there
would be somehow an outrage in it. And she would not
amuse herself with him; she would sacrifice that, and be
quite frank and simple always. So that when it came to
pass--here Elfrida retired into a lower depth of
consciousness--there would be only a little pity and a
little pain, and no reproach or regret. There was a delay
in the arrival of the next letter which Elfrida felt to
be unaccountable, a delay of nearly three weeks. She took
it with an odd rush of feeling from the hand of the
housemaid who brought it up, and locked herself in alone
with it.

A few days later, driving through Bryanston Street in a
hansom, Elfrida saw the windows of Kendal's studio wide
open. She leaned forward to realize it with a little
tumult of excitement at the possibility it indicated,
half turned to bid the cabman stop, and rolled on undecided.
Presently she spoke to him.

"Please go back to number sixty-three," she said, "I want
to get out there," and in a moment or two she was tripping
lightly up the stairs.

Kendal, in his shirt-sleeves, with his back to the door,
was bending over a palette that clung obstinately to the
hardened round dabs of color he had left upon it six
weeks before. He threw it down at Elfrida's step, and
turned with a sudden light of pleasure in his face to
see her framed in the doorway, looking at him with an
odd shyness and silence. "You spirit!" he cried, "how
did you know I had come back?" and he held her hand for
just an appreciable instant, regarding her with simple
delight. Her tinge of embarrassment became her sweetly,
and the pleasure in his eyes made her almost instantly
aware of this.

"I didn't know," she said, with a smile that shared his
feeling. "I saw the windows open, and I thought the woman
downstairs might be messing about here. They can do such
incalculable damage when they really set their minds to
it, these _concierge_ people. So I--I came up to interfere.
But it is you!" She looked at him with wide, happy eyes
which sent the satisfaction she found in saying that to
his inmost consciousness.

"That was extremely good of you," he said, and in spite
of himself a certain emphasis crept into the commonplace.
"I hardly realize myself that I am here. It might very
well be the Skaagerak outside."

"Does the sea in Norway sound like that?" Elfrida asked,
as the roar of London came across muffled from Piccadilly.
She made a tittle theatrical movement of her head to
listen, and