may
put down to my weakness and selfishness, to your own
charm, to what you will; but I shall be glad if you will
not withhold the blame that is due me in the matter, for
I have wronged you, as well as myself, in keeping silence.

"Look, it is all here in a nutshell. _Nothing is changed_.
I have tried to believe otherwise, but the truth is
stronger than my will. My opinion of you is a naked,
uncompromising fact I cannot drape it or adorn it, or
even throw around it a mist of charity. It is unalterably
there, and in any future intercourse with you, such
intercourse as we have had in the past, I should only
dash myself forever against it. I do not clearly see upon
what level you accepted me in the beginning, but I am
absolutely firm in my belief that it was not such as I
would have tolerated if I had known. To-day at all events
I am confronted with the proof that I have not had your
confidence--that you have not thought it worth while to
be single-minded in your relation to me. From a personal
point of view there is more that I might say, but perhaps
that is damning enough, and I have no desire to be abusive.
It is on my conscience to add, moreover, that I find you
a sophist, and your sophistry a little vulgar. I find
you compromising with your ambitions, which in themselves
are not above reproach from any point of view. I find
you adulterating what ought to be the pure stream of
ideality with muddy considerations of what the people
are pleased to call the moralities, and with the feebler
contamination of the conventionalities--"

"I _couldn't_ smoke with her," commented Janet, reading
over his shoulder. "It wasn't that I objected in the
least, but it made me so very--uncomfortable, that I
would never try a second time."

Kendal's smile deepened, and he read on without answering,
except by pressing her finger-tips against his lips.

"I should be sorry to deny your great cleverness and your
pretensions to a certain sort of artistic interpretation.
But to me the _artist bourgeois_ is an outsider, who must
remain outside. He has nothing to gain by fellowship with
me, and I--pardon me--have much to lose.

"So, if you please, we will go our separate ways, and
doubtless will represent, each to the other, an experiment
that has failed. You will believe me when I say that I
am intensely sorry. And perhaps you will accept, as
sincerely as I offer it, my wish that the future may
bring you success even more brilliant th