Jean laughed.
"I won't if I can help it," she assured him.
He caught up a costume which lay upon a low divan, and ransacked a heap of unframed canvases that leaned backs outward against the wall.
"This sketch will give you a notion how the dress goes," he said, and carried his armful into the alcove.
When she reëntered the studio, MacGregor was arranging a screen of a pattern Jean had never seen.
"It was made from an old lattice," he explained, placing a chair for her behind it. "I picked it up in Kairwan. This little door swings in its original position. You are looking now from a window—a little more than ajar, so—from which generations of women, dressed as you are dressed, have watched an Arab street."
He passed round to the front of the screen and studied her intently.
"Eyes about there," he said, indicating a rose-water jar upon a low shelf. "Expression," he paused thoughtfully. "How shall I tell you what I want you to suggest from the lattice? Don't think of those women of the Orient. You can't truly conceive their life. Think of something nearer home. Imagine yourself in a convent—no, that won't do at all. Imagine yourself a prisoner, an innocent prisoner, peering through your grating at the world, longing—"
"Wait," said Jean.
She threw herself into his conception, closed her mental vision upon the studio and its trophies, erased the bustling city from her thoughts. She was again a resentful inmate of Cottage No. 6, lying in her cell-like room at twilight, while the woods called to her with a hundred tongues. There were flowers in the sheltered places; arbutus, violets—