“In any case, a lady remade and better than new. My profound felicitations, Dr. Strong.” He walked over to the flushed and lovely athlete. “Miss Ennis,” he said abruptly, “I want your permission to stay over to-morrow and sketch you. I need you in my ‘Poet’s Cycle of the Months.’”
“How do you do, Mr. Taylor?” she returned demurely. “Of course you can sketch me, if it doesn’t interfere with my working hours.” A quick smile rippled across her face like sunlight across water. “The same subject?” she asked with mischievous nonchalance.
“No. Not even the same season,” he replied emphatically, coloring, as he bethought him of his “November, the withered mourner of glories dead and gone.”
“What part am I to play now?”
“Let Dr. Strong name it,” said Taylor with quick tact. “He has prepared the model.”
The girl turned to the physician, a little deeper tinge of color in her face.
“Referred to Swinburne,” said Strong lightly, and quoted:—
“When the hounds of Spring are on Winter’s traces,
The mother of months in valley and plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.”
“Atalanta,” said Oren Taylor, bowing low to her; “the maiden spirit of the spring.”