Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/207

 a fabulous cap of starched linen and bearing in her hands a japanned tray delicately set with chocolate and cream and rolls of bread and rose-petals of butter.

By ten o'clock, if it didn't rain, Edward and Beaulieu would be in the park painting. They painted from ten to twelve and from three to five. Every day when it didn't rain Edward painted two small landscapes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Beaulieu believed in painting much boldly rather than a little with infinite pains.

As Edward's landscapes dried he painted other landscapes on top of them, but there was one view of the ornamental water with a group of old limes beyond to which he returned oftenest. This view, especially in the afternoon, furnished a beautiful problem and pattern in lights and shadows and reflections. And one afternoon he solved the problem, and when he had finished, the water that he had painted looked wet and the sunlight looked like sunlight. This miracle persisted even after the little canvas had been carried into the house and examined in the sobering light of the living room. It persisted after the paint had dried and flattened into the canvas. Beaulieu was triumphant.

"It is I who have taught the Master," he said. "I told him never to forget that it was light he was