“Yes,” my companion mused—­“for she is conscientious.  Or Nina, without waiting for that, may cast her forth.”

I faced it all.  “Then we should have to keep her.”

“As a regular model?” Mrs. Munden was ready for anything.  “Oh that would be lovely!”

But I further worked it out.  “The difficulty is that she’s not a model, hang it—­that she’s too good for one, that she’s the very thing herself.  When Outreau and I have each had our go, that will be all; there’ll be nothing left for any one else.  Therefore it behoves us quite to understand that our attitude’s a responsibility.  If we can’t do for her positively more than Nina does—­”

“We must let her alone?” My companion continued to muse.  “I see!”

“Yet don’t,” I returned, “see too much.  We can do more.”

“Than Nina?” She was again on the spot.  “It wouldn’t after all be difficult.  We only want the directly opposite thing—­and which is the only one the poor dear can give.  Unless indeed,” she suggested, “we simply retract—­we back out.”

I turned it over.  “It’s too late for that.  Whether Mrs. Brash’s peace is gone I can’t say.  But Nina’s is.”

“Yes, and there’s no way to bring it back that won’t sacrifice her friend.  We can’t turn round and say Mrs. Brash is ugly, can we?  But fancy Nina’s not having seen!” Mrs. Munden exclaimed.

“She doesn’t see now,” I answered.  “She can’t, I’m certain, make out what we mean.  The woman, for her still, is just what she always was.  But she has nevertheless had her stroke, and her blindness, while she wavers and gropes in the dark, only adds to her discomfort.  Her blow was to see the attention of the world deviate.”

“All the same I don’t think, you know,” my interlocutress said, “that Nina will have made her a scene or that, whatever we do, she’ll ever make her one.  That isn’t the way it will happen, for she’s exactly as conscientious as Mrs. Brash.”

“Then what is the way?” I asked.

“It will just happen in silence.”

“And what will ‘it,’ as you call it, be?”

“Isn’t that what we want really to see?”

“Well,” I replied after a turn or two about, “whether we want it or not it’s exactly what we shall see; which is a reason the more for fancying, between the pair there—­in the quiet exquisite house, and full of superiorities and suppressions as they both are—­the extraordinary situation.  If I said just now that it’s too late to do anything but assent it’s because I’ve taken the full measure of what happened at my studio.  It took but a few moments—­but she tasted of the tree.”

My companion wondered.  “Nina?”

“Mrs. Brash.”  And to have to put it so ministered, while I took yet another turn, to a sort of agitation.  Our attitude was a responsibility.

But I had suggested something else to my friend, who appeared for a moment detached.  “Should you say she’ll hate her worse if she doesn’t see?”