But Mr. Stirling swept him down.
"That's enough. You must forgive him, Miss Manvers. He has mistaken his vocation. He ought not to be a painter, but a novelist. Fiction is evidently his forte. Good evening. Good-bye, Harry. Thank you for opening the gate for us. We will take the short cut across the fields to Noyes. Good-bye. Good-bye."
And Mr. Stirling, holding Geoff by the elbow, walked him off rapidly down the lane.
"Uncle Reggie," said the boy, "I think I won't go to Japan to-morrow after all. I think I'll stop on here. I can get a room in the village, and make a picture of the fountain and the lichen and the willow weed, with Mrs. Le Geyt picking flowers. She's just what I want. I suppose there isn't any real chance of her being so kind as to stand for me, is there?—she looks so very kind,—in the nude, I mean. It's quite warm. But if she wouldn't consent to that, that gown she had on, that mixed colour, cobalt with crimson lake in it——"
"Called lilac for short," interpolated Mr. Stirling.
"It would be glorious against the yews, and knocking up against the grey stone and that yellow lichen in the reflection. The whole thing would be—stupendous. I see it."
Geoff wrenched his elbow away from his uncle's grip, and stopped short in the path, looking at Mr. Stirling, through him.
"I see it," he said, and his pink, silly face became pale, dignified, transfigured.
Mr. Stirling's heart smote him.