ughts; and she was aware that the present position of
affairs might look rather crazy to some people. The best excuse for it
was that it would have looked crazier yet if she had refused such an
opportunity simply because of the circumstances. She began to be a
little vague about the circumstances, and whether they were queer
because she had fancied a likeness of herself in Mr. Ludlow's picture
of Charmian, or because she had afterwards made a fool of herself so
irreparably as to be unworthy Mr. Ludlow's kindness.

If it was merely kindness, and she was the object of charity, it was
all right; she could accept it on those terms. She even tempted him to
patronize her, but when he ventured upon something elderly and paternal
in his monitions, she resented it so fiercely that she was astonished
and ashamed. There was an inconsistency in it all that was perplexing,
but not so perplexing as to spoil the pleasure of it.

There were not sittings every day, now; Ludlow came once or twice a
week, and criticised her work; sometimes he struck off a sketch
himself, in illustration of a point, and these sketches were now so
unlike Cornelia, and so wholly like Charmian, that when he left them
for her guidance, she studied them with a remote ache in her heart.
"Never mind," Charmian consoled her once, "he just does it on purpose."

"Does what?" Cornelia demanded awfully.

"Oh, nothing!"

One of the sketches he fancied so much that he began to carry it
forward. He worked at it whenever he came, and under his hand it grew
an idealized Charmian, in which her fantastic quality expressed itself
as high imagination, and her formless generosity as a wise and noble
magnanimity.

She made fun of it when they were alone, but Cornelia could see that
she was secretly proud of having inspired it, and that she did not
really care for the constant portrait which Cornelia had been
faithfully finishing up, while Ludlow changed and experimented, though
Charmian praised her to his disadvantage.

One day he said he had carried his picture as far as he could, and he
should let it go at that. It seemed an end of their pleasant days
together; the two girls agreed that now there could be no further
excuse for their keeping on, and Cornelia wondered how she could let
him know that she understood. That evening he came to call on her at
Mrs. Montgomery's, and before he sat down he began to say: "I want to
ask your advice, Miss Saunders, about what I shal