“Why?”

“Do you remember the way you took that impoverished joke of mine about the occupants of the kingdom of heaven?”

She laughed lightly at the recollection.  But it was the lightness only of a moment.  Her head turned, and she found again the eyes of that miniature looking into hers.  Questions then rushed to her lips—­a chorus of children fretting with intense desire.  She could not hold them back—­they would speak.  Each one held her heart in its hands.

“Why do you have that miniature—­amongst all the other pictures?”

“That?” He turned round, following her eyes, the boiling kettle steaming in his hands.  “Pretty, isn’t it?”

They both looked at it—­he, without distraction—­she, with eyes wandering covertly backwards and forwards to his face.  Of course, she admitted its charm.  Could she do otherwise?

He poured the hot water into the strainer over the coffeepot, then shutting the lid, he laid the kettle back in the grate and walked across to the miniature, looking long and closely into it.  Sally watched him, nostrils slightly distended, lips tightly pressed.  In that moment an unwarranted jealousy almost charred her softer feelings with its burning breath.

“There are a good many points in it, you know,” he said, turning round, “that bear a strong resemblance to you.”

“Oh, but she’s very pretty,” said Sally.

“And you’re not?” He came back to the fireplace; stood there, taking regard of every one of her features with no attempt to conceal the direction of his eyes.  “And you’re not, I suppose?” he repeated.

She smiled with an effort.  “If I were, it ’ud scarcely be for me to say.  But I don’t think I am.  I suppose I’m not ugly.  When I’m in good spirits, I sometimes go so far as to think I’m not actually plain.  But she’s pretty—­really pretty.”  Her eyes pointed in the direction of her last remark.

Traill leant forward, facing her, putting both hands on the arms of the chair in which she was sitting.  “So are you,” he said quietly, “really pretty.”

She was locked in, his hands on the arms of her chair and his body making the bars, against which, even had she wished it, escape were impossible.  She tried to take it with a little smile, the ordinary compliment in the ordinary way.  But the note in his voice refused to harmonize with that.  Her smile was forced, her expression unnatural.  And there she was caged, locked in by his eyes and, like a bird in the first moments of its captivity, her heart beat wildly against her breast.  It was not because she was afraid—­the trust in her mind never failed her for an instant—­but she knew that she was captive.  Whoever the other woman might be, if his honour, his heart, his whole soul were plighted to her, yet Sally knew that she must love him.  There was all the giving, all the yielding, all the passive abandonment in her eyes; and when he saw that, Traill shot upright, forcing his hands to anything they might do.