“My dear boy,” remonstrated Jill in tones of apprehension, “do mind the lay figure. I am trying to finish this canvas with its sole aid,” pointing to the work that she had been engaged upon at his entry—a female figure recumbent on a night rainbow. “I can’t possibly employ a model, unless perhaps for a final sitting when I know that I shall see so many mistakes it will be a case of repainting it.”
Then St. John had a happy inspiration.
“Wouldn’t I do?” he asked in all good faith. “I’m bigger, of course; but I’d be better than a lay figure, and I don’t mind posing for you a bit.”
Jill broke into a laugh, the first laugh of thorough enjoyment that she had had for days.
“Ye gods!” she cried, “what next I wonder?” Then she got up and put her two arms about his neck.
“Dear old boy,” she said gratefully, “I believe you’d stand on your head if I wanted you to. But no, dear, I won’t pose you as ‘The Shepherd’s Delight,’ I’m sore afraid you wouldn’t do at all.”
Well the end of it all was that Jill absolutely refused to marry St. John on the understanding that they should pick up a precarious livelihood by their combined artistic efforts, though she was quite willing that he should speak to his father again on the subject if he deemed it of any use. She also thought that Miss Bolton should be apprised of what had taken place, and for the rest things would go on just as usual, only he would attend the Art School again, and, as he himself stipulated, pop in as often as he chose. Then Jill went and put her hat on at his request, and they strolled out to lunch somewhere, and afterwards spent the rest of the day as they liked, which wasn’t among pictures as one would have imagined from two such lovers of art. In the first place St. John drove to a jewellers and placed a handsome solitaire ring on the third finger of Jill’s left hand, then they attended a matinée at one of the theatres, and in the evening he took her to Frascatti’s to dinner. There were several men there whom he knew and saluted in passing. They bowed back and stared hard at the dowdy little girl he escorted, wondering where he had unearthed her, and why? That night Jill tasted champagne for the first time, and its effect upon her spirits was decidedly exhilarating. She liked champagne, she said, and St. John laughed at the naïveté of both manner and remark. When he asked her where she would like to finish up the evening she suggested a Music Hall; for there one could talk while the performance was going on. So they drove to Shaftsbury Avenue, and St. John got one of the comfortable little curtained boxes at the Palace where one can enjoy the stage if one wishes to, or sit back and not pay any attention to it at all. Jill liked the Living Pictures best. She almost forgot in the delight of watching that they were actually animate and not marvellously painted canvasses by some master hand. But St. John rather spoiled the effect by remarking that they were ‘leggy,’ whereat she told him that he was horrid; nevertheless she noticed how very quietly the house received these artistic representations; but it was the quietness of appreciation had she known it—the appreciation which enjoys, yet with a very common mock modesty fears to be detected enjoying. Jill glanced at her lover as he sat back watching her instead of the stage with a smile of quiet amusement on his face.
“They are lovely, Jack,” she said. “I should like to carry them all home in reality as I shall in my mind’s eye. But this is the wrong audience to exhibit such things to.”
And St. John agreed with her, though he was by no means certain as to the soundness of her logic, but he would have agreed to anything just then; he was in the idiotic, inconsequent stage of love sickness, and had got it fairly badly.
When the Music Hall was over he suggested a late supper somewhere, but Jill was firm in her refusal; so they drove straight to her lodgings where St. John alighted and opened the door for her, and embraced her several times in the dirty passage before he finally allowed her to shut him out and go on up to her room. And that night she fell asleep with her cheek pressed to the diamond ring, and a smile of perfect happiness parting her lips.