“And you think I’m not partial to Marshby?”

“It isn’t that.  It’s only that they say you look inside people and drag out what is there.  And inside him—­oh, you’d see his hatred of himself!” The tears were rolling unregarded down her face.

“This is dreadful,” said Wilmer, chiefly to himself.  “Dreadful.”

“There!” said Mary, drearily, emptying the pods from her apron into the basket at her side.  “I suppose I’ve done it now.  I’ve spoiled the picture.”

“No,” returned Jerome, thoughtfully, “you haven’t spoiled the picture.  Really I began it with a very definite conception of what I was going to do.  It will be done in that way or not at all.”

“You’re very kind,” said Mary, humbly.  “I didn’t mean to act like this.”

“No,”—­he spoke out of a maze of reflection, not looking at her.  “You have an idea he’s under the microscope with me.  It makes you nervous.”

She nodded, and then caught herself up.

“There’s nothing you mightn’t see,” she said, proudly, ignoring her previous outburst.  “You or anybody else, even with a microscope.”

“No, of course not.  Only you’d say microscopes aren’t fair.  Well, perhaps they’re not.  And portrait-painting is a very simple matter.  It’s not the black art.  But if I go on with this, you are to let me do it in my own way.  You’re not to look at it.”

“Not even when you’re not at work?”

“Not once, morning, noon, or night, till I invite you to.  You were always a good fellow, Mary.  You’ll keep your word.”

“No, I won’t look at it,” said Mary.

Thereafter she stayed away from the barn, not only when he was painting, but at other times, and Wilmer missed her.  He worked very fast, and made his plans for sailing, and Aunt Celia loudly bemoaned his stinginess in cutting short the summer.  One day, after breakfast, he sought out Mary again in the garden.  She was snipping Coreopsis for the dinner table, but she did it absently, and Jerome noted the heaviness of her eyes.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked, abruptly, and she was shaken out of her late constraint.  She looked up at him with a piteous smile.

“Nothing much,” she said.  “It doesn’t matter.  I suppose it’s fate.  He has written his letter.”

“Marshby?”

“You knew he got his appointment?”

“No; I saw something had him by the heels, but he’s been still as a fish.”

“It came three days ago.  He has decided not to take it.  And it will break his heart.”

“It will break your heart,” Wilmer opened his lips to say; but he dared not jostle her mood of unconsidered frankness.

“I suppose I expected it,” she went on.  “I did expect it.  Yet he’s been so different lately, it gave me a kind of hope.”

Jerome started.  “How has he been different?” he asked.

“More confident, less doubtful of himself.  It’s not anything he has said.  It’s in his speech, his walk.  He even carries his head differently, as if he had a right to.  Well, we talked half the night last night, and he went home to write the letter.  He promised me not to mail it till he’d seen me once more; but nothing will make any difference.”