“You make it necessary for me to tell you,” he said slowly, “that there is one thing between us you do not know.  I saw you at Cheynemouth on the stage.”

“I know you did,” she smiled at him.  “Janet Cardiff let it out, by accident I suppose you came, like Mr. Cardiff, because you—­disapproved.  Then why didn’t you remonstrate with me?  I’ve often wondered.”  Elfrida spoke softly, dreamily.  Her happiness seemed very near.  Her self-surrender was so perfect and his understanding, as it always had been, so sweet, that the illusion of the moment was cruelly perfect She raised her eyes to Kendal’s with an abandonment of tenderness in them that quickened his heart-beats, man that he was.

“Tell me, do you want me to give it up—­my book—­last night I finished it—­my ambition?”

She was ready with her sacrifice or for the instant; she believed herself to be, and it was not wholly without an effort that he put it away.  On the pretence of picking up his palette knife he relinquished her hand.

“It is not a matter upon which I have permitted myself a definite opinion,” he said, more coldly than he intended, “but for your own sake I should advise it.”

For her own sake!  The room seemed full of the echo of his words.  A blank look crossed the girl’s face; she turned instinctively away from him and picked up her hat.  She put it on and buttoned her gloves without the faintest knowledge of what she was doing; her senses were wholly occupied with the comprehension of the collapse that had taken place within her.  It was the single moment of her life when she differed, in any important way, from the girl Kendal had painted.  Her self-consciousness was a wreck, she no longer controlled it; it tossed at the mercy of her emotion.  Her face was very white and painfully empty, her eyes wandered uncertainly around the room, unwilling above all things to meet Kendal’s again.  She had forgotten about the portrait.

“I will go, then,” she said simply, without looking at him, and this time, with a flash, Kendal comprehended again.  He held the door open for her mutely, with the keenest pang his pleasant life had ever brought him, and she passed out and down the dingy stairs.

On the first landing she paused and turned.  “I will never be different,” she said aloud, as if he were still beside her, “I will never be different!” She unbuttoned one of her gloves and fingered the curious silver ring that gleamed uncertainly on her hand in the shabby light of the staircase.  The alternative within it, the alternative like a bit of brown sugar, offered itself very suggestively at the moment.  She looked around her at the dingy place she stood in, and in imagination threw herself across the lowest step.  Even at that miserable moment she was aware of the strong, the artistic, the effective thing to do.  “And when he came down he might tread on me,” she said to herself, with a little shudder.  “I wish I had the courage.  But no—­it might hurt, after all.  I am a coward, too.”