He felt like a husband in an old-fashioned problem play; and in a moment he had spoken like one. “Nad, where’ve you come from?” he broke out abruptly.

            “Why, the studio. It was my last sitting.”

            “People don’t sit for their portraits in the dark.”

            He saw a faint surprise in her eyes as she bent to the samovar. “No; I was not sitting all the time. Not for the last hour or more, I suppose.”

            She spoke as quietly as usual, yet he thought he caught a tremor of resentment in her voice. Against himself—or against the painter? But how he was letting his imagination run away with him! He sat down in his accustomed armchair, took the cup of tea she held out. He was determined to behave like a reasonable being, yet never had reason appeared to him so unrelated to reality. “Ah, well—I suppose you two had a lot of things to talk about. You rather fancy Svengaart, don’t you?”

            “Oh, yes; I like him very much. Do you know,” she asked earnestly, “how much he has made during his visit to America? It was of course in confidence that he told me. Two hundred thousand dollars. And he was rich before.”

            She spoke so solemnly that Targatt burst into a vague laugh. “Well, what of it? I don’t know that it showed much taste to brag to you about the way he skins his sitters. But it shows he didn’t make much of a sacrifice in painting you for nothing,” he said irritably.

            “No; I said to him he might have done you too.”

            “Me?” Targatt’s laugh redoubled. “Well, what did he say to that?”

            “Oh, he laughed as you are now laughing,” Nadeja rejoined. “But he says he will never marry—never.”

            Targatt put down his cup with a rattle. “Never marry?

            What the devil are you talking about? Who cares whether he marries, anyhow?” he gasped with a dry throat.

            “I do,” said Nadeja.

            There was a silence. Nadeja was lifting her tea-cup to her lips, and something in the calm tree movement reminded him of Svengaart’s outburst when he had seen her lift the pile of music. For the first time in his life Targatt seemed to himself to be looking at her; and he wondered if it would also be the last. He cleared his throat and tried to speak, to say something immense, magnanimous. “Well, if—”

            “No; it’s useless. He will hear nothing. I said to him: ‘You will never anywhere find such a plastik as Mouna’s’ …”

            “Mound’s?”

 

            She turned to him with a slight shrug. “Oh, my poor Jim, are you quite blind? Haven’t you seen how we have all been trying to make him want to marry Mouna? It will be almost my first failure, I think,” she concluded with a half-apologetic sigh.

            Targatt rested his chin on his hands and looked up at her. She looked tired, certainly, and older; too tired and old for any one still well under forty. And Mouna—why in God’s name should she be persecuting this man to marry Mouna? It was indecent, it was shocking, it was unbelievable… Yet not for a moment did he doubt the truth of what she said.

            “Mouna?” he could only repeat stupidly.

            “Well, you see, darling, we’re all a little anxious about Mouna. And I was so glad when Svengaart asked to paint me, because I thought: ‘Now’s my opportunity.’ But no, it was not to be.”

            Targatt drew a deep breath. He seemed to be inhaling some life-giving element, and it was with the most superficial severity that he said: “I don’t fancy this idea of your throwing your sister at men’s heads.”

            “No, it was no use,” Nadeja sighed, with her usual complete unawareness of any moral rebuke in his comment.

            Targatt stood up uneasily. “He wouldn’t have her at any price?”

            She shook her head sadly. “Foolish man!”

            Targatt went up to her and took her abruptly by the wrist.

            “Look at me, Nadeja—straight. Did he refuse her because he wanted vow?”

            She gave her light lift of the shoulders, and the rare colour flitted across her pale cheeks. “Isn’t it always the way of men? What they can’t get—”

            “Ah; so he’s been making love to you all this time, has he?”

            “But of course not, James. What he wished was to marry me. That is something quite different, is it not?”

            “Yes. I see.”

            Targatt had released her wrist and turned away.