She turned to another passage as she stood there--'How pretty it sounds
_in poetry!_' she said, and began to read:--

'"There in the odorous meadowsweet afternoon,
With the lark like the dream of a song in the dreamy blue,
All the air abeat with the wing and buzz of June,
We met--she and I, I and she," [You and I, I and you.]
"And there, while the wild rose and woodbine deliciousness blended,
We kissed and we kissed and we kissed, till the afternoon ended...."'

Here Rondel at last interrupted--

'Woman!' he said, 'are your cheeks so painted that you have lost all sense
of shame?' But she had her answer--

'Man! are you so _great_ that you have lost the sense of pity? And which
is the greater shame: to publish your sins in large paper and take
royalties for them, or to speak of them, just you and I together, you and
I, as "there in the odorous meadowsweet afternoon"?'

'Look you,' she continued, 'an artist pays his model at least a shilling
an hour, and it is only her body he paints: but you use body and soul, and
offer her nothing. Your blues and reds are the colours you have stolen
from her eyes and her heart--stolen, I say, for the painter pays so much a
tube for his colours, so much an hour for his model, but you--'

'I give you immortality. Poor fly, I give you amber,' modestly suggested
the poet.

But Annette repeated the word 'Immortality!' with a scorn that almost