“I’m sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren’t nice to you, here.  We ought to be.”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “What would you have?  We are different.  That is unpardonable.  An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin fewer than other people, and he sees things that they do not.  People do not like you to be different.  If ever in your life you act differently from others, you will find it so, mademoiselle.”

Noel felt herself flushing.  Was he reading her secret?  His eyes had such a peculiar, secondsighted look.

“Have you nearly finished?” she asked.

“No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep you.  It is cold for you, sitting there.”

Noel got up.  “May I look?”

“Certainly.”

She did not quite recognise herself—­who does?—­but she saw a face which affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was, and yet was not, in front of her.

“My name is Lavendie,” the painter said; “my wife and I live here,” and he gave her a card.

Noel could not help answering:  “My name is Noel Pierson; I live with my father; here’s the address”—­she found her case, and fished out a card.  “My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him?  He loves music and painting.”

“It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to paint you.  Alas!  I have no studio.”

Noel drew back.  “I’m afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and—­and I don’t want to be painted, thank you.  But, Daddy would like to meet you, I’m sure.”

The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.

“Of course I can see that you’re a very fine painter,” she said quickly; “only—­only—­I don’t want to, you see.  Perhaps you’d like to paint Daddy; he’s got a most interesting face.”

The painter smiled.  “He is your father, mademoiselle.  May I ask you one question?  Why do you not want to be painted?”

“Because—­because I don’t, I’m afraid.”  She held out her hand.  The painter bowed over it.  “Au revoir, mademoiselle.”

“Thank you,” said Noel; “it was awfully interesting.”  And she walked away.  The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and the foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely.  Beauty, and the troubles of others, soothed her.  She felt sorry for the painter, but his eyes saw too much!  And his words:  “If ever you act differently from others,” made her feel him uncanny.  Was it true that people always disliked and condemned those who acted differently?  If her old school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat her?  In her father’s study hung a little reproduction of a tiny picture in the Louvre, a “Rape of Europa,” by an unknown painter—­a humorous delicate thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted on a prancing white bull, crossing a shallow stream,