Some magnetic wave had apparently drawn the passing damsel's attention upwards towards Pallister. She saw him beckon; saw another masculine figure appear by his side in response to the summons. She had cast down her eyes demurely enough and walked on, but at this moment she looked back, flashing a quick glance upwards over her shoulder. Seeing the two men gazing as if spellbound at her retreating figure, she smiled at them. It was a fleeting smile, wicked and subtle, narrowing her eyes and bringing alluring dimples into either cheek. Then she passed on her way.
"I'm positive she would sit for you, if you paid her enough," commented Pallister sagely. "Hi, there! Hi!—Miss!"
But the girl did not hear his voice.
And then Jack fell away from grace. The hand of ambition beckoned, and the faint whisperings of duty proved impotent to stay his following steps.
"I must go; I must get her!" he declared hoarsely, shaken from his habitual calm. "My luck will indeed turn now. I shall win everything from that picture. It will drive me mad never to paint it. Pallister, you can keep an eye on Geoff, can't you? He's all right; he wants nothing whatsoever but to be left alone. The mask is very nearly ready to come off now, but that's a slow job. I can't stop, can I? Geoff won't be scared by the waiting. He's been through it before, you know. You just sit quietly by him."
"Trust me; I'll nurse him," assented Pallister gaily. "Buck up, old chap, or she'll be gone."
But the remainder of his sentence was wasted upon the atmosphere. Jack was already bounding downstairs, every other thought excluded from his mind by the mental picture of a pale-faced girl smiling upwards over her shoulder.
"I shall succeed now! I shall succeed! I know it—if I can get this girl to sit!"
Thus his innermost conviction spoke loudly as he hurried along the busy street; yet every second the tiny voice of conscience grew more clamorous and insistent. Under such urgent stress of circumstances, surely any artist would have maintained that it was forgivable enough to have thus left Geoffrey for several minutes longer than was necessary, in what was certainly an unpleasant and possibly a dangerous situation! But knowing Frank Pallister, would not one and all have asserted that under any pretext it was infamous that Jack should abandon his friend to so unreliable and careless—let alone totally inexperienced—an assistant?
"I must go back. Soon—almost immediately," Jack declared within himself; and with his mind torn in two directions, he hurried on with yet more frantic haste in pursuit of this long-desired and widely-sought model.