‘Can’t we begin again?’ she said, in a low voice, while the tears rose in her eyes.  ‘I’m sorry for what I did.’

‘How does that help it?’ he said, irritably.  ’I’m a ruined man.  I can’t paint any more—­or, at any rate, the world doesn’t care a ha’p’orth what I paint.  I should be a bankrupt—­but for Madame de Pastourelles—­’

‘John!’ cried Phoebe, bending forward—­’I’ve got a little money—­I saved it—­and there are some shares a friend advised me to buy, that are worth a lot more than I gave for them.  I’ve got eight hundred pounds—­and it’s all yours, John,—­it’s all yours.’  She stretched out her hands in a yearning anguish, and touched his.

‘What friend?’ he said, with a quick, suspicious movement, taking no notice of her statement; ‘and where have you been—­all these years?’

He turned and looked at her sharply.

‘I’ve been in Canada—­on a farm—­near Montreal.’

She held herself erect, speaking slowly and carefully, as though a moment had arrived for which she had long prepared; through rebellion, and through yielding; now in defiance, and now in fear:  the moment when she should tell John the story of her flight.  Her manner, indeed—­for one who could have understood it—­proved a curious thing; that never, throughout their separation, had she ceased to believe that she should see her husband again.  There had been no finality in her action.  In her eyes the play had been always going on, the curtain always up.

’You know I told you about Freddy—­Freddy Tolson’s—­coming to see me—­that night?  Well, it was the things he said about Canada made me do it.  Of course I didn’t want to go where he was going.  But he said that one could get to Canada for a few pounds, and it took about nine days.  And it was a fine place, and any one could find work.  He’d thought of it, he said, but as he had friends in Australia, he was going there.  And so, when he’d left the cottage, I thought—­if, when I came up to town—­I—­I did find what I expected—­I’d take Carrie—­and go to Canada.’

Fenwick rose, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, began to walk up and down excitedly.

‘And of course—­as you expected it—­you found it,’ he said, bitterly.  ’Who could ever have conceived that a woman could act in such a way!  Why, I had been kissing your photograph the minute before!  Lord Findon had been there, to tell me my pictures were in the Academy all right, and he’d given me five hundred pounds for them—­and the cheque’—­he stopped in front of her, rapping the table with his finger for emphasis—­’the cheque was actually in the drawer!—­under your hand—­where I’d left it.  It was too late to catch the North post for a letter to you, so I went out to tell one or two people, and on the way I bought some things for you at a shop—­prettinesses that I’d never been able to give you.  Why, I thought of nothing but you.’

His voice had risen to a cry.  He stooped, bending over the table, his haggard face close to hers.