'What?' exclaimed Hicks, with languid surprise and visibly deep pleasure. 'Mrs. Huston! I am delighted. When I left my studio and plunged into all this mist and gloom this afternoon, I never thought that both would be dispelled so suddenly.'

'Is it dispelled?' asked Mrs. Huston, glancing playfully towards the window.

'In here it is. But then,' he added, as he shook hands with Mrs. Wylie, 'there is never any mist or gloom in this room.'

With a pleasant laugh, as if deprecating his own folly, he turned to greet Brenda, who had stood near the mantelpiece with her gloved hand extended. Then his manner changed. Moreover, it was a distinctly advantageous alteration. One would have imagined, from the expression of his handsome but thoroughly weak face, that if there was anybody on earth whom he respected and admired, almost as much as he respected and admired William Hicks, that person was Brenda.

For her he had no neatly-turned pleasantry—no easy, infectious laugh.

'I did not know you were coming home, Mrs. Huston,' he said, turning again to that lady. Then his social training enabled him to detect unerringly that he might be on a dangerous trail, and with ready skill he turned aside. 'This is not the best time of year,' he continued, 'to return to your native shores. Personally I am rather disgusted with the shore in question, but we must surely hope for some more sunshine before we finally bid farewell to the orb of day for the winter. We poor artists are the chief sufferers, I am sure.'

'At all events,' put in Mrs. Wylie easily, 'you take it upon yourselves to grumble most. There is always something to displease you—the want of daylight, the scarcity of buyers, or the hopeless stupidity of the hanging-committee.'

'I think I confine my observations to the weather,' murmured Hicks, gazing sadly into the fire, towards which bourne Brenda's glance was also apparently directed, for she presently pressed the glowing coals down with the sole of her dainty boot, and quite lost the studied poesy of the artist's expression. 'I am, I think,' he continued humbly, 'independent of buyers and hanging-committees. I do not exhibit at Burlington House, and you know I never sell.'

'Indeed,' said Mrs. Huston, with slight interest, for the elder lady had turned away and was busy with her second cup of tea, which was almost cold.

'No,' answered Hicks, with the eagerness that comes to egotistical talkers when they are sure of a new listener. 'No. I don't care to enter into competition with men who depend more upon conventional training than natural talent. The Royal Academy is only a human institution, and, perhaps, it is only natural that their own students should be favoured before all others. I am not an Academy student, you know!'