The definite figure of Mr. Shanner with his magnificent appropriation of Miss Robinson merely impelled Wyndham to smash up this rival at once and have done with the business. The evening had obscured all the repugnance that lay in the depths of him; had stimulated roseate conceivings of possible felicity.

On the Tuesday he found his opportunity. Miss Robinson came alone, explaining that her mother would not appear till the time fixed for the tea-party. The weather was rigorously wintry now, and a biting wind blew in as the door was opened. A new layer of snow had fallen during the last hour, and Miss Robinson had come across wrapped in a big, heavy cloak. He ushered her through the ante-room with a charming air of solicitude, to which she vibrated like a struck harp, and gave him the softest and tenderest intonations of her voice. He helped her off with the cloak, and hung it away carefully, the whilst she stooped and warmed her long hands at the lavishly heaped-up fire. Her throat and arms now showed at their best, and her face had some strange, almost mystic undertone of happiness. As she bent down there before his eyes, she completely blotted out the impression of the insignificant plain woman whom he had suddenly come upon in the streets; of the everyday Miss Robinson that at one time had almost become an obsession. At that moment she was well-nigh the idealised figure he had painted. Yet there was something even subtler in her which he had missed, and knew that he had missed. But, studying his own work again, he saw that that was just as well; for the picture existed as a separate creation, a piece of painting first and foremost, in which he had exhibited the cleverness of his brush. It was paint—distinguished, intellectual paint—more than it was human portraiture; in spite of all the significance with which he had tried to invest it. As this new truth dawned upon him, he kept glancing from sitter to canvas, and from canvas to sitter, with a strange, surprised interest. But her hands suddenly arrested his attention, and he became aware that, for the first time since he had known her, they were absolutely bare of rings.

"You have no rings to-day," he remarked, his voice showing his surprise. "I might have wanted to touch up the hands."

Her colour deepened unaccountably. "I thought the hands were finished," she breathed, all of a flutter. "Shall I go back for them?" "What a goose it is!" he said lightly, and she smiled again, as if pleased they were on so charmingly intimate a footing.

"Shall we not need them?" she asked.

"I think not," he answered, studying the hands a little. "You were perfectly right; they had best remain as they are."

She took the pose, and for a minute or two he worked silently; she maintaining the perfect stillness that had at first been her cherished ambition. He was still pondering about her bare hands and her confusion at his having observed them, and light came to him. Was it to show him that no man—not even Mr. Shanner—had any claim on her? After the close attentions he had witnessed the other evening, was she afraid he might infer that some understanding existed between herself and Mr. Shanner?—that one of these rings, even if not a formal pledge, might be his and worn for his sake? Her neglect of such favourite trinkets to-day was then to indicate that no one of them had any special sentimental interest for her!

"You are sitting perfectly to-day," he presently remarked. "It doesn't tire you?"

"What an unkind suggestion! I thought I had got beyond the amateur stage long ago."

"I'm sorry. You didn't hear, though, the beginning of my remark." "I agreed with that," she answered with a sly humour.

"So that it hadn't to be reckoned. Do you know all women are like that?"

She considered. His brush made strokes. "Like what?" she asked at last.

"If you pay them the greatest of tributes, but are incautious enough to hint the tiniest of qualifications, the tribute dwindles to nothing, and they remain tremendously annoyed at the suggestion of imperfection."

"Am I like that?"

"You were just now."

"I was such a bother and a hindrance to you when we started," she explained. "I used to get tired every few minutes. And now at last, just when I am flattering myself on my improvement——"

"You take me too seriously," he broke in.

"You were serious," she insisted.

"Serious—yes; in so far as I was afraid you were tired. I didn't even mean it as a qualification of my tribute; it was only genuine concern for you."

"How stupid of me!" she exclaimed. "I ought to have felt that at once."

There was another spell of silence; he intensely absorbed in his brush, she obviously considering.

"I am not really like that," she said at last.

He stood away from the canvas, glanced critically at certain points, levelled his mahl-stick at her, took up a rag, and wiped a bit out. "Like what?" he asked.

"Like women."

"But you are. You see, it is sticking in your mind." He smiled wickedly.

"You fight too hard," she pleaded.

"I'm sorry," he said remorsefully. "I shall not do it again."

"Oh, I'm not a bit hurt," she protested. "I was only thinking the point over."

"I want to hear what you were thinking." His smile and tone were meaningly affectionate, as if they would add "little child."

"I meant that I should never really be hurt by qualifications. I have never been used to having nice things said to me. I certainly do not deserve tributes, but I know I deserve all possible qualifications."

"Oh, if you please! I'll not allow even Miss Robinson to say such slanderous things about so valued a friend of mine."

"So I have been slandering a friend of yours! I'm so sorry. Forgive me."

"I suppose I must—though I find it hard—very hard."

"I do believe you are paying me a tribute," she laughed. "Now for the qualifications. You shall see how stoical I am."

"Qualifications—none!" He threw down his brushes and palette, as if to emphasise the declaration. "I'm tired first," he sang out gaily. "Let us rest."

"There!" she exclaimed. "What a triumph for me!"

"But you say it so gently that it is a pleasure to concede you the victory. You are an ideal foe."

"Oh, if you please, I don't want to be a foe. ... How cold it is!" She stooped and held her hands again to the fire.

"No, child," he said gently, "of course we aren't foes. We are very good friends indeed, aren't we?" He held out his hand, as if to clench the understanding, so clearly and warmly acknowledged.

She was all a-flutter again, though, as was her habit, she covered it up with a smile. "Very good friends!" she returned, with conviction, and she put her hand in his, and let it linger there. "I have always lived reserved and to myself," she added thoughtfully. "You may think it strange, but I have never had a friend before—not even a woman friend."

"I can well understand your shrinking away from people. No doubt most people would jar on you."

"It would hurt me if I thought that. I should not like to despise anybody. I should have loved to have friends: only I have never had the gift of making them. Sometimes I am thankful that I am not brilliant—I might so easily have become unendurable and full of self-conceit." "Ah, you are something better than brilliant," he exclaimed. "It needs an exceptional spirit to appreciate you. You are so much out of the ordinary in every way, in looks——"

"No, no," she interrupted in protest. "I have no looks. I have no illusions about that."

"Look at your own portrait," he insisted. "I say it is the kind of beauty it needs a gift to appreciate. In beauty—as in everything else—the crowd runs after the obvious and the commonplace."

"You are the first that ever thought I possessed good looks. You have given them to me."

"I have not even done you justice. I have omitted more than I have suggested. My sister thinks you are beautiful; all my artist friends who have seen the picture share her opinion."

She was silent, almost distressed; she could not meet his gaze, but turned her eyes away.

"It gave me pleasure to hear you appreciated," he continued. "You are above conventional compliments. I withdraw what I said before. You are not like other women."

Her breath came and went as she listened, but she smiled bravely.

"At any rate I am not like some women. I never could take any of the deeper aspects of life in a merely frivolous spirit. With me it is a loyal, deep friendship, or nothing."

He took her hand again. "Believe me, dear child, the friendship on my part is equally loyal and deep. It is for life."

"For life," she murmured, suddenly grown pale.

He dashed in, determined to strike home.

"I prize you at your full worth, since I am one of those who can measure it. I have the deepest affection for you. I believe I could make you happy. Don't you understand? I offer you my whole life—that is, if you think me worthy."

"Worthy!" she echoed, in dazed distress. "How can you think me worthy of you! I have lived in narrow retirement. I am nothing."

He seized both her hands now. "No more of this. I ask for your promise."

"I love you with all my heart and soul. But I am not good enough for you."

"I thought we agreed you were not like other women, and yet there is this stiff-necked obstinacy." He drew her nearer to him, and kissed her on the lips. "It is settled—you are to be my wife."

His domination seemed to hypnotise her. "Yes, I will do my best to make you a perfect wife, dear," she murmured, as if bowing to his irresistible will.

He held her hands tighter, and looked into her face as if proudly. She met his look with glistening eyes: she was deathly pale now, and her lips, too, were colourless. Then abruptly she drew her hands from him, and, as if impelled on some tide of womanhood that rose in high music above all hesitations, above the fluttering timidity of her whole life, she threw her arms round his neck, and kissed his lips with a long abandonment.

"I am now almost afraid of your sister," she whispered presently. "I shall feel on my trial."

"But she has fallen in love with you already," he reassured her again. "And Mary is the sweetest and gentlest soul in the world."

"I know I shall love her," she said. Her head hung down a moment in meditation. "But let us continue the work now, dear. I know you wish to have it finished to-day."

But he had little now to add to it, and he had made his last stroke before the dusk of the afternoon overtook him.

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