"’The right people.’ I always scoffed at that phrase. But I found out what it means to-night. Well, I hope to satisfy Lady Randolph. What I see I can paint. I wonder if Miss Kirtling would sit. Would you ask her?"
"The finer lines are blurred. I might fail on that account. It would be no small thing to set on canvas the ’unexpectedness’ of her face. She’s going to surprise all of you before she’s many years older."
"She will marry a swell and become like everybody else," said Mark nervously.
"A marriage of convenience! That would indeed be surprising. No, no; she is likely to marry the wrong man, but not from any ignoble motive; she is capable of a great passion, which, mind you, is more physical than mental, nine times out of ten. I’d like to make a study of her for a head of Juliet, but I should want her to be thinking of Romeo, who, I take it, has not yet made her acquaintance."
Mark shuffled uneasily, and began to drive a willing horse too fast.
"Ah! When they were standing together to-night, somehow I thought of Verona at once."
"Pynsent," said Mark desperately, "I may as well tell you that I—I l-l-love Betty Kirtling. I loved her when she was a b-baby. I loved her when she was a g-girl. And it all came back to-night. There never has been anyone else."
"I’m trying to fit you into it—as Romeo."
"I’m an imbecile, of course, but I f-feel like Romeo. There—it’s out."
"So is your cigar. Take a pull on yourself, man, and on that horse, too! You’re not an imbecile. Alps lie between you and Miss Kirtling, but the Alps have been scaled before and will be again."
Mark continued keenly: "And I feel in all my bones that I shall get there, as you put it—with both feet. I say—you’re not very encouraging."
No more was said. But when Mark found himself alone in the room at Pitt Hall which he always used, he lit the candles on each side of the old-fashioned mirror. Then he examined himself, frowning.
"Romeo!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "Good heavens!"
After the Hunt Ball Betty Kirtling was whisked away on a round of visits. Jim Corrance accepted a clerkship in a big firm on the Stock Exchange. Archibald was reading hard for his degree. Mark returned to Paris and work.
Acting under Saphir’s advice, he went to Barbizon with the intention of painting a picture for the Salon. In those days every man who went to Barbizon painted one picture at least in accordance with certain well-defined Barbizonian rules. At the top of the canvas was a narrow strip of sky put on boldly with big brushes and a palette-knife. Invariably, the sky was of a tender, pinky-grey complexion, hazy, but atmospheric, hall-marked, so to speak, by Bastien Lepage. Below this strip of opalescent mist, in solid contrast, were painted the roofs of the village. These, too, were handled capitally even by the beginners. The foreground represented a field full of waving grasses, grasses from which the sun had sucked the chlorophyl, leaving them pale and attenuated. In this field grew one tree, looking much the worse for wear. Under the tree sat or stood a woman, a peasant wearing the _coiffe_ of the commune and heavy sabots. This woman always had a complexion of the colour and texture of alligator-skin, and her back was bowed by excessive labour. A pretty maid waiting for her lover would have been deemed rank blasphemy against the traditions of the place where the "Angelus" of Millet had been conceived and painted.