"And he's an artist, too!" said Betty. "How awfully interesting! I
wish I could see his face."

But this his slouched Panama forbade. He was in white, the sleeve and
breast of his painting jacket smeared with many colours; he had a
camp-stool and an easel and looked, she could not help feeling, much
more like a real artist than she did, hunched up as she was on a
little mound of turf, in her shabby pink gown and that hateful garden
hat with last year's dusty flattened roses in it.

She went on sketching with feverish unskilled fingers, and a pulse
that had actually quickened its beat.

She cast little glances at him as often as she dared. He was certainly
a real artist. She could tell that by the very way he held his
palette. Was he staying with people about there? Should she meet him?
Would they ever be introduced to each other?

"Oh, what a pity," said Betty from the heart, "that we aren't
introduced _now_!"

Her sketch grew worse and worse.

"It's no good," she said. "I can't do anything with it."

She glanced at him. He had pushed back the hat. She saw quite plainly
that he was smiling--a very little, but he _was_ smiling. Also he was
looking at her, and across the fifteen yards of gray turf their eyes
met. And she knew that he knew that this was not her first glance at