When the news came, Targatt gave his wife a pair of emerald ear-rings, and suggested that they should take their summer holiday in Paris.

            It was the same winter that New York was thrown into a flutter by the announcement that the famous portrait painter, Axel Svengaart, was coming over to “do” a chosen half-dozen sitters. Svengaart had never been to New York before, had always sworn that anybody who wanted to be painted by him must come to his studio at Oslo; but it suddenly struck him that the American background might give a fresh quality to his work, and after painting one lady getting out of her car in front of her husband’s motor-works, and Mrs. Guggins against the background of a spouting oil-well at Rapid Rise, he appeared in New York to organise a show of these sensational canvases. New York was ringing with the originality and audacity of this new experiment. After expecting to be “done” in the traditional setting of the Gothic library or the Quattro Cento salon, it was incredibly exciting to be portrayed literally surrounded by the acknowledged sources of one’s wealth; and the wife of a fabulously rich plumber was nearly persuaded to be done stepping out of her bath, in a luxury bathroom fitted with the latest ablutionary appliances.

            Fresh from these achievements, Axel Svengaart carried his Viking head and Parisian monocle from one New York drawing-room to another, gazing, appraising—even, though rarely, praising—but absolutely refusing to take another order, or to postpone by a single day the date of his sailing. “I’ve got it all here,” he said, touching first his brow and then his pocket; and the dealer who acted as his impresario let it be understood that even the most exaggerated offers would be rejected.

            Targatt had, of course, met the great man. In old days he would have been uncomfortably awed by the encounter; but now he could joke easily about the Gugginses, and even ask Svengaart if he had not been struck by his sister-in-law, who was Mrs. Guggins’s social secretary, and was about to marry Mr. Guggins’s Paris representative.

            “Ah—the lovely Kouradjine; yes. She made us some delicious blinys,” Svengaart nodded approvingly; but Targatt saw with surprise that as a painter he was uninterested in Olga’s plastic possibilities.

            “Ah, well, I suppose you’ve had enough of us—I hear you’re off this week.”

            The painter dropped his monocle. “Yes, I’ve had enough.” It was after dinner, at the Bellamys’, and abruptly he seated himself on the sofa at Targatt’s side. “I don’t like your frozen food,” he pursued. “There’s only one thing that would make me put off my sailing.” He readjusted his monocle and looked straight at Targatt. “If you’ll give me the chance to paint Mrs. Targatt—oh, for that I’d wait another month.”

            Targatt stared at him, too surprised to answer. Nadeja—the great man wanted to paint Nadeja! The idea aroused so many conflicting considerations that his reply, when it came, was a stammer. “Why, really … this is a surprise … a great honour, of course…” A vision of Svengaart’s price for a mere head thrust itself hideously before his eyes. Svengaart, seeing him as it were encircled by millionaires, probably took him for a very rich man—was perhaps manoeuvring to extract an extra big offer from him. For what other inducement could there be to paint Nadeja? Targatt turned the question with a joke. “I suspect you’re confusing me with my brother-in-law Bellamy. He ought to have persuaded you to paint his wife. But I’m afraid my means wouldn’t allow …”

            The other interrupted him with an irritated gesture. “Please—my dear sir. I can never be ‘persuaded’ to do a portrait. And in the case of Mrs. Targatt I had no idea of selling you her picture. If I paint her, it would be for myself.”

            Targatt’s stare widened. “For yourself? You mean—you’d paint the picture just to keep it?” He gave an embarrassed laugh. “Nadeja would be enormously flattered, of course. But, between ourselves, would you mind telling me why you want to do her?”

            Svengaart stood up with a faint laugh. “Because she’s the only really pain table woman I’ve seen here. The lines are incomparable for a full-length.