By mid-December the portrait needed only the finishing touches, and, at his invitation, several of his artist-friends came to see it. Commendation of the work was general, combined with a certain admiration of the unknown sitter. Wyndham could not help feeling that there was much speculation as to her identity, and he gave himself all the more credit as an artist for the qualities with which he had endowed her, and which alone bestowed upon her this interesting individuality.

Wyndham, who made it a point never to have his work interrupted, had so arranged these visits that none of his friends had stumbled upon the Robinsons. To the not infrequent query of "Who is she?" he usually responded, with a half-humorous gleam in his eye, "She might be Brown or Jones: as a matter of fact she is Robinson—the daughter of a respectable citizen of that ilk." Yet what more, in sober truth, could he tell them about her? He might have put it differently, but it was the information he supposed they wanted. Yet one day he was to learn that this conciseness had been construed as reserve. Sadler lounged in one Sunday afternoon, when, as it happened, Wyndham was awaiting his sister, whose long-deferred visit had at last been arranged for that day. And, in the course of conversation, the visitor soon let slip out a word that struck Wyndham like a blow. Sadler had begun by referring to Miss Robinson as "your friend;" but, presently, as he still reviewed the painting, out came "your fiancÉe."

"My fiancÉe! What the devil——?"

Sadler apologised; a shrewd meaning smile clung about his massive jaws. "Of course everybody understands that it's a secret, but when you've heard of a thing, it's difficult to keep it from slipping out, don't y' know."

"This is all too absurd!" Wyndham was suddenly impelled to laugh.

"What's absurd about it? It seems likely enough to me; else I shouldn't have believed it."

"An artist cannot accept a commission without being engaged to his sitter?" urged Wyndham indignantly.

"Things have a way of getting about, you know," maintained Sadler.

"They have indeed," said Wyndham.

"Well, what are you so annoyed at?" shouted Sadler. "You make me tired. There's nothing discreditable in being engaged by rumour to a wealthy and beautiful woman."

Wyndham laughed again. Beautiful! he thought. If only Sadler had met the everyday Miss Robinson shopping with her mother in the Finchley Road!

"Seriously, do you consider her beautiful?" he asked in a more genial tone, suddenly curious to hear Sadler's real impression.

"What is beauty?" demanded Sadler. "The moment you can define it, it ceases to be beauty. Its essence is elusiveness. A touch, a flash—and you've got it! The lines here are not classical, but your Miss Robinson has distinct individuality. The eyes are fine. She looks the sort that would stick to a man. Gee-rusalem! I shouldn't mind having a shot at her myself. Look here, old fellow, will you introduce me to her? If there's nothing in it for you, give me a chance."

"Goodbye," said Wyndham sweetly. "You won't think me rude, but I've an engagement in a minute or two."

"Right!" said Sadler. "I'll be off. Goodbye, Wyndham, old chap. You're a real damned old swell. Gee-rusalem! you're just great at getting rid of people."

Left alone, Wyndham gave way to annoyance again. It was a fine thing! Artists themselves ought to know better than to indulge in tittle-tattle of that kind. He worked himself up into a towering rage. Then Mary rang the bell, and he had abruptly to recall his graciousness.

It was her first visit to the studio since the new turn of affairs; her multifarious duties as worker among the sick and poor after her day's teaching leaving her so little freedom. They had of course seen each other in the interim; for Wyndham had himself looked in at the "Buildings" in Kensington whenever his engagements had taken him that way, and he had been fortunate enough just to catch her at home for a few moments on several occasions. The poor girl had been overflowing with happiness—had not a window on the skies been opened, too, for her? And though both had so far delicately avoided all reference to that old painful interview, she had yet often been impelled to throw herself at his feet in contrition. Only she felt that he, in his great magnanimity, would be hurt by such an abasement.

When he brought the picture well into the light, her first exclamation was, "Oh, how beautiful!" Then she kissed him impulsively.

The tribute gave him more pleasure than all the professional praise that had been showered on the portrait.

"What a charming girl! I should like to know her," were her next words. "She has such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit as beautiful as you've painted her."

Wyndham's vexation at his rumoured engagement seemed to take wing and be off into the airs. He even felt a shy pride in Miss Robinson. "I'm sure you'll like her," he said. "Shall I arrange a tea here one of these days before Christmas?"

"That would be lovely." Mary's voice was full of enthusiasm. "School breaks up in a day or two, and I shall have so much more time to myself," she added, still gazing at the picture.

"Any criticism?"

"None," she returned. "You have caught the character with rare genius. She is so simple and unaffected; one could repose absolute trust in her.... You see," she continued, smiling, "I feel so strong an interest in her as being the beginning of your good fortune. I have a sort of conviction—don't laugh at me, please—that it has come to stay."

When he poured out her tea, she suddenly laughed, remembering she had a message for him which she had forgotten to deliver in the absorption of contemplating Miss Robinson; in fact, there was a heap of things she had wanted to talk over. The most important, at any rate, was the question of his Christmas holiday. Aunt Eleanor wanted Mary to spend the two or three weeks with her, but she was anxious that Wyndham, too, should join their little party over the New Year—since she now understood that he had emerged to some extent from his austere seclusion. A refusal Aunt Eleanor would take to heart—she naturally regarded her own home as his, as the place to which his mind should spontaneously turn at such a season.

Wyndham welcomed the invitation. It was more than two years since he had passed any time in Hertfordshire, and the visit itself, which last Christmas he had sullenly avoided, would afford him the greatest satisfaction. Much as he appreciated the Robinson housekeeping, it was a relief to feel definitely that he was not staying the year-end at his studio, with no resource save their cordial hospitality.

Mary went off in great elation. "I don't know when I have felt so happy as to-day," she declared, as she kissed him. "I leave my best love for the work—and for the lady as well," she added, smiling.

It was arranged on the door-step that they should travel down to Hertfordshire together, and Mary insisted he must leave her to look up the trains, and make all the arrangements.

"It is just the sort of task I enjoy," she assured him. "Looking up trains to get into the country always sends me into a sort of happy excitement; it is part of the joy of anticipation." Wyndham was left, somehow, a greater admirer of Miss Robinson. He studied her again in his own picture, and accepted her as a far finer creature than he had realised—even allowing for this idealisation of her in paint. "My feeling against her must be purely morbid, and it's really too bad when she likes my society so much!—she has no idea how much she shows it." Her unsophistication, hitherto a deficiency, began to take on a certain charm. How refreshing this womanly simplicity in a world of showy coquettes and chattering, feather-headed females! Even Mary, who was so shrewd and fastidious, had been compelled to pay her homage. The Robinson family was charming! What fine old-world courtesy in the father—many a born aristocrat might well take a lesson from him! How unassuming, too, the mother, full of quiet virtues and womanly excellencies!

And Mary's significant smile remained with him. Good gracious! was she, too, taking the sort of thing for granted? This power of suggestion from every side was annoying: still—it would not be right to let that prejudice him!

Wyndham paced to and fro feverishly. Why should he not——?

It was the first time he was impelled to put the question to himself in clear seeking. Obscure in his mind these last weeks, it crystallised itself brusquely—surprised him with its swift definiteness: but he broke it off, all unprepared to meet it yet. He had a shamefaced remembrance of his matrimonial conversation with Sadler, of the lofty convictions he had then expressed.

Well, he had spoken honestly, he argued, and his convictions had changed not a jot. "Only now that I am face to face with the actual possibility, I see aspects of the case that then escaped me. Till now I have always viewed marriage as the great central fact to which the whole of life has to converge, from which everything else takes its significance. Hence it was a case of the ideal or nothing—there seemed no other choice. But now I recognise that matrimony that is not ideal may yet take its place as an accessory to life, may be accepted as a good without filling the whole horizon."

He resumed his feverish pacing. Well, why should he not seize an opportunity which presented itself so favourably? By the loss of his money he had become reduced in his own world to the rank of a mere "detrimental." Had he not already felt that sufficiently? He laughed harshly at the memory. No, no, a Lady Betty he could not hope to marry. Such wondrous beings did not grow on every bush; nor did life permit of his setting out in search of one. This holding out for the perfect ideal only meant humiliation and sadness in the end. The world—the hard world of fact—was like that, and you had to take it as you found it. No folly could be greater than to forget that life was as it was, and not as you thought it ought to be!

Yet he vacillated again. Did he really want to marry at all? Had he not decided—wholly, absolutely, irrevocably—that his business in life was work? Though he would never have spoken of it to another, he was proud in his heart of his sentimental loyalty to Lady Betty, and marriage seemed almost an unfaithfulness. Better perhaps to bend himself sternly to the task before him!

Yes, but this task before him—unaided, he could never accomplish it. Let him confess it now, since he was master again of his full sanity. He had been beaten, smashed! But for this timely piece of good fortune all would have been at an end by now. The Robinson support once withdrawn, he would not be strong enough to stand. He had gauged his powers in the great contest, and, in this moment of supreme lucidity, he foresaw he must be conquered again. One portrait could not suffice for the rebuilding of his future; even on the money side his fee would be absorbed immediately. And the finishing of the great picture meant more outlay. To try to "fake" it without proper models would be a folly of follies—far better to abandon it altogether. His blind optimism at the turn of things had certainly been of benefit to him, had stimulated him to his best; but with this first piece of work practically accomplished, the moment for estimating and facing the situation with mathematical exactitude had certainly arrived.

He could not fight the world alone. However he might desire nothing in life save self-consecration to work, he could not even achieve that much without reinforcing his own strength by means that were unexceptionable and honourable.

He came to an abrupt stop as the words swept from his brain. "By Jove, that hits the nail pretty square!" he murmured, his lips ashen. Naked and ugly, his primary motive stood before him as in a mirror. For one clear moment he saw himself brutally, and shuddered. "I am not in love with her. If she were dowerless, I should never have worked myself up to this stage of appreciation; I should never have dressed up the Robinson menage to make it palatable. The portrait would never have come out like this. I should have dashed in a brutal modern study of a plain woman, full of bravura passages. If I am going in for a thing of this kind, let me at least be honest with myself."

And then he laughed with the irony of it all. He, the lover of poesie; he, the fastidious gourmet in things of the spirit; who had followed the cult of all that was lyrical and exquisite; he planned to mate beneath him for the sake of crude money. Faugh! A vulture hovering over a heap of carrion!

But the violence of the metaphor brought a reaction. "Rubbish!" he murmured, and paced again. The pacing grew into a striding. Up and down the length of the studio he stamped, face and eyes working intensely. "I am exaggerating. I am morbid about it all; I am rushing to the other extreme. When have I ever hidden from myself that the thing would be primarily a means to my great impersonal end—I may as well admit it has been in my mind all along! What could be a greater degradation than my old way of living? Poor Mary! Why, I owe it to her as a duty to put an end to all this misery. I'd face anything on earth now to make up to her for the past! Besides, the idea is not at all so inhuman as I am trying to make out. In a mildish sort of way, of course, I am really fond of Miss Robinson. Her virtues are a reality! She is plain, I admit—very plain; but my eye has learnt to see her its own way—the way of the portrait!"

Brusquely he flung his hesitations from him. Why should he not marry Miss Robinson? Even in the driest aspect of the case, the match was not inequitable. The "crude money"—yes, let him use the words deliberately—the "crude money" on her side; on his a full equivalent in his personal self, his no doubt brilliant career once sordid matters were disposed of, and a sphere of existence that was obviously interesting to her. If he brought no immediate fortune himself, his future earnings, once he were free to work without anxiety, might well be considerable. What was there in the idea to wound his pride? How absurd his metaphor of the vulture!

And then he turned to dwell again with relief at the pleasanter aspects of the case. Even if he were not attaining to passionate poetic dreams, he would yet be carrying into effect a charming domestic ideal of peace and tranquillity. And the very poetry of marriage began to invest Miss Robinson with something of its own glamour. He saw her in a bridal veil holding a big bouquet. His enthusiasm mounted.

And Mary's voice seemed to echo again in the studio: "What a charming girl! She has such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit as beautiful as you've painted her." He almost felt himself blushing in embarrassment; it was as if he himself were being commended. "She is so simple and unaffected," went on Mary's voice with its unmistakable ring of conviction. "One could repose absolute trust in her."

How shrewd and true was his sister's reading of the character! Moreover, Mary had confessed to an almost superstitious thrill at gazing on the features of the woman who had been the beginning of his good fortune. Could he say that he was entirely free from the same sort of superstitious sentiment? Alice Robinson had begun his good fortune; why should she not complete it? If only that confounded set of fools hadn't started their silly tittle-tattle!

Undoubtedly there was a substratum of truth and good sense in the views so stoutly and passionately maintained by Sadler; only Sadler imagined it was possible to compromise, to step down from the ideal and yet find great happiness. He himself would give up the dream of happiness in the ideal sense: his would be frankly a case of convenience, though were it not for the many virtues of Miss Robinson, his mind would never have become reconciled to it. No! not even were she as rich as Croesus. He must do that amount of justice to himself. At his age he could appreciate the importance of the rarer qualities of character in his life's mate—loyalty, modesty, devotion! He would be making a wise marriage! not a sordid one. He would be choosing the deep calm of life instead of the elusive and often mocking flash of superficial passion and beauty.

And, on his part, he was prepared to be the best and most dutiful of husbands!

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