GLADYS ELLINGTON, as has been remarked, was not in the least ill-natured, and never even hinted ill-natured things against anybody unless she was certain to be undiscovered. So, as all the world knew, since she was not “quite devoted,” a phrase of her’s, to her mother-in-law, the merest elements of wisdom demanded of her that she should be unreserved in her commendation of Madge’s engagement. Unreserved, in consequence, she was, even to her own husband. He also was quite unreserved, but his unreserve was whiskered and red-faced like himself, and bore not the slightest resemblance to his wife’s voluble raptures.

“Seems to me,” he said, “that Madge has married him for his money. Don’t believe she loves him. Cold-blooded fish like that. Don’t tell me. Hate a girl marrying for money. American and so on. Good love match, like you and me, Gladys. I hadn’t a sou, you hadn’t a penny. Same sort of thing, eh?”

Lord Ellington usually ended his sentences with “Eh?” If he did not end them with “Eh?” he ended them with “What?” The effect in either case was the same, for, like Pilate, he did not wait for an answer. “Eh” or “what,” in fact, meant that he had not finished; if he had finished, he ended up his period with “Don’t tell me.” As a consequence, perhaps, nobody told him anything. All worked together for good here, because he would not have understood it if they had. He was fond of his wife, and slightly fonder of his dinner. Why she had married him was a mystery; but there are so many mysteries of this kind that it is best to leave them alone.

Gladys, on this occasion (a speech which had given rise to his, in so far as any speech or connected thought would account for what Lord Ellington would say next), had merely remarked that the engagement was very, very nice.

“You seem to object to him,” she said, “because he is rich. That is very feeble. I never knew riches to be a bar to anything except the kingdom of heaven, with which you, Ellington, are not immediately concerned. But you are much more immediately concerned with South African mines. Now, he is dining here to-night, and so is Madge. If you can’t get something out of him between the time we leave the room and you join us, I really shall despair of you.”

A heavy, jocular look came into Lord Ellington’s face.

“You don’t despair of me yet, Gladys?” he said.

“No, not quite. Very nearly, but not quite. Oh, Ellington, do wake up for once to-night! Philip Home moves a finger in that dreadful office of his in the City, somewhere E.C., and you and I are beggars, even worse than now, or comparatively opulent. Ask him which finger he moves. If only I were you, I could do it in two minutes. So I’ll allow you ten. Not more than that, because we’ve got the Reeves’ box at the opera, and Melba is singing.”

“Lot of squawking,” said he. “Why not sit at home? Who wants to hear squawking? All in Italian too. Don’t understand a word, nor do you. And you don’t know one note from another, nor do I. Don’t tell me.”

Gladys required all her tact, which is the polite word for evasion, sometimes, in getting her way with her husband, and all her diplomacy, which is the polite word for lying. If he got a notion into his head it required something like the Lisbon earthquake to get it out; if, on the other hand, a thing commoner with him, he had not a notion in his head, it required a flash of lightning, followed by the steady application of a steam-hammer to get it in. Also in talking to him it was almost as difficult to concentrate one’s own attention as it was to command his, for the fact that he was being talked to produced in him, unless he was dining, an irresistible tendency to make a quarter-deck of the room he was in, up and down which he shuffled. When this became intolerable, Gladys told him not to quarter-deck, but this she only did as a last resort, because he attended rather more when he was quarter-decking than when not.

“Never mind about the opera then,” she said, “you needn’t go unless you like. But what is important is that since Madge is going to marry Philip Home, we should reap all the advantages we can. Perhaps there is only one, apart from having another very comfortable house to stay in, but that is a big one. He can make some money for us.”

This was only the second time she had mentioned this, and in consequence she was rather agreeably surprised to find that her husband grasped it. He even appeared to think about it, and suggested an amendment, though the process required, it seemed to Gladys, miles of quarter-decking.

“Eh, what?” he said. “Something South African? Put in twopence and get out fourpence, with a dividend in the interim? By Gad, yes! But you’d better get it out of him, Gladys, not I. Lovely woman, you know; a man tells everything to lovely woman. Don’t tell me.”

This had never occurred to Gladys, and she always respected anyone to whom things occurred before they occurred to her.

“How very simple,” she said, “and much better than my suggestion. I suppose it was so simple that it never occurred to me.”

Ellington chuckled, and as the conversation was over, sat down again to read the evening paper, which had just come in. He read the morning paper all the morning, and talked of it at lunch, and the evening paper all evening, and talked of it at dinner; these two supplied him with his mental daily bread. All the same, he never seemed well-informed even about current events; he managed somehow to miss the point of all the news he read, and could never distinguish between Kuroki and Kuropatkin.

Three days had passed since Madge had had her last sitting for her portrait, and those three days had passed for her in a sort of dream of disquietude which was not wholly pain. She had not seen Evelyn since, and scarcely Philip, for he had been harder worked than usual, and last night, when he was to have dined with them, had sent word that he could not possibly get there in time. They were to go to the theatre afterwards, and he said he would join them there. She had upbraided him laughingly for his desertion of them, telling him that he put the pleasure of business higher than the pleasure of her society. For retort he had the fact that when he was not at work he was never anywhere else but in her society, whereas two days ago, when he was free one morning, she refused to ride with him because she was to give a sitting to Evelyn. But the moment he had said this he was sorry for it, for Madge had flushed, and turned from him, biting her lip. But though he was sorry for the undesigned pain he had apparently given her, his heart could not but sing to him. She could not bear such a word from him even in jest.

But this had not been the cause of Madge’s disquietude; Philip’s remark indeed had, so far as it alone was concerned, gone in at one ear but to come out at the other. In its passage through it had touched something that made her wince with sudden pain. But the pain passed, and a warmth, a glow of some secret kind, remained. Disquieting it was, but not painful, except that at intervals a sort of pity and remorse would stab her, and at other times her heart, like Philip’s, could not but sing to her for the splendour of love which was beginning to dawn. She could not help that dawn coming, and she could not help glorying in its light.

Of what should be the practical issue she did not at once think. It was but three weeks ago that she had promised to marry Philip, and then her honesty had made her tell him that she gave him liking, esteem, affection, all that she was conscious that it was in her power to give. And now, when she knew that she was possessed of more than these, and that the new possession was not hers to give him, a long day of indecision, this day on which in the evening they were to dine together with Gladys Ellington, had been hers. But gradually, slowly, with painful gropings after light, she had made up her mind.

She had no choice—her choice was already made, and all duty, all obedience, all honour, called her to fulfil the promise she had made, to fulfil it, too, in no niggardly lip-service sense of the word, but to fulfil it loyally. She must turn her back to the dawn which had come too late, she must never look there, she must for ever avert her eyes from it. Above all, she must do all that lay in her power to prevent that brightness growing. She must, in fact, not see Evelyn again of her own free will.

Then the difficulties, each to be met and overcome, began to swarm thick about her. First and foremost there was the portrait, for which she was engaged to give him a sitting to-morrow. That, at any rate, as far as this particular sitting was concerned, was easily managed, a note of three lines expressing regret did that. This, however, was only a temporary measure, it but put off for this one occasion the necessity of meeting what lay before her. For she knew she must not sit to him again; she dared not risk that, she must not give this strange new rapture in her heart the food that would make it grow. Yet, again, she must not act like a mad-woman, and what reasonable cause could she give for so strange a freak? Perhaps if she went there with Philip, or if she took her mother with her.

Yet that did not dispose of the question. Evelyn was one of her future husband’s warmest friends. In the ordinary course of things they must often meet, but till she had conquered herself, made sure of herself, such meetings were impossible. And how could she ever be sure of herself, to whom had come this utterly unlooked for thing, a thing so unlooked for that only a few weeks before she had consented to its being dismissed as a practical impossibility?

Then came a thought which, for the very shame of it, was bracing. Not by word or look or sign had Evelyn ever showed that he regarded her with the faintest feeling that answered hers. She remembered well the rise of the full moon on the terrace of Philip’s house above Pangbourne, how he had called attention to it, merely to point out that it was not in drawing, how she herself on that occasion had noticed how different he was to the ordinary moonlight-walker. No hint of sentiment, no sign of the vaguest desire towards the most harmless flirtation had appeared in him then, nor had any appeared since. While she was sitting to him, half the time he scowled at her, the other half he bubbled with boyish nonsense. For very shame she must turn her back on the dawn.

Dinner was to be early to-night, as the objective was Melba and the opera, and her maid came in to tell her that dressing-time was already overstepped. She got up, but paused for a moment at the window, looking out from Buckingham Gate over the blue haze that overhung St. James’ Park, driving her resolution home. She half-pitied, half-spurned herself, telling herself at one moment that it was hard that she had to suffer thus, at another that she was despicable for thinking of suffering when her road was so clearly marked for her. If what had happened was not her fault, still less should there be any fault of hers in what should happen. Clearly the future was in her own control; of the future she could make what she would.

Her mother was not coming with her to-night; indeed, she seldom wasted the golden evening hours at the opera, when there was a rubber of bridge so certainly at her command, and Madge went into the drawing-room to wish her good-night before she set off. Prosperity—and the last three weeks seemed to Lady Ellington to be most prosperous—had always a softening effect on her, and she was particularly gracious to her daughter, since Madge was responsible for so large a part of these auspicious events.

“So you’re just off, dear,” she said. “Dear me, you are rather late, and I mustn’t keep you. But give my love to Philip, and let him see you home, and if I am in—you can ask them at the door—bring him in for a few minutes. And don’t forget your sitting with Mr. Dundas to-morrow.”

“Ah, I have put that off,” said Madge, “I am rather busy!”

“A pity, surely.”

“Well, I have sent the note, I am afraid. Good-night, mother, in case I am in first.”

Philip had already arrived when she got to her cousin’s house, and they went down to dinner. Lord Ellington had got the news of the evening feverishly mixed up in his head, and was disposed to mingle fragments of Stock Exchange with it, forgetful, apparently, that this had been relegated to his wife. But his natural incoherence redeemed the situation, and when dinner was over it was already time to start for the opera. While Gladys got her cloak, however, the two lovers had a few private minutes, as the master of the house remained in the dining-room when they went out. Philip had sent her that day a diamond pendant which she was wearing now.

“It is too good of you, Philip,” she said, “and I can’t tell you how I value it. It is most beautiful. But why should you always be sending me things?”

Philip was usually serious, and always sincere.

“Because I can’t help it,” he said. “I must give you signs of what I feel, and even these clumsy, material signs are something.”

That sincerity touched the girl.

“I know what you feel,” she said. “I want to have it never absent from my mind. I want to think of nothing else but that.”

This was sincere too, the outcome of this long day of thought. But Philip came a little closer to her, and his voice vibrated as he spoke.

“That contents me utterly,” he said—“that and the gift of yourself that you made me.”

She gave a long sigh.

“Oh, Philip!” she began. But the voice of Gladys called to her from the passage outside the drawing-room.

“Come, Madge. Come, Mr. Home,” she cried. “We are already so late, and I can’t bear to miss a note of BohÊme.”

Apparently to be present in the opera-house when BohÊme was going on was sufficient for Gladys, and constituted not missing a note, for she spent that small portion of the first act which still remained to be performed after their arrival in an absorbed examination of the occupants of the other boxes, and whispered communications as to the result of her investigations to Madge. The fall of the curtain had the effect of rendering these more audible.

“Yes, absolutely everybody is here; so good of you, dear Mr. Home, to ask us to-night. Of course, it is the last night Melba sings, is it not? How wonderful, is she not? That long last note quite thrilled me. So sad, too, the last act, it always makes me cry! Oh! there is Madame Odintseff, dearest Madge, did you ever see such ropes of pearls—cables you might call them. Who is that she is talking to? I know her face quite well. That’s her daughter, yes, the sandy-coloured thing, rather like a rabbit. They say she’s engaged to Lord Hitchin, but I don’t believe it. Dear Madge, is it not brilliant? You look so well, dear, to-night. If only Mr. Dundas could paint you as you are looking now! By the way, how is the portrait getting on?”

Philip also had risen when the act ended, and was looking out over the house. Here he joined in.

“Evelyn was absolutely jubilant when I saw him a few days ago,” he said. “And though he is usually jubilant over the last thing, I saw he thought there was something extra-special about this. By-the-way, Madge, you are sitting to him to-morrow afternoon, are you not? I shall try to look in; my spate of work is over, I hope.”

“Oh! I’m afraid I have had to put it off,” said she. “I couldn’t manage it to-morrow.”

She fingered her fan nervously for a moment.

“In fact, Philip,” she said, “I am so dreadfully full of engagements for the next week or two that I don’t see how I can squeeze in another sitting. I am so ashamed of myself, but I can’t help it. I wish you would go down to Mr. Dundas’ studio to-morrow and tell him so.”

Philip looked at her a moment in blank surprise.

“Ah, but you can’t do that,” he said; “a painter isn’t like a tailor to whom you say, ‘I am not coming to try on; send it home as it is.’”

Madge lost her head a little; the burden of the hours of this day pressed heavily on her.

“Ah! but that is what I want him to do,” she cried. “It is a wonderful portrait; he said so himself. There is a little background that must be put in, but I needn’t be there for that.”

Gladys Ellington had turned her attention again to the house, and, with her opera-glasses glued to her eyes, was spying and observing in all directions. Philip cast one glance at her, and rightly considered himself alone with Madge, for the other was blind and deaf to them.

“Madge, is anything wrong?” he asked gently.

“No, nothing is wrong,” she said, recovering herself a little. “But I ask you to do as I say. I can’t bear sitting for that portrait any more, and Mr. Dundas—he bores me.”

That got said, also she managed to smile at him naturally.

“That is all, dear Philip,” she added. “Pray don’t let us talk of it any more.”

“And you wish me to tell Evelyn what you say?” he asked.

“Yes, anything, anything,” she said. “I don’t want to sit to him again. But make it natural, if you can. Look at the portrait; tell him you don’t want it touched any more. Believe me, that is best.”

She paused a moment.

“I am excited and rather overwrought to-night somehow,” she said, “and you mustn’t indeed think that there is anything the matter. Indeed, there is nothing. Tell me you believe that?”

“Why, dear, of course, if you tell me so,” he said.

“I do tell you so.”

As has been mentioned before, there were two Philips; one known only to the four people who knew him best, the other the Philip who showed a sterner and harder face to the world. And though, since he was with Madge, the Philip of the inner sanctum, where only the intimates were admitted, was in possession, yet the door of the sanctum, as it were, opened for a moment, and the other Philip, quick as a lizard, glanced in. His appearance was of the most momentary duration, but he did look in.

She laid her hand on his arm as she said these last words, then left the back of the box, where they had been standing, and took a chair next Lady Ellington.

“How full it is!” she said. “Look at the stalls too; they are like an ant-heap, covered with brilliant, crawling ants. How hard it is to recognise people if one is above them. I’m sure there are a hundred people I know, but the tops of heads are like nothing except the tops of heads. How many bald heads too! What a blessing we don’t go bald like men. Who is that walking up the gangway now? I’m sure I know him. Ah! it’s Mr. Dundas.”

The sudden stream of her talk stopped, as if a tap had been turned on. Her eyes left the stalls and gazed vacantly over the boxes opposite. She was conscious of wondering what would happen next—whether she would speak, or her companion, or whether Philip would say something. Then it seemed to her nobody would say anything any more; there was to be this dreadful silence for ever. That possibility, at any rate, was soon averted, for Gladys signalled violently to Evelyn, and spoke.

“Yes, he sees us,” she said. “Mr. Home, do put the door of the box open, it is so stuffy. And Mr. Dundas I am sure is coming up. He’s such a darling, isn’t he?”

The greater part of her speech was justified by realities. Evelyn had seen them; the heat was undeniable; also, in answer to the violent signalling he had received, mere politeness, to say nothing of inclination, would have made him come. But he had seen too who sat in profile by Lady Ellington, and he took two and three steps in the stride as he mounted the staircases. And before Madge had time to put into execution her very unwise idea of asking Philip not to let him in, he was at the door of the box.

“You lordly box-holder,” he said to him, “just let me in. How are you, Lady Ellington? Yes, I’m just back from the Hermitage, to-night only, from three days in the forest with Merivale. How are you, Miss Ellington? I had to come up to-night, or I shouldn’t have been able to keep the appointment to-morrow.”

A sense of utter helplessness seized Madge; she could not even respond by a word to his greeting, for his presence merely was the only thing that mattered, the only thing she loved and dreaded. And he continued:

“Half-past two, isn’t it?” he said. “I could have come up to-morrow, of course, but it was necessary for me to have a morning’s work at the background before I troubled you again.”

Then Gladys broke in.

“Too wonderful, isn’t it?” she said, “the portrait, I mean. But, Mr. Dundas, who is that just opposite with rubies? I’m sure you’ve painted her. That great pink thing there, who must have come from the west coast of Asia Minor. How naughty of me!”

But Evelyn apparently condoned the naughtiness; he mentioned the name of the great pink thing, and turned to Madge again.

“But by half-past two I shall be ready,” he said. “Please, if it is not an impossible request, please be punctual. Art takes so long, you know. Not that life is short. Nobody ever died too soon.”

She turned to him, the diamond pendant that Philip had sent her that day glittering on the smooth whiteness of her bosom.

“I am so sorry,” she said, “and I know I ought to have let you know before, Mr. Dundas. But I can’t come to-morrow. I wrote you this evening only, I did not know you were out of town, explaining—at least saying—I could not come.”

Philip—the real, intimate Philip—heard this. And it was he only, the lover of this girl, who spoke in reply.

“We have settled that I shall come instead,” he said. “So your time won’t be wasted, Evelyn. You have to paint me too, you know, and if you want it to be characteristic, make a study of a telephone and a tape-machine. Half-past two, I think you said.”

There came a sudden hush over the crowded house as the lights went down. Philip laid his hand on Evelyn’s shoulder, as he sat in the front of the box between the two ladies.

“Half-past two, then, to-morrow,” he repeated.

The hint was plain enough, and Evelyn took it, and stumbled his way out of the box to regain his seat in the stalls. What had happened, what this all meant, he did not and could not know; he knew only what he was left with, namely, that Madge for some reason would not sit to him to-morrow. In his eager way he searched for a hundred motives, yet none satisfied him, and he was forced to fall back on the obvious and simple one, that she was busy. Nothing in the world could be more likely, his whole practical self assured him of that; but he felt somehow as if someone had leaned out of the window when he called at a house and had shouted stentoriously to the servant who opened the door, “I am not at home.” He was bound to accept a thing which he did not believe.

Then he questioned himself as to whether the fault was his. Yet that was scarcely possible, for it was not till after he had last seen her that the knowledge of his love for her had dawned on him. It was impossible that he could have made that betrayal of himself, for until she had gone he had not known that there was anything to betray. He and she had always been on terms of the frankest comradeship, yet to-night her manner had somehow been subtly yet essentially different. All the good comradeship had gone from it, the indefinable feeling of “being friends” was no longer there. Was it that the “being friends” was no longer sufficient for him, and did the change really lie in himself? He felt sure it did not; Madge was different.

Evelyn was not of an analytical mind; his inferences were based usually on instinct rather than reason, and reason was powerless to help him here and his instinct drew no inference whatever. However, Philip was coming to take her hour to-morrow, and he would try to find out something about this. Indeed, perhaps there was nothing to find, for he knew that now and for ever his own view of Madge would be coloured by the super-sensitiveness of love. Then a suspicion altogether unworthy crossed his mind. Was it possible that Philip had.... But, to do him justice, he instantly dismissed it.

Gladys, like the stag at eve, had drunk her fill of the occupants of the boxes, and turned her attention to the stage during the second act. Her mind was rather like a sparrow, it hopped about with such extraordinary briskness, and apparently found something to pick up everywhere. The things it picked up, it is true, were of no particular consequence, but they were things of a sort, and at the end of the act she announced them.

“Opera is really the best way of carrying on life,” she said. “You always sing, and at any crisis you sing a tune—a real tune. And if the crisis is really frightful, you make it the end of the act, pull the curtain down, and have some slight refreshment in privacy, and put on another frock. Mr. Home, is that Mrs. Israels there—that woman bound in green? How nice to have a husband who is a magnate of South African affairs! You can even afford to be bound in green; it doesn’t matter how you look if you are rich enough.”

Philip looked where she pointed; it certainly was Mrs. Israels.

“Yes, that is she,” he said; “but I had no idea they were as rich as her appearance indicates.”

Lady Ellington gave a little gasp of horror.

“Good gracious, I forgot you were a magnate too!” she cried. “How rude of me! But, really, you are so unlike Mrs. Israels.”

Then she sank her voice to a confidential whisper.

“Dear Mr. Home,” she said, with all the brilliance of unpremeditated invention, “do talk shop with me for one minute. Ellington told me he had got a little sum of money—you know the sort of thing, not big enough to be of any real use—ah, you mustn’t tell him I asked you. He would be furious, quite furious. Yes, and if you could just casually mention some investment which might eventually cause it to be of some use——”

Philip—she could not see him, as he was sitting behind her, with his arm on the back of her chair—could not help frowning. He was delighted to be of any use to his friends, but sometimes, as now, his help was asked in a sideways, hole-and-corner manner. Why shouldn’t her husband know? He did not like intrigue at any time; purposeless intrigue was even more tiresome. But he expunged the frown from his voice anyhow when he answered:

“Yes, I can certainly recommend you an investment or two,” he said, “but I can promise you no certainty. I can only say that I hold a stake in them myself. I suppose, as you have this—this sum of money, you will take up your shares—pay for them, I mean!”

She gave a little laugh of surprise.

“You are too delicious!” she said. “You mean we can buy them without paying for them, like a bill?”

He laughed.

“Well, I don’t recommend that,” he said. “But it can be done. However, that is not my concern, as I’m not a broker. I will send you a note in the morning.”

“Too good of you!” she said. “And you won’t tell my husband I asked you?”

“Certainly not,” said he, “though I really can’t imagine why not.”

The unreal Philip—the one, that is to say, that Madge did not know—had had the door slammed pretty smartly in his face, and when the real Philip went to Evelyn’s studio the next afternoon he had not attempted to put in another appearance. Evelyn, when he arrived, was working at the background of Madge’s portrait, and he yelled to the other to keep his eyes off it.

“You musn’t see it till it’s done!” he cried. “Just turn your back, there’s a good chap, till I put it with its face to the wall. I had no idea till I looked at it to-day how nearly it is finished. I do wish Miss Ellington could have come this afternoon instead of you—which sounds polite, but isn’t—and I really think I might have made it the last sitting. That sounds polite too. By the way, what an ass I am; I never made another appointment with her last night!”

This was all sufficiently frank, for Evelyn had managed, with the healthy optimism of which she had so much, to reason himself out of his fantastic forebodings of the evening before. It was left, therefore, for Philip, a task which was not at all to his taste, to put them all neatly back again.

“I really doubt if she could have given you an appointment off-hand,” he said, still fencing a little. “She is really so frightfully busy I hardly set eyes on her. Apparently, when you are to be married, you have to buy as many things as if you were going to live on a desert island for the rest of your life.”

Evelyn checked for a moment at this; the healthy optimism weakened a little.

“I must write and ask her,” he said, “or go and try to find her in. I must have the sitting soon; the thing won’t be half so good if I have to wait. It is all ready; it just wants her for an hour or two.”

Philip was conscious of a most heartfelt wish that Madge had not entrusted him with this errand, and he cudgelled his head to think how least offensively to perform it. Then Madge’s own suggestion came to his aid.

“I wish you would let me see it,” he said. “Pray do; I really mean it.”

Evelyn hesitated; though he had been so peremptory in its removal before, the impulse, he knew, was rather childish, it being but the desire to let the finished thing be the first thing seen. Yet, on the other hand, he so intensely believed in the portrait himself that he now felt disinclined to defer the pleasure of showing it.

“Well, you mustn’t criticise at all,” he said, “not one word of that, or I may begin to take your criticism into consideration, and I want to do this just exactly as I see it, not as anybody else does. Do you promise?”

“Certainly.”

“Very well; stand back about three yards—three yards is about its focus. Now!”

He turned the easel back into the room again, where it stood fronting Philip. And the latter did not want to criticise at all; he felt not the smallest temptation to do so. Indeed, it was idle to do so; the picture was Madge, Madge seen by an unerring eye and recorded by an unerring brush. It stood altogether away from criticism; a man might conceivably reject the whole of it, if he happened not to care about Evelyn’s art, but he could not reject a part. As Evelyn had said to Merivale, he had put there what he meant to put there, but nothing that he did not. It was brilliant, superb, a master-work.

Philip looked at it a long minute in silence.

“It is your best,” he said.

Evelyn laughed.

“It is my only picture,” he said.

Then Philip saw an opportunity, which was as welcome as it was unexpected.

“I beg you not to touch Madge’s figure or face again,” he said. “It is absolutely finished; there is nothing more to be done to it. Please!”

Evelyn gave a snort of disgust.

“That is criticism,” he said.

“Not at all; there is nothing to criticise. I mean it, really.”

Now Philip was no bad judge, and Evelyn was well aware of that. He had been as he painted, intensely anxious that Philip should like it, and Philip more than liked it. The great pleasure that that knowledge gave him was sufficient for the time to banish the forebodings that had begun to creep back, and were in a way confirmed by Philip’s wish that it should not be touched.

“Oh, Philip, is it really good?” he said. “I feel that I know it is, but I want so much that both you and she should think so.”

“I can answer for myself,” said the other.

With that the whole subject was dismissed for the time. Evelyn had given no promise that he would not touch the figure again, but Philip on his side was wise enough to dwell on that point no more, for he saw quite well that a certain inkling of the true state of things had been present, however dimly, to the other, and any further allusion would but tend to disperse that dimness and make things clearer. So the new canvas was produced, and Philip was put into pose after pose without satisfying the artist.

“No, no,” he cried; “if you stand like that, you look like an elderly St. Sebastian, and, with your hand on the table, you look like a railway director. Look here, walk out of the room, come in whistling, and sit down. I am not going to paint you portrait, you are not going to be photographed. Just pretend I’m not here.”

This went better, and soon, with inarticulate gruntings, Evelyn began to put in the lines of the figure with charcoal. At first he laboured, but before long things began to go more smoothly; his own knitted brow uncreased itself, and his hand began to work of itself. Then came a half hour in which he talked, telling his sitter of his visit to the Hermit, and the really charming days he had spent in the Forest. But that again suggested a train of thought which caused silence again and a renewal of the creased brow. But it was not at his sketch that he frowned.

Eventually he laid his tools down.

“I can’t go on any more,” he said. “Thanks very much! It’s all right.”

He wandered to the chimney-piece, lit a cigarette, and came back again.

“You mean Miss Ellington doesn’t want to give me any more sittings, don’t you?” he said. “For it is childish to expect me to believe that she can’t spare one hour between now and the end of the month.”

The childishness of that struck Philip too.

“But I ask you not to touch it any more, except of course the background,” he said. “Won’t that content you?”

“Not in the least. It is not the real reason.”

Philip was cornered, and knew it.

“It is a true one,” he said rather lamely. “After seeing the picture, I should have said it, I believe, in any case.”

“But it’s not the real reason,” repeated Evelyn. “Of course, you need not tell me the real reason, but you can’t prevent my guessing. And you can’t prevent my guessing right.”

“Ah, is this necessary?” asked Philip.

Evelyn flashed out at this.

“And is it fair on me?” he cried. “I disagree with you; I want another sitting, and she really has no right to treat me like this. I’m not a tradesman. She can’t leave me because she chooses, like that, without giving a reason.”

Philip did not reply.

“Or perhaps she has given a reason,” said Evelyn, with peculiarly annoying penetration.

Indeed, these grown-up children, boys and girls still, except in years, are wonderfully embarrassing, so Philip reflected—people who will ask childish questions, who are yet sufficiently men and women to be able to detect a faltering voice, an equivocation. Tact does not seem to exist for them; if they want to know a thing they ask it straight out before everybody. And, indeed, it is sometimes less embarrassing if there are plenty of people there; one out of a number may begin talking, and with the buzz of conversation drown the absence of a reply. But alone—tactlessness in a tÊte-À-tÊte is to fire at a large target; it cannot help hitting.

This certainly had hit, and Philip knew it was useless to pretend otherwise. And, as the just reply to tactlessness is truth, also tactless, he let Evelyn have it.

“Yes, she gave a reason,” he said, “since you will have it so. She said she was bored with the sittings. And you may tell her I told you,” he added.

Evelyn had put his head a little on one side, an action common with him when he was trying to catch an effect. He showed no symptom whatever of annoyance, his face expressed only slightly amused incredulity.

“Bored with the sittings, or bored with me?” he asked.

Philip’s exasperation increased. People in ordinary life did not ask such questions. But since, such a question was asked, it deserved its answer.

“Bored with you,” he said. “I am sorry, but there it is; bored with you.”

“Thanks,” said Evelyn. “And now, if you won’t be bored with me, do get back and stand for ten minutes more. I won’t ask for longer than that. I just want—ah, that’s right, stop like that.”

Philip, as recommended, “stopped like that,” with a mixture of amusement and annoyance in his mind. Evelyn was the most unaccountable fellow; sometimes, if you but just rapped him on the knuckles, he would call out that you had dealt a deathstroke at him; at other times, as now, you might give him the most violent slap in the face, and he would treat it like a piece of thistledown that floated by him. Of one thing, anyhow, one could be certain, he would never pretend to feel an emotion that he did not feel; he would, that is to say, never pump up indignation, and, on the other hand, if he felt anything keenly, he might be trusted to scream. Philip, therefore, as he “stopped like that,” had the choice of two conclusions open to him. The one was that Evelyn felt the same antipathy to Madge as Madge apparently felt for him. The other was that he did not believe Madge had said what he had reported her to have said. But neither conclusion was very consoling; the second because, though all men are liars, they do not like the recognition of this fact, especially if they have spoken truly.

Yet the other choice was even less satisfactory, for he himself did not believe that Evelyn was bored by Madge; nor, if he pressed the matter home, did he really believe that Madge was bored by Evelyn. She had said so, it is true, and he had therefore accepted it. But it did not seem somehow likely; down at Pangbourne they had been the best of friends, and they had been the best of friends, too, since. Yet—and here the door was again slammed on the unreal Philip—yet she had said it, and that was enough.

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