rected my steps westward along Boyne Street
until I came to the Art Museum, where a loan exhibition was being held.
I entered, bought a catalogue, and presently found myself standing
before number 103, designated as a portrait of Mrs. Hambleton
Durrett,--painted in Paris the autumn before by a Polish artist then
much in vogue, Stanislaus Czesky. Nancy--was it Nancy?--was standing
facing me, tall, superb in the maturity of her beauty, with one hand
resting on an antique table, a smile upon her lips, a gentle mockery in
her eyes as though laughing at the world she adorned. With the smile
and the mockery--somehow significant, too, of an achieved
inaccessibility--went the sheen of her clinging gown and the glint
of the heavy pearls drooping from her high throat to her waist. These
caught the eye, but failed at length to hold it, for even as I looked
the smile faded, the mockery turned to wistfulness. So I thought, and
looked again--to see the wistfulness: the smile had gone, the pearls
seemed heavier. Was it a trick of the artist? had he seen what I saw,
or thought I saw? or was it that imagination which by now I might have
learned to suspect and distrust. Wild longings took possession of me,
for the portrait had seemed to emphasize at once how distant now she was
from me, and yet how near! I wanted to put that nearness to the test.
Had she really changed? did anyone really change? and had I not been
a fool to accept the presentment she had given me? I remembered those
moments when our glances had met as across barriers in flashes
of understanding. After all, the barriers were mere relics of the
superstition of the past. What if I went to her now? I felt that I
needed her as I never had needed anyone in all my life.... I was aroused
by the sound of lowered voices beside me.

"That's Mrs. Hambleton Durrett," I heard a woman say. "Isn't she
beautiful?"

The note of envy struck me sharply--horribly. Without waiting to listen
to the comment of her companion I hurried out of the building into the
cold, white sunlight that threw into bold relief the mediocre houses of
the street. Here was everyday life, but the portrait had suggested that
which might have been--might be yet. What did I mean by this? I didn't
know, I didn't care to define it,--a renewal of her friendship, of our
intimacy. My being cried out for it, and in the world in which I lived
we took what we wanted--why not this? And yet for an instant I stood on
the sidew