“It’s just that—­don’t you see?” she reproached him.

“Just that—­the fact that I could be of use to you?”

“The fact that, as you say, things have changed since you painted Mrs. Millington.  I haven’t seen the later portraits, but they tell me—­”

“Oh, they’re just as bad!” Stanwell jeered.

“You’ve sold your talent, and you know it:  that’s the dreadful part.  You did it deliberately,” she cried with passion.

“Oh, deliberately,” he interjected.

“And you’re not ashamed—­you talk of going on.”

“I’m not ashamed; I talk of going on.”

She received this with a long shuddering sigh, and turned her eyes away from him.

“Oh, why—­why—­why?” she lamented.

It was on the tip of Stanwell’s tongue to answer, “That I might say to you what I am just saying now—­” but he replied instead:  “A man may paint bad pictures and be a decent fellow.  Look at Mungold, after all!”

The adjuration had an unexpected effect.  Kate’s colour faded suddenly, and she sat motionless, with a stricken face.

“There’s a difference—­” she began at length abruptly; “the difference you’ve always insisted on.  Mr. Mungold paints as well as he can.  He has no idea that his pictures are—­less good than they might be.”

“Well—?”

“So he can’t be accused of doing what he does for money—­of sacrificing anything better.”  She turned on him with troubled eyes.  “It was you who made me understand that, when Caspar used to make fun of him.”

Stanwell smiled.  “I’m glad you still think me a better painter than Mungold.  But isn’t it hard that for that very reason I should starve in a hole?  If I painted badly enough you’d see no objection to my living at the Waldorf!”

“Ah, don’t joke about it,” she murmured.  “Don’t triumph in it.”

“I see no reason to at present,” said Stanwell drily.  “But I won’t pretend to be ashamed when I’m not.  I think there are occasions when a man is justified in doing what I’ve done.”

She looked at him solemnly.  “What occasions?”

“Why, when he wants money, hang it!”

She drew a deep breath.  “Money—­money?  Has Caspar’s example been nothing to you, then?”

“It hasn’t proved to me that I must starve while Mungold lives on truffles!”

Again her face changed and she stirred uneasily, and then rose to her feet.

“There is no occasion which can justify an artist’s sacrificing his convictions!” she exclaimed.

Stanwell rose too, facing her with a mounting urgency which sent a flush to his cheek.

“Can’t you conceive such an occasion in my case?  The wish, I mean, to make things easier for Caspar—­to help you in any way you might let me?”

Her face reflected his blush, and she stood gazing at him with a wounded wonder.

“Caspar and I—­you imagine we could live on money earned in that way?”