“Nobody looks at it, you notice,” said Elgar, when they had stood on the spot for five minutes.

“Nobody.”

Yet as soon as they had spoken, an old and a young lady came in front of them, and they heard the young lady say, as she pointed to Mallard’s canvas: 

“Where is that, mamma?”

“Oh, Land’s End, or some such place,” was the careless reply. “Do just look at that sweet little creature playing with the dog!  Look at its collar!  And that ribbon!”

Reuben turned away and muttered contemptuous epithets; Cecily cast a haughty and angry glance at the speaker.  They passed on, and for the present spoke no more of Mallard; but Cecily thought of him, and would have liked to return to the picture before leaving.  There was a man who did something, and something worth the doing.  Reuben must have had a thought not unlike this, for he said, later in the same day: 

“I am sorry I never took up painting.  I believe I could have made something of it.  To a certain extent, you see, it is a handicraft that any man may learn; if one can handle the tools, there’s always the incentive to work and produce.  By-the-bye, why do you never draw nowadays?”

“I hold the opinion of Miss Denyer—­I wonder what’s become of her, poor girl?—­that it’s no use ‘pottering.’  Strange how a casual word can affect one.  I’ve never cared to draw since she spoke of my ‘pottering.’”

This day was the last on which Reuben was quite his wonted self.  Cecily, who was not studying him closely just now, did not for a while observe any change, but in the end it forced itself upon her attention.  She said nothing, thinking it not impossible that he was again dissatisfied with the fruitlessness of his life, and had been made to feel it more strongly by associating with so many new people.  Any sign of that kind was still grateful to her.

She knew now how amiss was her interpretation.  The truth she could not accept as she would have done a year ago; it would then have seemed more than pardonable, as proving that Reuben’s love of her could drive him into grotesque inconsistencies.  But now she only felt it an injury, and in sitting down to write her painful letter to Mrs. Travis, she acted for the first time in deliberate resentment of her husband’s conduct.

When the reply from Mrs. Travis instructed him in what had been done, Reuben left the house, and did not return till late at night.  Cecily stayed at home, idle.  Visitors called in the afternoon, but she received no one.  After her solitary dinner, she spent weary hours, now in one room, now in another, unable to occupy herself in any way.  At eleven o’clock she went down to the library, resolving to wait there for Reuben’s return.

She heard him enter, and heard the servant speaking with him.  He came into the room, closed the door, sauntered forwards, his hands in his pockets.

“Why didn’t you tell me you would be away all day?” Cecily asked, without stress of remonstrance.