"I'm only marking time," he fretted, as he and Jean sat together before the canvas after Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's third sitting. "All my preconceived notions were merely blind scents. I'm not getting at the woman behind."
"Yet it's wonderfully like her," she encouraged, studying the strong, mocking old face.
"So are her photographs! Is that portraiture? Look at their stuff," he cried, catching a handful of unmounted prints from a drawer. "See what Huntington did with her girlhood! See Millais's woman of thirty! Look at Zorn's great portrait! Take Sargent's!"
"But none of them have painted her old age," she reminded. "You have that advantage."
"And what have I got out of it? Wrinkles!"
Crossing Madison Square a day or two later, Jean met MacGregor. He had congratulated them promptly by letter and sent them one of his desert studies which he knew for a favorite; but she had not come face to face with him since her marriage. She wanted to speak to him, for an unfulfilled penance hung over her, and almost her first word was a confession of her feeling that she had done Julie an injustice.
He listened with a caustic stare.
"Buried the hatchet?" he remarked.
"If there ever was a hatchet. I'm not so sure there was. I think we both misjudged her."
"Both, eh!" snorted MacGregor, huffily. "I dare say. After all, I'm a raw young thing with no experience."