m seemed to swim.

"_All!_" she heard Kendal say reproachfully. "Wait until
you see it!" He experienced a shade of dejection, and
there was an instant's silence between them, during which
it seemed to Janet that the world was made over again.
"That young woman!" She disloyally extracted the last
suggestion of indifference out of the phrase, and found
it the sweetest she had heard for months. But her brain
whirled with the effort to decide what it could possibly
mean.

"I hope you have made it as beautiful as Elfrida is,"
she cried, with sharp self-reproof. "It must have been
difficult to do that."

"I have made it--what she is, I think," he answered,
again with that sudden gravity. "It is so like my conception
of her which I have never felt permitted to explain to
you, that I feel as if I had stolen a march upon her.
You must see it. When will you come? It goes in the day
after to-morrow, but I can't wait for your opinion till
it's hung."

"I like your calm reliance upon the Committee," Janet
laughed. "Suppose--"

"I won't. It will go on the line," Kendal returned
confidently. "I did nothing last year that I will permit
to be compared with it. Will you come to-morrow?"

"Impossible; I haven't two consecutive minutes to-morrow.
We sail, you know, on Thursday."

Kendal looked at her blankly. "You _sail?_ On Thursday?"

"I am going to America, Lady Halifax and I. And Elizabeth,
of course. We are to be away a year. Lady Halifax is
buying tickets, I am collecting light literature, and
Elizabeth is in pursuit of facts. Oh, we are deep in
preparation. I thought you knew."

"How could I possibly know?"

"Elfrida didn't tell you, then?"

"Did she know?"

"Oh yes, ten days ago."

"Odd that she didn't mention it."

Janet told herself that it was odd, but found with some
surprise that it was not more than odd. There had been
a time when the discovery that she and her affairs were
of so little consequence to her friend would have given
her a wondering pang; but that time seemed to have passed.
She talked lightly on about her journey; her voice and
her thoughts, had suddenly been freed. She dilated upon
the pleasures she anticipated as if they had been real,
skimming over the long spaces of his silence, and gathering
gaiety as he grew more and more sombre. When he rose to
go their moods had changed: the brightness and the flush
were hers, and, his face spoke only of a puzzled dejection,
an anxious uncertain