He twisted the canvas around to get a better look at it and groped for his pipe, suddenly conscious of the fact that he had painted and that his model had sat steadily for an hour and a half without a rest.
"You poor child," he muttered with compunction, as he helped her down, "that's the penalty of being interesting."
"Oh, I'm so glad," she cried, "You can say nice things, can't you?"
"When I think of them," he laughed.
She stood before the canvas in breathless delight.
"Oh, do I look like that, Mr. Markham, like Psyche with the lamp? It's quite too wonderful for words. I'm a dream. I've never seen anything quite so flattering in my life. Oh, I'm so glad I came to you instead of to Teddy Vincent. You've made my poor nose quite straight—and yet it's my nose, too. How on earth did you do it? You're not going to work any more—?"
"No—" he laughed, "the head is done."
She sat in the chair he brought forward for her and Markham dropped on the divan near her and smoked. She gazed at the head for a while in rapturous silence.
"O Mr. Markham, will you ever forgive me for being so stupid last summer," she said at last, "about that upside-down painting? I've been so humiliated—"
"I'm not really a landscape man, you know," he said cheerfully by way of consolation, "and it was only a sketch."