"Lord in Heaven!" he said; "what kind of a girl am I dealing with?--or
what kind of a girl is dealing so unmercifully with me?"

"I--I didn't mean--"

"Yes, you did. Those very lovely and wonderfully shaped eyes of yours
are not entirely for ornament. Inside that pretty head there's an
apparatus designed for thinking; and it isn't idle."

He laughed gaily, a trifle defiantly:

"You've said it. You've found the fly in the amber. I'm cursed with
facility. Worse still it gives me keenest pleasure to employ it. It does
scare me occasionally--has for years--makes me miserable at
intervals--fills me full of all kinds of fears and doubts."

He turned toward her, standing on his ladder, the big palette curving up
over his left shoulder, a wet brush extended in his right hand:

"What shall I do!" he exclaimed so earnestly that she sat up straight,
startled, forgetting her pose. "Ought I to stifle the vigour, the
energy, the restless desire that drives me to express myself--that will
not tolerate the inertia of calculation and ponderous reflection? Ought
I to check myself, consider, worry, entangle myself in psychologies,
seek for subtleties where none exist--split hairs, relapse into
introspective philosophy when my fingers itch for a lump of charcoal and
every colour on my set palette yells at me to be about my business?"

He passed the flat tip of his wet brush through the mass of rags in his