This use of the National Gallery once understood, the thing which happened here the day after the reading of the play will not seem incredible, though it certainly was not intended by the architect when he designed the building. Otherwise there might have been convenient arbours.
Armorel went often to the Gallery: the English girl reserves, as a rule, her study of pictures, and art generally, till she gets to Florence. Armorel, who had also studied art in Florence, found much to learn in our own neglected Gallery. Sometimes she went alone: sometimes she went with Effie, and then, being quite a learned person in the matter of pictures and their makers, she would discourse from room to room, till the day was all too short. The country visitors streamed past her in languid procession: the lovers met by appointment at her very elbow: the copyists flirted, talked scandal, wasted time, and sighed for commissions: but Armorel had not learned to watch people: she came to see the pictures: she had not begun to detach an individual from the crowd as a representative: in other words, she was not a novelist.
This morning she was alone. She carried a notebook and pencil, and was standing before a picture making notes. It was a wet morning: the rooms were nearly empty, and the galleries were very quiet.
She heard a manly step striding across the floor. She half turned as it approached her. Mr. Alec Feilding took off his hat.
'Mrs. Elstree told me you were here,' he said. 'I ventured to follow.'
'Yes?'
'You—you—come often, I believe?' He looked pale, and, for the first time in Armorel's recollection of him, he was nervous. 'There is, I believe, a good deal to be learned here.'
'There is, especially by those who want to paint—of course, I mean—who want to do their own paintings by themselves. Mr. Feilding, frankly, what do you want? Why do you come here in search of me?' Her face hardened: her eyes were cold and resolved. But the man was full of himself; he noted not these symptoms.
'I came because I have something to say.'
'Of importance?'