ng-list did
not often supply, though it might have been said to
overflow with more widely recognized virtues. For that
Miss Cardiff was known to be willing to sacrifice the
Thirty-nine Articles, respectable antecedents, the
possession of a dress-coat. Her willingness was the more
widely known because in the circle which fate had drawn
around her--ironically, she sometimes thought--it was
not usual to sacrifice these things. As for Janet's own
artistic susceptibility, it was a very private atmosphere
of her soul. She breathed it, one might say, only
occasionally, and with a kind of delicious shame. She
was incapable of sharing her caught-up felicity there
with any one, but it was indispensable that she should
see it sometimes in the eyes of others less contained,
less conscious, whose sense of humor might be more slender
perhaps. Her own nature was practical and managing in
its ordinary aspect, and she had a degree of tact that
was always interfering with her love of honesty. Having
established a friendship by the arbitrary law of sympathy,
it must be admitted that she had an instinctive way of
trying to strengthen it by voluntary benefits, for
affection was a great need with her.

It was only about this time and very gradually that she
began to realize how much more she cared for John Kendal
than for other people. Since it seemed to be obvious
that Kendal gave her only a share of the affectionate
interest he had for humanity at large, the realization
was not wholly agreeable, and Janet doubtless found
Elfrida, on this account, even a more valuable distraction
than she otherwise would. One of the matters Miss Bell
was in the habit of discussing with some vivacity was
the sexlessness of artistic sympathy. Upon this subject
Janet found her quite inspired. She made a valiant effort
to illumine her thoughts of Kendal by the light Elfrida
threw upon such matters, and although she had to confess
that the future was still hid in embarrassed darkness,
she did manage to construct a theory by which it was
possible to grope along for the present. She also cherished
a hope that this trouble would leave her, as a fever
abates in the night, that she would awake some morning,
if she only had patience, strong and well. In other things
Miss Cardiff, was sometimes jarred rather than shocked
by the American girl's mental attitudes, which, she began
to find, were not so posed as her physical ones. Elfrida
often left her repelled an