. “I never had. What is more, I never mean to have."

"How about models? Oh, I forgot, you don't need them. That girl I had here this morning had a very poor opinion of our studio."

"No, I don't need them, thank Heaven." Max's tone was devout, and Roland did not see his face.

"You may thank Heaven," said Roland. "There was that girl this morning jabbering, I don't know what, about Smith, and Brown, and Jones, and what they were doing. What the devil do I want to know about Smith, and Brown, and Jones? If I want to learn about their work, I can go to their studios. As it was, I wanted to attend to my own, and wished her to sit and hold her tongue.'

"They are all alike," said Max, "she and the rest of her sex. Of course, old boy, I'm glad that Goring and his daughter are coming here to gaze at your immortal

work, but I never had a lady here to gush

over mine."

"Eve Goring won't gush."

Won't she?" said Max. "Well, I don't know that I don't prefer gush to a stony glare, and 'Ah! very nice.' I'm not sure, though; I'm not learned in feminine criticism."

"You must have the usual ruck of people here on picture Saturday?"

"Not if I knows it; not a soul, but a few fellows who really care. But all the same, I know the fuss that Dayrell and the rest of that lot make when ladies are coming to drink a dish of tea with them, with forced fruit and hothouse lilies, and I can't help thinking you are treating the young woman unhandsomely."

"Hang it, Max, don't class me with Dayrell and his set, confound them!"

"Amen," responded Max, to the last ejaculation.