He had echoed her talk of disguises, and his words embodied the unconscious perception under which he worked.  He had selected a disguise, and, as she wished, a becoming one.  But he had not used it fairly, seriously.  He had thrown it over her face like a veil, if anything could be a veil which rather revealed than hid, rather emphasized than softened, the human secret of the face underneath.  He realized now that he had been guided by a broader perception, by deeper instincts, in painting that.  It was the real Elfrida.

There was still a moment before she spoke.  He wondered vaguely how she would take it, and he was conscious of an anxiety to get it over.  At last she rose and faced him, with one hand, that trembled, resting on the back of the chair.  Her face wore a look that was almost profound, and there was an acknowledgment in it, a degree of submission, which startled him.

“So that is how you have read me,” she said, looking again at the portrait “Oh, I do not find fault; I would like to, but I dare not.  I am not sure enough that you are wrong—­no, I am too sure that you are right.  I am, indeed, very much preoccupied with myself.  I have always been—­I shall always be.  Don’t think I shall reform after this moral shock as people do in books.  I am what I am.  But I acknowledge that an egotist doesn’t make an agreeable picture, however charmingly you apologize for her.  It is a personality of stone, isn’t it?—­implacable, unchangeable.  I’ve often felt that.”

Kendal was incapable of denying a word of what she said.  “If it is any comfort to you to know it,” he ventured, “hardly any one will see in it what you—­and I—­see.”

“Yes,” she said, with a smile, “that’s true.  I shan’t mind its going to the Academy.”

She sat down again and looked fixedly at the picture, her chin propped in her hand.  “Don’t you feel,” she said, looking up at him with a little childish gesture of confidence, “as if you had stolen something from me?”

“Yes,” Kendal declared honestly, “I do.  I’ve taken something you didn’t intend me to have.”

“Well, I give it you—­it is yours quite freely and ungrudgingly.  Don’t feel that way any more.  You have a right to your divination,” she Added bravely.

“I would not withhold it if I could.  Only—­I hope you find something good in it.  I think, myself, there is something.”

Her look was a direct interrogation, and Kendal flinched before it.  “Dear creature,” he murmured, “you are very true to yourself.”

“And to you,” she pleaded, “always to you too.  Has there ever been anything but the clearest honesty between us?  Ah, my friend, that is valuable—­there are so few people who inspire it.”

She had risen again, and he found himself shame-facedly holding her hand.  His conscience roused itself and smote him mightily.  Had there always been this absolute single-mindedness between them?