Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/241

 make into a package and take home with me to mend."

"Where do you live, Anne, in case I want a model?"

She gave him her address and he wrote it down. Then presently, the rain having stopped, she gathered together the clothes which were to be mended and departed as casually as she had come.

And to Edward, all at once, the studio seemed extraordinarily empty.

It was a very rainy winter and the young man's loneliness was heavy upon him. He longed for the spring and Corsica, but these were a long way off.

He had many friends but they were mostly serious, hard-working friends and he saw so little of them at this time that he felt as if he didn't have any. One day Anne came with his mended clothes and made chocolate for him and went. He wished she had not been in such a hurry. The dreary studio with the rain-stained lights had been brightened by her presence.

For several days he could not get her out of his mind. But although the arrangement of his picture had reached a point where he wished to make some studies from living models, he did not at once send for her. Some instinct told him that if he wished to keep free from entanglements he had