‘There were many troubles between us,’ he said, hoarsely, walking on beside her, his eyes on the grass.

’Was she—­was she jealous?’—­she breathed with difficulty—­’of any of your models?—­I know that sometimes happens—­or of your sitters—­of me, for instance?’

The last words were scarcely audible; but her gaze enforced them.

’She was jealous of my whole life—­away from her.  And I was utterly blind and selfish—­I ought to have known what was going on—­and I had no idea.’

‘And what happened?  I know so little.’

Her voice so peremptorily strange—­so remote—­compelled him.  With difficulty he gave an outline of Phoebe’s tragic visit to his studio.  His letter of the night before had scarcely touched on the details of the actual crisis, had dwelt rather on the months of carelessness and neglect on his own part, which had prepared it.

She interrupted.

‘That was she?—­the mother in the “Genius Loci"?’

He assented mutely.

She closed her eyes a moment, seeing, in her suffering, the face of the young mother and her child.

’But go on.  And you were away?  Please, please go on!  When was it?  It must have been that spring when—­’

She put her hand to her head, trying to remember dates.

‘It was just before the Academy,’ he said, reluctantly.

‘You were out?’

‘I had gone to tell Watson and Cuningham the good news.’

His voice dropped.

Her hands caught each other again.

‘It was that day—­that very day we came to you?’

He nodded.

’But why?—­what was it made her do such a thing?—­go—­for ever—­without seeing you—­without a word?  She must have had some desperate reason.’

‘She had none!’ he said, with energy.

’But she must have thought she had.  Can’t—­can’t you explain it to me any more?’

He was almost at the end of his resistance.

‘I told you—­how she had resented—­my concealment?’

’Yes—­yes!  But there must have been something more—­something sudden—­that maddened her?’

He was silent.  She grew whiter than before.

’Mr. Fenwick—­I—­I have much to forgive.  There is only one course of action—­that can ever—­make amends—­and that is—­an entire—­an absolute frankness!’

Her terrible suspicion—­her imperious will had conquered.  Anything was better than to deny her, torture her—­deceive her afresh.

He looked at her in a horrible indecision.  Then, slowly, he put his hand within the breast of his coat.

‘This is the letter she wrote me.  I found it in my room.’

And he drew out the crumpled letter from his pocket-book, which he had worn thus almost from the day of Phoebe’s disappearance.

Eugenie fell upon it, devoured it.  Not a demur, not a doubt, as to this!—­in one so strictly, so tenderly scrupulous.  Even at that moment, it struck him pitifully.  It seemed to give the measure of her pain.