The picture upon the easel was the artist’s portrait of Sibyl Andres.

With an exclamation that was not unlike fear, Mrs. Taine drew back from the canvas.  Looking at the beautiful painting,—­in which the artist had pictured, with unconscious love and an almost religious fidelity, the spirit of the girl who was so like the flowers among which she stood,—­the woman was moved by many conflicting emotions.  Surprise, disappointment admiration, envy, jealousy, sadness, regret, and anger swept over her.  Blinded by bitter tears, with a choking sob, in an agony of remorse and shame, she turned away her face from the gaze of those pure eyes.  Then, as the flame of her passion withered her shame, hot rage dried her tears, and she sprang forward with an animal-like fierceness, to destroy the picture.  But, even as she put forth her hand, she hesitated and drew back, afraid.  As she stood thus in doubt—­halting between her impulse and her fear—­a sound at the door behind her drew her attention.  She turned to face the beautiful original of the portrait Instantly the woman of the world had herself perfectly in hand.

Sibyl Andres drew back with an embarrassed, “I beg your pardon.  I thought—­” and would have fled.

But Mrs. Taine, with perfect cordiality, said quickly, “O how do you do, Miss Andres; come in.”

She seemed so sincere in the welcome that was implied in her voice and manner; while her face, together with her somber garb of mourning, was so expressive of sadness and grief that the girl’s gentle heart was touched.  Going forward, with that natural, dignity that belongs to those whose minds and hearts are unsullied by habitual pretense of feeling and sham emotions, Sibyl spoke a few well chosen words of sympathy.

Mrs. Taine received the girl’s expression of condolence with a manner that was perfect in its semblance of carefully controlled sorrow and grief, yet managed, skillfully, to suggest the wide social distance that separated the widow of Mr. Taine from the unknown, mountain girl.  Then, as if courageously determined not to dwell upon her bereavement, she said, “I was just looking, again, at Mr. King’s picture—­for which you posed.  It is beautiful, isn’t it?  He told me that you were an exceptionally clever model—­quite the best he has ever had.”

The girl—­disarmed by her own genuine feeling of sympathy for the speaker—­was troubled at something that seemed to lie beneath the kindly words of the experienced woman.  “To me, it is beautiful,” she returned doubtfully.  “But, of course, I don’t know.  Mr. Lagrange thinks, though, that it is really a splendid portrait.”

Mrs. Taine smiled with a confident air, as one might smile at a child.  “Mr. Lagrange, my dear, is a famous novelist—­but he really knows very little of pictures.”

“Perhaps you are right,” returned Sibyl, simply.  “But the picture is not to be shown as a portrait of me, at all.”