"It's an extraordinary thing," he began on one occasion. "But as I sit here fashioning your body out of wax, you yourself become every moment more and more of a spirit. I've a queer fancy working in my brain all the time that this is really you, here under my hands. I suppose it's the perpetual concentration on one object that puts everything else out of proportion. One thing, however, I do realize: you're making yourself every day more necessary to my life. Honestly, when you're not here, this studio is infernal. You seem to endow it with your presence, to infuse it with your personality. It's so romantic, you and I all alone on the tops of the houses, more alone than if we were on a beach in winter. I wish I could tell you the glorious satisfaction I feel all the time."
"Darling," she murmured drowsily.
"Sleepy girl, are you?"
Just then came a knock at the door, and Ronnie Walker looked in.
"Hullo, Ronnie," said Maurice, with a hint of ungraciousness in his tone.
"I say, old chap, would you think me an intrusive scoundrel if I made some drawings of Jenny?"
Maurice's annoyance at interruption was mollified by the pride of ownership.
"Rather not. Any time. Why not now?"
So Ronnie sat there, making little croquis of Jenny with soft outlines elusive as herself. After a while, with his sketch-book under his arm, he stole quietly from the room. The next day he came back with two water-colors, of which the first showed a room shadowy with dawn and Jenny fast asleep before a silver mirror, wrapped in a cloak of clouded blue satin. The second represented a bedroom darkened by jalousies faintly luminous with the morning light, when through one chink, glittering with motes, a narrow sunbeam made vivid her crimson lips.