side, and she fixed
her eyes on me with quite a troubled look.

"I am afraid I have hurt your feelings," she said; "I am very sorry. I
always speak my mind out; I never think that it may hurt. It is very
dull in me."

At these words I felt that unpleasant stir spring suddenly to a guilty
misery. I felt, somehow, that I was a shameful hypocrite, and Miss Jones
a priggish but most charming and most injured angel.

"Miss Jones," I said, much confused, "sincerity cannot really hurt me,
and I always respect it. I am sorry, very sorry, that you see no more in
my picture. I care for your good opinion" (this was certainly, in a
sense, a lie, and yet, for the moment, that guilty consciousness upon
me, I believed it), "and I hope that though my picture has not gained
it, I, personally, may never forfeit it."

Still looking at me gravely, Miss Jones said:

"I don't think you ever will. That is a very manly, a very noble way of
looking at it."

But the thought of Manon Lescaut now tormented me. I had finished the
head; my preoccupation could not harm that; but this lovely face looking
into the mirror, with soulless, happy eyes, seemed to slide a smile at
me, a smile of malicious comprehension, a smile of _nous nous
entendons_, a smile that made a butt of Miss Jones's innocence and
laughed with me at the joke.

I soon found myself rebelling against Manon's intrusion. I wished to
assure her that we had nothing in common and that, in Miss Jones's
innocence, I found no amusing element.

That evening Carrington came in. He wore a rather absorbed look, and
only glanced at my picture. After absent replies to my desultory
remarks, he suddenly said, from his chair:

"I walked home with Miss Jones this afternoon." Carrington, with his
ultra-aesthetic sensibilities, must find Miss Jones even more jarring
than I did, and his act implied a very kindly interest.

"That was nice of you," I observed, though at the mention of Miss Jones
that piercing stab of shame again went through me, and my eyes
unwillingly, guiltily sought the eyes of my smiling Manon.

"She was rather troubled about something she had said," Carrington
pursued, ignoring my approbation, "about the picture. Of course she
doesn't know anything about pictures."

"No," I murmured, "she doesn't."

"By Jove!" added Carrington, "that's the trouble. She doesn't understand
anything!"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I mean that she could never see certain things from our