rfectly _madly_ in love with her."

"Heavens!" Kendal cried, as if the contingency had been
physically impossible. "It is a man's privilege to fall
in love with a woman, darling--not with an incarnate
idea."

"It's a very beautiful idea."

"I'm not sure of that--it looks well from the outside.
But it is quite incapable of any growth or much, change,"
Kendal went on musingly, "and in the end--Lord, how a
man would be bored!"

"You are incapable of being fair to her," came from the
coat collar.

"Perhaps. I have something else to think of--since
yesterday. Janet, look up!"

She looked up, and for a little space Elfrida Bell found
oblivion as complete as she could have desired between
them. Then--

"You were telling me--" Janet said.

"Yes. Your Elfrida and I had a sort of friendship too--it
began, as you know, in Paris. And I was quite aware that
one does not have an ordinary friendship with her--it
accedes and it exacts more than the common relation. And
I've sometimes made myself uncomfortable with the idea
that she gave me credit for a more faultless conception
of her than I possessed; for the honest, brutal truth
is, I'm afraid, that I've only been working her out.
When the portrait was finished I found that somehow I
had succeeded. She saw it, too, and so I fancy my false
position has righted itself. So I haven't been sincere
to her either, Janet. But my conscience seems fairly
callous about it. I can't help reflecting that we are to
other people pretty much what they deserve that we shall
be. We can't control our own respect."

"I've lost hers," Janet repeated, with depression, and
Kendal gave an impatient groan.

"I don't think you'll miss it," he said.

"And, Jack, haven't you any--compunctions about exhibiting
that portrait?"

"Absolutely none." He looked at her with candid eyes.
"Of course if she wished me to I would destroy it. I
respect her property in it so far as that. But so long
as she accepts it as the significant truth it is, I am
entirely incapable of regretting it. I have painted her,
with her permission, as I saw her, as she is. If I had
given her a, squint or a dimple, I could accuse myself;
but I have not wronged her or gratified myself by one
touch of misrepresentation."

"I am to see it this afternoon," said Janet. Unconsciously
she was looking forward to finding some measure of
justification for herself in the portrait; why, it would
be difficult to say.

"Yes; I put i