Stanwell made an impatient gesture.  “You’ve got to live on something—­or he has, even if you don’t include yourself!”

Her blush deepened miserably, but she held her head high.

“That’s just it—­that’s what I came here to say to you.”  She stood a moment gazing away from him at the lake.

He looked at her in surprise.  “You came here to say something to me?”

“Yes.  That we’ve got to live on something, Caspar and I, as you say; and since an artist cannot sacrifice his convictions, the sacrifice must—­I mean—­I wanted you to know that I have promised to marry Mr. Mungold.”

“Mungold!” Stanwell cried with a sharp note of irony; but her white look checked it on his lips.

“I know all you are going to say,” she murmured, with a kind of nobleness which moved him even through his sense of its grotesqueness.  “But you must see the distinction, because you first made it clear to me.  I can take money earned in good faith—­I can let Caspar live on it.  I can marry Mr. Mungold; because, though his pictures are bad, he does not prostitute his art.”

She began to move away from him slowly, and he followed her in silence along the frozen path.

When Stanwell re-entered his studio the dusk had fallen.  He lit his lamp and rummaged out some writing-materials.  Having found them, he wrote to Shepson to say that he could not paint Mrs. Van Orley, and did not care to accept any more orders for the present.  He sealed and stamped the letter and flung it over the banisters for the janitor to post; then he dragged out his unfinished head of Kate Arran, replaced it on the easel, and sat down before it with a grim smile.

THE BEST MAN

I

DUSK had fallen, and the circle of light shed by the lamp of Governor Mornway’s writing-table just rescued from the surrounding dimness his own imposing bulk, thrown back in a deep chair in the lounging attitude habitual to him at that hour.

When the Governor of Midsylvania rested he rested completely.  Five minutes earlier he had been bowed over his office desk, an Atlas with the State on his shoulders; now, his working hours over, he had the air of a man who has spent his day in desultory pleasure, and means to end it in the enjoyment of a good dinner.  This freedom from care threw into relief the hovering fidgetiness of his sister, Mrs. Nimick, who, just outside the circle of lamplight, haunted the warm gloom of the hearth, from which the wood fire now and then sent up an exploring flash into her face.

Mrs. Nimick’s presence did not usually minister to repose; but the Governor’s serenity was too deep to be easily disturbed, and he felt the calmness of a man who knows there is a mosquito in the room, but has drawn the netting close about his head.  This calmness reflected itself in the accent with which he said, throwing himself back to smile up at his sister:  “You know I am not going to make any appointments for a week.”