In the early days of their acquaintanceship Mrs. Harding had felt very favorably disposed toward Marian, but gradually appreciation had given place to envy, and liking had been displaced by dislike. She understood that Marian was her superior not only in beauty, which she would have forgiven, but in education and social standing, which deeply galled her. She realized how badly she compared with Marian in conversation and the amenities of life. At first she laughed, shrugged her sturdy shoulders, consoling herself with the thought that after all men do not fall in love with a tongue; but gradually, as she realized that pretty speech is an excellent support to a pretty face, she began to hate Marian’s dainty ways and facile talk. More than once, too, Marian had shown by some little gesture or some uncontrolled look that Mrs. Harding’s coarse coarseness annoyed and jarred upon her. The latter’s treachery also filled her with the spite that so often comes to a mean spirit, who has wronged another. It was not the first time that Davis had called on her to spy upon a woman with whom she was upon terms of familiarity, but in other cases the victims had always been those to whom she had not made any pretense of real friendship and whose confidence she had not sought. But Marian had trusted her, and the betrayal of this trust, combined with jealousy, drove her for refuge from compunction to hatred and malice.

A further point was this. Some of the practices to which Mrs. Harding was addicted were obviously distasteful to Marian; it was a temptation to her, therefore, to reduce Marian to her own level, and to this temptation she now yielded. The episode with Geraldstein pleased her, as a step in the direction to which she desired to drive Marian.

One of the practices which was at present abhorrent to Marian was over-indulgence in drink. Once she had been spending the evening at a rather noisy restaurant with Mrs. Harding; they had met there two young fellows, of that age when women and wine are temptations all the more deadly because the yielding to them is held in reprobation by those from whose authority they have but recently been released. Marian was utterly bored by the pointless and often indecent jests, and watched with disgust the quantity of wine which her friend drank and its influence upon her.

Mrs. Harding saw that she was being watched.

“Don’t mind her,” she said to the youth who sat beside Marian, pestering her with his plain-spoken attentions. “She’s young and is afraid of being jolly. Some night she’ll get a bottle of fizzy inside her, and’ll be all over the place before she knows where she is. Once bitten, never shy again. Drink up, Marian, it won’t hurt you. Let’s have another bottle, boys.”

Marian left the party, her departure not meeting with any real protest, and the next morning received a visit from Mrs. Harding, whose skin was unwholesome to look at and her eyes blowzed and bloodshot.

“I suppose you’ll tell me it serves me right,” she said, “but my head’s aching fit to split. I wouldn’t have come down, but I’ve run out of brandy; don’t preach, dear, but just be good and give me a B. and S.”

For a week or so after the dinner with West, Marian’s life was very quiet outwardly. Inwardly she lived tossed this way and that by a turmoil of contrary desires. She realized with terror that she was losing grip upon herself; that her physical emotions were daily growing more and more imperious. When she had sundered herself from her old and had plunged into this new life, she had fully counted on using her bodily gifts to procure her the ends for which her soul thirsted. But this life was different to what she had expected it to be, and now her mental desires were rapidly growing weaker, and the lust of mere pleasure and excitement was usurping their place.

Her visit to Maddison at Rottingdean and her friendship with West had stayed for a while this degeneration, and now she had come to look upon the latter as the one bulwark remaining between her and a life of promiscuous debauchery.

The time, too, was approaching for her to go down to Rottingdean again, and the thought of seeing Maddison was very distasteful. His letters came regularly, full of love and devotion, telling how much he missed her, how often he thought of her, how difficult he found it to stick to his work, how dissatisfied he was with the result, and how he counted the hours to the day when he should see her again. She wrote at less length and less frequently than he did, and each time the effort was more laborious to her. She was anxious that he should not discover her discontent, still more that he should not obtain any inkling that he was not as dear and as necessary to her as she was to him. Now and again dread came to her when she thought of what might happen when she dismissed him.

Her loneliness rendered all these thoughts the more distressing to her; she was unable to escape from herself, and herself was the very worst and most hurtful company that she could have.

Broken sleep, which quickly became night-long sleeplessness, was the inevitable result.

One night she lay awake, restlessly shifting her position from time to time; striving to rest her mind by fixing it upon matters of indifference, but without success. Then of a sudden there swept down upon her a terror that had often stricken her when a child, but from which she had not suffered of recent years. What if this sleeplessness should prove incurable and kill her? Or the beginning of a dangerous illness? She turned cold and faint with the horror of the thought of death. Not of the physical pain with which it might be accompanied, but of the thing itself. She could not lie there any longer in the dark; turning up the light brought no comfort, only rendering the idea of death more real. She imagined herself lying there, a nurse in the room, Maddison, perhaps, by her side. She knowing, they knowing, that Death stood outside the door, his grisly knuckle sounding for the admission that could not be denied. There was added an oppressive sense of being alone; she refrained with difficulty from shrieking, just for the sake of hearing some living response.

She recalled how once, soon after their marriage, her husband had suffered from a long spell of sleeplessness, brought upon him by over-work, and how she had told him again and again that if he would only exert his will he could overcome his trouble. She remembered, too, that the doctor had ordered him to set aside his teetotal scruples, and drink each night before going to bed a glass of brandy and water, and how much she had disliked the smell of the spirit.

She slipped out of bed, shivering, for the night was bitter cold, and having wrapped herself in her dressing gown made her way to the dining room. She poured out about a wineglassful of brandy into a tumbler, added water, and drank it hastily. She shuddered as she put the glass down, but the quick warmth of the liquor comforted her, running like heat through her frame.

After a while she slept heavily, wakening late in the morning, parched and unrefreshed. She was not hungry, but drank her tea eagerly, feeling refreshed for a time.

The following night she placed the decanter of brandy and the water carafe on the table by her bedside, and as soon as she became restless had recourse to them. This time the spirit did not soothe but excited her; wild, aimless thoughts chased one another rapidly, until it seemed as if her brain would burst. She drank again, pouring out a larger amount of the brandy than before; stupor, then restless slumber resulting.

The thought of each approaching night came to be a terror by day. She sat up late reading—reading until her eyes fell heavy with sleep. Then to bed and to sleeplessness.

She saw no one; Geraldstein had dropped her; West did not come, and she did not see anything of Mortimer. Mrs. Harding came in once or twice, but her presence was an irritation.

Then came the appointed day for her going to Maddison, and, to her surprise, it was with a sense almost of relief that she found herself in the train, speeding away from London.

He met her at the station, and although he said little, she could not but discern in his face the intense joy it was to him to see her again. He looked tired and troubled; even the light of love that sprang into his eyes as they rested on her did not dispel from them the curious look that shows in them when a man is eagerly searching after that which he cannot find. As it was raining they drove the whole way to the cottage, not talking much as they went, he seemingly content to be quiet, holding her hand tightly in his own.

Mrs. Witchout greeted Marian cordially.

“You don’t lookaswell, though, as when you went away,” she said critically; “does she, Mr. Maddison? I do hear as rosy cheeks ain’t the fashun in Lunnon. But, there, Lunnon fashuns ain’t the onlyonesworth follering. Lunch is ready; Mr. Maddison says I ought to call it luncheon, but I don’t see that it matters what you callthingso long as peopleknows whatyermeans.”

“And how’s the work getting on?” Marian asked, as they went into the studio.

“Lamely. Only hobbling. I’ve finished Mrs. West. What do you think of it?”

“What does she is more to the point?”

“No; what do you?”

Marian looked long at the portrait before she answered. It was evidently very like the original, but there was something in the face that puzzled her.

“You told me she was a doll!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, but I’ve discovered that dolls have hearts as well as sawdust in them.”

“Oh!”

“Is that all you notice?”

“Ye-es, I think so,” she answered. “I like it.”

He laid his hands on her shoulders, and moved her so that the light fell full upon her face; then scanned her features closely.

“I’m right,” he said, “right. Go and look in the glass there, then look at the picture again, and see if you don’t find something of yourself reflected in what I meant to be a portrait of another woman.”

Marian looked closely again at the picture; it was true; as he said there was a distinct semblance of herself, a fleeting likeness which it was impossible to define, but unmistakable.

“You see, Marian, I’ve tried doing without you and I cannot; we must never leave each other again—why should we? We love each other—you do love me still, dear, don’t you?”

“Yes, George, of course I do.”

“Of course you do! That sounds so cold. It seems to me this way,” he said, sitting down, drawing her on to his knee and resting his head against her shoulder; “life’s so short, and there’s only one thing in it worth having; your love’s just all to me. So why waste any of our time by being apart? We can go away and live quite quietly somewhere, or live here—it’s cheap enough; and if I only paint a picture a year we shall be well off, even if they’re not my best,” he added, sighing and looking at the portrait.

She did not answer him, but fondled his hair and pressed him close to her, which she knew would speak to him more eloquently than any words she could put together. Never before had she felt quite so helpless to deal with this love of his, which had grown so much more intense than she had counted upon its becoming. At any rate the time was not yet come for her to show him anything of coldness, and her cool fingers ran through his thick dark hair and he was comforted.

“I must put you into another picture; make myself immortal by painting you always; you must be my Emma. What shall it be next? As a Bacchante? Your eyes wild with excitement and your cheeks glowing like red roses? Your lips just parted and your little teeth peeping out between? I could do it; by Jove, I will do it. We’ll begin to-morrow; we mustn’t work to-day. That’s my mistake! I ought never to have tried to paint without you as my model.”

“You’re forgetting me!” she said, an idea coming to her, which held out promise of sufficient excuse for leaving him again soon.

“Forgetting you—do you think that I ever forget you for a single moment? You know—I often used to think myself in love, but it never lasted. Then I began to believe that love wasn’t very much after all, and that people were fools or ignorant who said it was the only thing in life worth having. You’ve taught me better, dear. But what did you mean by saying I’d forgotten you?”

“You’ve—left me out of your plans!”

“Left you out? Why, you’re just everything!”

“Not quite. You couldn’t go on loving a woman who had no pride, could you?”

“I could love you whatever you were.”

“But that’s not right, George. When I—came to you, you were a great man, but not nearly so great as you were going to be. And now I have spoiled all your future and you don’t seem to have any ambition left. No,” she said, forcing herself away from him and with a gesture forbidding him to follow her, “I’m not going to spoil your life. If I come between you and your work—I’ll—leave you.”

“Leave me!”

The agony in his voice startled her.

“Leave me!” he repeated, striding across to her and holding her fiercely to him. “I think I’d kill you before I’d let you do that.”

“Don’t, George, don’t,” she gasped; “you’re frightening me.”

“I’m so sorry, love, but—why do you say such horrid things to me?”

“What I said was right. If I can’t help you with your work, George, I’ll do this; if in a few days you can’t begin a picture without me in it, can’t prove that you can work with me near you—I’ll go away and I’ll stay away until you can tell me that I can come back safely to you.”

“So that’s your plan! But it will take two to carry it out, and I won’t make the second. I simply won’t let you go. So that’s settled.”

“You don’t want me to be happy? Is your love so selfish as all that?”

“So selfish!” he said, freeing her, dropping his arms, standing amazed. “Selfish! Oh, my love, you’re right, right. It was damnably selfish; I was just thinking of myself. But—are you happy when you’re not with me?”

“You know I’m not, George. But—I’m so proud of you, and I should hate myself if I knew I was standing in your way. I should be unhappy with you then. Besides, dear, is—is——”

“Yes?”

“Is it right to love me like that? Love ought to help you, not harm you.”

“Help me! It has helped me to understand what happiness is. I didn’t know that before.”

“Well, George, you mustn’t kill my pride; keep me proud of you, proud of having helped you, proud of myself. There, we’ll talk no more about it now, and to-morrow, or the next day, you shall start another picture, only I will not be your model.”

“But——”

“No! We’re not going to argue the first day we are together. Look, the rain’s over and the sun’s trying to come out. I’ll run up and put on my country boots and hat, and we’ll go for a walk over the downs.”