Kendal never felt a keener hatred of the conventions which rule the relations between men and women.  Could he only simply have expressed his own feeling, he would have knelt beside her on the path, have taken the trembling hands in his own, and comforted her as a woman would have done.  But as it was, he could only stand stiff and awkward before her, and yet it seemed to him as if the whole world had resolved itself into his own individuality and hers, and as if the gay river party and the bright friendly relations of an hour before were separated from the present by an impassable gulf.  And, worst of all, there seemed to be a strange perversity in his speech—­a fate which drove him into betraying every here and there his own real standpoint whether he would or no.

‘You must not say such things,’ he said, as calmly as he could.  ’You have charmed the English public as no one else has ever charmed it.  Is not that a great thing to have done?  And if I, who am very fastidious and very captious, and over-critical in a hundred ways—­if I am inclined to think that a part is rather more than you, with your short dramatic experience, can compass quite successfully, why, what does it matter?  I may be quite wrong.  Don’t take any notice of my opinion:  forget it, and let me help you, if I can, by talking over the play.’

She shook her head with a bitter little smile.  ’No, no; I shall never forget it.  Your attitude only brought home to me, almost more strongly than I could bear, what I have suspected a long, long time—­the contempt which people like you and Mr. Wallace feel for me!’

‘Contempt!’ cried Kendal, beside himself, and feeling as if all the criticisms he had allowed himself to make of her were recoiling in one avenging mass upon his head.  ’I never felt anything but the warmest admiration for your courage, your work, your womanly goodness and sweetness.’

‘Yes,’ she said, rising and holding out her hand half-unconsciously for her cloak, which she put round her as though the wood had suddenly grown cold; ’admiration for me as a woman, contempt for me as an artist!  There’s the whole bare truth.  Does it hold my future in it, I wonder?  Is there nothing in me but this beauty that people talk of, and which I sometimes hate?’

She swept her hair back from her forehead with a fierce dramatic gesture.  It was as though the self in her was rising up and asserting itself against the judgment which had been passed upon it, as if some hidden force hardly suspected even by herself were beating against its bars.  Kendal watched her in helpless silence.  ‘Tell me,’ she said, fixing her deep hazel eyes upon him, ’you owe it me—­you have given me so much pain.  No, no; you did not mean it.  But tell me, and tell me from the bottom of your heart—­that is, if you are interested enough in me—­what is it I want?  What is it that seems to be threatening me with failure as an artist?  I work all day long, my work is never out of my head; it seems to pursue me all night.  But the more I struggle with it the less successful I seem even to myself.’