n him in first, which never looked shabby somehow on him; but it
was not the baby as she knew him. He was looking at her almost
defiantly, a cloud had come over his eyes, and the muscles of his face
were set. Audrey saw the look of unrelenting determination, which is
only seen to perfection in the faces of the very young, but it seemed to
her that Ted had taken a sudden leap into manhood.

"Audrey," he said again, and their eyes met. She tried to speak, but it
was too late. The boy had crouched down on the floor beside her, and was
clasping her knees like a suppliant before some marble divinity.

"Don't--Ted, don't," she gasped under her breath.

"I won't. I don't ask you to do it now, before I've made my name. It may
take years, but--I shall make it. And then, perhaps----"

She tried to loosen his fingers one by one, and they closed on her hand
with a grip like a dying man's. Through the folds of her thin dress she
could feel his heart thumping obtrusively, and the air throbbed with the
beating of a thousand pulses. Her brain reeled, and the little voice
inside it left off saying "Not yet." She stooped down and whispered
hurriedly--

"I will--I will."

The suppliant raised his head, and his fingers relaxed their hold.

"You _will_, Audrey? So you don't--at the present moment?"

"I do. It wasn't my fault. I didn't know what love was like. I know
now."

Passion is absolutely sincere, but it is not bound to be either truthful
or consistent. What has it to do with trains of reasoning, or with the
sequence of events in time? Past and future history are nothing to it.
For Audrey it was now--now--now. All foreshadowings, all dateless
possibilities, were swept out of her fancy; or rather, they were crowded
into one burning point of time. Now was the moment for which all other
moments had lived and died. Life had owed her some great thing, and now
with every heart-beat it was paying back its long arrears. Henceforth
there would be no more monotony, no more measuring of existence by the
hands of the clock, no more weighing of emotion by the scruple. The
revelation had come. Now and for ever it was all the same; for sensation
that knows nothing about time is always sure of eternity.

CHAPTER VII

When Katherine came back from the National Gallery she found Ted alone:
he had drawn up the couch in front of his easel, and lay there gazing at
his portrait. The restless, hungry look had gone from his eyes. There
w