But the day broke without her having won oblivion for a single minute.
CHAPTER XXXIX
EVIL, THAT GOOD MAY COME
The morning dawned radiantly clear, and hot to sultriness. Evarne dressed leisurely, and by nine o'clock, far from being at the studio, was still toying with her breakfast. Her magnificent health saved her from looking as exhausted as the sleepless night and the nerve-strain of the last few days would well have justified. Indeed, with a hectic flush upon her cheek, and eyes supernaturally brilliant, any untrained observer would have adjudged her a fit model for the goddess Hygeia herself.
"Do try and eat somethin'," persuaded Philia anxiously. "Goodness knows when you last 'ad a decent square meal."
"I don't feel that I can, and what's more, I can't stop looking at it any longer," declared the girl as she rose from the table. "Those poor young men will be thinking I'm not coming again."
And indeed at the studio everything did seem to be thoroughly disorganised.
"Well, we have done a fine lot of work these last few days," remarked Jack disconsolately.
But Pallister was in high spirits. He had seen Maudie Meridith on the previous evening, and, moved by his earnest reproaches, she had undertaken to do her level best to come this very morning to give him a first sitting for her portrait. Thus he answered Jack's complaining growl with light-hearted insouciance.