And I can’t tell you how I should enjoy the change.”

            Targatt continued to stare. Murmurs of appreciation issued from his parched lips. He remembered now that Svengaart’s charge for a three-quarter-length was fifteen thousand dollars. And he wanted to do Nadeja full length for nothing! Only—Targatt reminded himself—the brute wanted to keep the picture. So where was the good? It would only make Nadeja needlessly conspicuous; and to give all those sittings for nothing… Well, it looked like sharp practice, somehow…

            “Of course, as I say, my wife would be immensely flattered; only she’s very busy—her family, social obligations and so on; I really can’t say…”

            Svengaart smiled. “In the course of a portrait I usually make a good many studies; some almost as finished as the final picture. If Mrs. Targatt cared to accept one—”

            Targatt flushed to the roots of his thinning hair. A Svengaart study over the drawing-room mantelpiece! (“Yes—nice thing of Nadeja, isn’t it? You’d know a Svengaart anywhere… It was his own idea; he insisted on doing her…”) Nadeja was just lifting a pile of music from the top of the grand piano. She was going to accompany Mouna, who had taken to singing. As she stood with lifted arms, profiled against the faint hues of the tapestried wall, the painter exclaimed: “There—there! I have it! Don’t you see now why I want to do her?”

            But Targatt, for the moment, could not speak. Secretly he thought Nadeja looked much as usual—only perhaps a little more tired; she had complained of a headache that morning. But his courage rose to the occasion. “Ah, my wife’s famous ‘lines’, eh? Well, well, I can’t promise—you’d better come over and try to persuade her yourself.”

            He was so dizzy with it that as he led Svengaart toward the piano the Bellamys’ parquet floor felt like glass under his unsteady feet.

              

 

 VII.
 
 

            Targatt’s rapture was acute but short-lived. Nadeja “done” by Axel Svengaart—he had measured the extent of it in a flash. He had stood aside and watched her with a deep smile of satisfaction while the light of wonder rose in her eyes; when she turned them on him for approval he had nodded his assent. Of course she must sit to the great man, his glance signalled back. He saw that Svengaart was amused at her having to ask her husband’s permission; but this only intensified Targatt’s satisfaction. They’d see, damn it, if his wife could be ordered about like a professional model! Perhaps the best moment was when, the next day, she said timidly: “But, Jim, have you thought about the price?” and he answered, his hands in his pockets, an easy smile on his lips: “There’s no price to think about. He’s doing you for the sake of your beautiful ‘lines’. And we’re to have a replica, free gratis. Did you know you had beautiful lines, old Nad?”

            She looked at him gravely for a moment. “I hadn’t thought about them for a long time,” she said.

            Targatt laughed and tapped her on the shoulder. What a child she was! But afterward it struck him that she had not been particularly surprised by the painter’s request. Perhaps she had always known she was paintable, as Svengaart called it. Perhaps—and here he felt a little chill run over him—perhaps Svengaart had spoken to her already, had come to an understanding with her before making his request to Targatt. The idea made Targatt surprisingly uncomfortable, and he reflected that it was the first occasion in their married life when he had suspected Nadeja of even the most innocent duplicity. And this, if it were true, could hardly be regarded as wholly innocent…

            Targatt shook the thought off impatiently. He was behaving like the fellow in “Pagliacci”. Really this associating with foreigners might end in turning a plain business man into an opera-singer! It was the day of the first sitting, and as he started for his office he called back gaily to Nadeja: “Well, so long! And don’t let that fellow turn your head.”

            He could not get much out of Nadeja about the sittings.