"I know of nothing pleasanter," said he, "than a chat and smoke in the morning with a painter in his sanctum. If I had to live all my time in one apartment, I would choose first a studio, secondly, a library; in all other rooms, one eats, drinks, sleeps, or bores oneself."
He gazed complacently around the studio and his eyes fell on Dora's portrait. He rose, chose a good angle, and inspected the picture carefully.
"Beautiful likeness!" said he, "full of poetry—modelling perfect. It is simply quivering with life—and what lovely flesh colour! There is not a man in England that can paint flesh like Grantham—no, not one that comes up to his ankle. Yet, with the most brilliant future before him, with the foremost place among the painters of the day close at hand, and certain to be a Royal Academician before he is forty—here is a man to whom artistic fame does not suffice."
Without noticing it he had approached the door leading to the garden. He opened it. The lilacs and hawthorns were in bloom, and whiffs of delicious scents were wafted into the studio.
"Who would imagine," thought he, "that in this peaceful retreat, where the rustling of the trees is the only sound to be heard, a man was to be found who had invented a projectile likely to revolutionise modern warfare!"
Philip entered hurriedly.
"Ah, my dear de Lussac—no news yet?"
"No! the Commission is to-day sitting in Paris at the War Office. There is every hope of a favourable decision, I believe."
"Not so loud," said Philip, "not so loud; Dora might hear you. She knows nothing about it. Ah, my dear fellow, I have worked day and night to perfect that shell. The mechanism is so simple and yet so precise, that, by winding up the little spring, the shell will burst without necessarily striking any object on the ground or in the air, at any portion of its course, exactly so many seconds as is wished after it has been fired. The usefulness of the shell in the open field or against fortified positions is obvious."
"That is so! in every case the experiment has proved entirely successful; and we wonder how it is the invention was not immediately bought by the English Government."