"It has taken you long, Miss Gray. I nearly sent Simpson up, to find out what had happened."
"I am glad you did not do that, Mr. Dalmain. Simpson would have found me weeping on the studio floor; and to ask his assistance under those circumstances, would have been more humbling than inquiring after the fly in the soup!"
Garth turned quickly in his chair. The artist-ear had caught the tone which meant comprehension of his work.
"Weeping!" he said. "Why?"
"Because," answered Nurse Rosemary, "I have been entranced. These pictures are so exquisite. They stir one's deepest depths. And yet they are so pathetic—ah, SO pathetic; because you have made a plain woman, beautiful."
Garth rose to his feet, and turned upon her a face which would have blazed, had it not been sightless.
"A WHAT?" he exclaimed.
"A plain woman," repeated Nurse Rosemary, quietly. "Surely you realised your model to be that. And therein lies the wonder of the pictures. You have so beautified her by wifehood, and glorified her by motherhood, that the longer one looks the more one forgets her plainness; seeing her as loving and loved; lovable, and therefore lovely. It is a triumph of art."
Garth sat down, his hands clasped before him.
"It is a triumph of truth," he said. "I painted what I saw."