"Frank's very much excited about it," said Margery, "which is always a good sign. I think he is satisfied."
"And when will it be finished?" asked Mrs. Greenock. "Your husband was so good as to tell me I might see it when it was done. I am looking forward to an intellectual as well as an artistic treat."
"It ought to be done to-morrow," said Margery. "He has been working very hard."
"A giant," murmured Mrs. Greenock—"a gigantic personality. Are you walking home? May I not accompany you a little way? I too have been hard at work to-day, and I have come out to get a breath of fresh air, and perhaps an idea or two."
Mrs. Greenock walked with Margery up to the lodge-gates, beguiling the tedium of the way with instructive discourse, and kept her several moments longer there, bidding her observe the exquisite glow in the western sky where the sun had already gone down.
Margery saw with annoyance that Mrs. Greenock had been quite right—the sun had already set, and the twilight was falling in darker and darker layers over the earth when she reached the house. She went quickly up the passage leading to the studio and opened the door.
Frank was standing on the other side of the room, with his face turned towards her, a piece of crumpled paper in his hands. The shadow cast from the window fell on the right side of his face, but in the dim light she could see that there was that expression of guilt and horror on it which she had seen there twice before.
"Why, Frank," she said, "you can't paint by this light!"
Something stirring at her elbow made her turn round quickly. Frank was sitting in a deep chair in the shadow, staring blankly before him.
She had mistaken the portrait for her husband.