Court.

Yes, Miss Bell was in, Miss Cardiff could go straight
up, Mrs. Jordan informed her, and she mounted the last
flight of stairs with a beating heart. Her mission was
important--oh, so important! She had compromised with
her conscience in planning it, and now if it should fail!
Her hand trembled as she knocked. In answer to Elfrida's
"Come in!" she pushed the door slowly open. "It is I,
Janet," she said; "may I?"

"But of course!"

Elfrida rose from a confusion of sheets of manuscript
upon the table and came forward, holding out her hand
with an odd gleam in her eyes, and an amused, slightly
excited smile about her lips.

"How do you, do?" she said, with rather ostentatiously
suppressed wonder. "Please sit down, but not in that
chair. It is not quite reliable. This one, I think is
better. How are--how are _you?_"

The slight emphasis she placed on the last word was airy
and regardless. Janet would have preferred to have been
met by one of the old affectations; she would have felt
herself taken more seriously.

"It's very late to come, and I interrupt you," she said
awkwardly, glancing at the manuscript.

"Not at all. I am very happy--"

"But of course I had a special reason for coming. It is
serious enough, I think, to justify me."

"What can it be!"

"_Don't_, Elfrida," Janet cried passionately. "Listen
to me. I have come to try to make things right again
between us--to ask you to forgive me for speaking as
I--as I did about your writing that day. I am sorry--I
am, indeed."

"I don't quite understand. You ask me to _forgive_
you--but what question is there of forgiveness? You had
a perfect right to your opinion, and I was glad to have
it at last from you, frankly."

"But it offended you, Elfrida. It is what is accountable
for the--the rupture between us."

"Perhaps. But not because it hurt my feelings," Elfrida
returned scornfully, "in the ordinary sense. It offended
me truly; but in quite another way. In what you said you
put me on a different plane from yourself in the matter
of artistic execution. Very well. I am content to stay
there--in your opinion. But why this talk of forgiveness?
Neither of us can alter anything. Only," Elfrida breathed
quickly, "be sure that I will not be accepted by you upon
those terms."

"That, wasn't what I meant in the least."

"What else could you have meant? And more than that,"
Elfrida went on rapidly--her phrases had the patness of
formed conclusion