ught of it. His
whole attention was absorbed in that faint hint of resemblance to
Winifred Anstice which lay chiefly in the full eyelids and the subtle,
shadowy, evanescent smile which said at once so much and so little.

He could not tell how it fell out, but at last the time came when he
admitted the source of its charm. He recalled the time sharply long
after, and how he had risen hastily, and paced the floor with his
hands thrust deep into his pockets. That it should come to this--he,
Jonathan Flint, a man whose gray hairs--here he stepped before the
mirror and studied the tuft of prematurely white locks upon his
forehead--whose gray hairs ought to have brought with them wisdom, or
at least common sense,--that he should fall to sitting for hours in
front of a picture like any schoolboy of eighteen! Really, it was too
absurd!

He would send off the portrait to the cleaner to-morrow, and then when
it was properly framed, it should be sent to Miss Anstice with his
compliments, and so an end of the whole matter. He would never see it
again.

_Nor the original?_

This query was so insistent that it seemed to come from outside his
consciousness, and to demand an answer. He stopped short in his walk
as it struck him. Then, alone as he was, he colored to the temples,
and gave a little gasp. Like an overwhelming tidal wave there swept
over him the realization that his will was mastered by a power above
it, mightier than itself; that his seeing Winifred Anstice again was
hardly a question of volition any longer, any more than breathing was
a matter of will--that he _must_ see her--that the chief question of
his future was whether she cared to see him.

This train of thought did not tend to anything very cheerful. One
after another he recalled their interviews, on the road, in the boat,
on the beach, and again at Flying Point. Her manner on each of these
occasions had been sufficiently pronounced to leave him in no doubt of
her opinion; and at the last two meetings her words had been even more
explicit. She had called him a man of ice. She had taxed him with the
narrow limits of his sympathies. "Well," said Reason, "did you not
give her cause for all she said and more? Weren't you an odious,
crabbed, supercilious cad?"

Flint took a savage satisfaction in admitting every accusation which
he could bring against himself, in recalling the light irony with
which Winifred Anstice had witnessed his blunders, and the direct,