"There!" he said. "It is not finished yet, but that is how I saw you one
evening as I was sitting here all alone in the twilight."

"But you didn't really see me like that!" I said.

"I hardly know," he answered. "I had been forgetting every thing else in
dreaming about you, and--how it was I cannot tell, but either in the body
or out of the body there I saw you, standing just so at the top of the
stair, smiling to me as much as to say, 'Have patience. My foot is on the
first step. I'm coming.' I turned at once to my easel, and before the
twilight was gone had sketched the vision. To-morrow, you must sit to me
for an hour or so; for I will do nothing else till I have finished it, and
sent it off to your father and mother."

I may just add that I hear it is considered a very fine painting. It hangs
in the great dining-room at home. I wish I were as good as he has made it
look.

The next morning, after I had given him the sitting he wanted, we set out
on our furniture hunt; when, having keen enough eyes, I caught sight of
this and of that and of twenty different things in the brokers' shops. We
did not agree about the merits of everything by which one or the other was
attracted; but an objection by the one always turned the other, a little at
least, and we bought nothing we were not agreed about. Yet that evening the
hall was piled with things sent home to line our nest. Percivale, as I have
said, had saved up some money for the purpose, and I had a hundred pounds
my father had given me before we started, which, never having had more than
ten of my own at a time, I was eager enough to spend. So we found plenty
to do for the fortnight during which time my mother had promised to say
nothing to her friends in London of our arrival. Percivale also keeping