“I couldn’t smoke with her,” commented Janet, reading over his shoulder.  “It wasn’t that I objected in the least, but it made me so very—­uncomfortable, that I would never try a second time.”

Kendal’s smile deepened, and he read on without answering, except by pressing her finger-tips against his lips.

“I should be sorry to deny your great cleverness and your pretensions to a certain sort of artistic interpretation.  But to me the artist bourgeois is an outsider, who must remain outside.  He has nothing to gain by fellowship with me, and I—­pardon me—­have much to lose.

“So, if you please, we will go our separate ways, and doubtless will represent, each to the other, an experiment that has failed.  You will believe me when I say that I am intensely sorry.  And perhaps you will accept, as sincerely as I offer it, my wish that the future may bring you success even more brilliant than you have already attained.”  Here a line had been carefully scratched out.  “What I have written I have written under compulsion.  I am sure you will understand that.

“Believe me,

“Yours sincerely,

“ELFRIDA BELL.

“P.S.—­I had a dream once of what I fancied our friendship might be.  It is a long time ago, and the days between have faded all the color and sweetness out of my dream—­still, I remember that it was beautiful.  For the sake of that vain imagining, and because it was beautiful, I will send you, if you will allow me, a photograph of a painting which I like, which represents art as I have learned to kneel to it.”

Kendal read this communication through with a look of keen amusement until he came to the postscript.  Then he threw back his head and laughed outright.  Janet’s face had changed; she tried to smile in concert, but the effort was rather piteous.  “Oh, Jack,” she said, “please take it seriously.”  But he laughed on, irrepressibly.

She tried to cover his lips. “Don’t shout so!” she begged, as if there were illness in the house or a funeral next door, and he saw something in her face which stopped him.

“My darling, it can’t hurt—­it doesn’t, does it?”

“I’d like to say no, but it does, a little.  Not so much as it would have done a while ago.”

“Are you going to accept Miss Bell’s souvenir of her shattered ideal?  That’s the best thing in the letter —­that’s really supreme!” and Kendal, still broadly mirthful, stretched out his hand to take it again; but Janet drew it back.

“No,” she said, “of course not; that was silly of her.  But a good deal of the rest is true, I’m afraid, Jack.”

“It’s damnably impudent,” he cried, with, sudden anger.  “I suppose she believes it herself, and that’s the measure of its truth.  How dare she dogmatize to you about the art of your work! She to you!”

“Oh, it isn’t that I care about.  It doesn’t matter to me, how little she thinks of my aims and my methods.  I’m quite content to do my work with what artistic conception I’ve got without analyzing its quality—­I’m thankful enough to have any.  Besides, I’m not sure about the finality of her opinion—­”