"'As you are honouring my poor collection with a visit you may like
to judge for yourself as to the inspiration of these two pictures.
She is upstairs changing her dress after our morning ride. But she
wouldn't be very long. She might be a little surprised at first to
be called down like this, but with a few words of preparation and
purely as a matter of art . . .'

"There were never two people more taken aback. Versoy himself
confesses that he dropped his tall hat with a crash. I am a
dutiful son, I hope, but I must say I should have liked to have
seen the retreat down the great staircase. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

He laughed most undutifully and then his face twitched grimly.

"That implacable brute Allegre followed them down ceremoniously and
put my mother into the fiacre at the door with the greatest
deference. He didn't open his lips though, and made a great bow as
the fiacre drove away. My mother didn't recover from her
consternation for three days. I lunch with her almost daily and I
couldn't imagine what was the matter. Then one day . . ."

He glanced round the table, jumped up and with a word of excuse
left the studio by a small door in a corner. This startled me into
the consciousness that I had been as if I had not existed for these
two men. With his elbows propped on the table Mills had his hands
in front of his face clasping the pipe from which he extracted now
and then a puff of smoke, staring stolidly across the room.

I was moved to ask in a whisper: