hers, too--than see her marry the man you have named.
It would be worth it to me."

After a strained silence, Guilder said:

"There is a mode of dealing with those who have injured you, which is
radically different--"

"I deal with such people in my own fashion!"

"But, after all, the infamy is Graylock's. Why oblige him by sharing it
with him?"

"Do you know what he did to me and mine?"

"A few of us know," said Guilder, gently, "--your old friends."

There came a pale, infernal flicker into Drene's eyes:

"I'll take your commission for that altar piece," he said.

"What is it? An Annunciation?"

IV

Composition had been determined upon, and the sketch completed by the
middle of August; Cecile had sat for him every day from nine until five;
every evening they had dined together at the seashore or other suburban
and cool resorts. Together they had seen every summer entertainment in
town, had spent the cooler, starlit evenings together in his studio,
chatting, reading loud sometimes, sometimes discussing he work in hand
or other subjects of he moment, even topics covering a wider and more
varied range than he had ever before discussed with any woman.

He seemed to have become utterly changed; the dark preoccupation had
been absent from his face--the gauntness, the grayness, seemed to have
become subdued; the deep lines of pain, imperceptible at times, smoothed
out and shadowed in an almost gay resurgence of youth.

If, during the first week or two of her companionship, his gaiety had
been not entirely spontaneous, his smile shadowed with something duller,
his laughter a trifle forced, she had not perceived it in her surprised
and shyly troubled preoccupation with this amazing and delightful
transfiguration.

At first she scarcely knew what to look for, what to expect from him,
from herself, when she came into the studio after many weeks of absence;
and she always halted in the doorway, trembling a little, as always,
when in contact with him.

But he was very delightful, smiling, easy, and deferential enough to
reassure her with a greeting that became him, as he saluted her pretty
hand, held it a moment in possession, laughingly, and released it.

From the moment of their reunion he had never touched her, save for
a quick, firm, smiling hand-clasp in the morning and another at the
night's parting.

Now, little by little, she was finding herself delightfully at ease with
him, emerging by degree