"This is a most charming surprise." His voice and manner were perfectly composed; only his intense paleness and the compression of his fine-cut nostrils betrayed any agitation.
Nan had seen that "white" look on his face before.
Then Penelope rushed in with some commonplace remark and the brief tension was over.
"Come and see my Mrs.T.Van Decken," said Rooke presently.

"The light's pretty fair now, but it will be gone after tea." They trooped out of the room and into the studio, where several other people, who had already examined the great portrait, were still strolling about looking at various paintings and sketches.
It was a big bare barn of a place with its cold north light, for Rooke, sybarite as he was in other respects, treated his work from a Spartan standpoint which permitted necessities only in his studio.
"Empty great barrack, isn't it ?" he said to Nan.

"But I can't bear to be crowded up with extraneous hangings and draperies like some fellows.
It stifles me." She nodded sympathetically.
"I know.

I like an empty music-room." "You still work?
Ah, that's good.

You shall tell me about it--afterwards--when this crowd has gone.