s face turned away from them. As he wheeled the
big easel round, and the picture came into view, a cry of admiration
broke from their lips. They were indeed surprised to learn that it was
"impossibly" unfinished; to them it seemed that, if justice were done,
it should go straightway into the National Gallery. Their pleasure and
gratification were extreme: they made not the least attempt to hide
their sense of the privilege of sitting at his feet.

And, when they rose to depart, they were absurdly grateful for the
lovely afternoon he had given them. Still staggering under the
magnificent impression of his brilliancy as an artist, Mrs. Robinson
summoned her courage, and suggested that, if he hadn't any other
engagement that evening, he might as well dine with them as dine alone.
The argument struck him as forcible, and he accepted with an
unhesitating simplicity that won her heart still further. He was
thanking her for her kindness, but she raised her hands in horrified
deprecation to check him.

"Kindness," she cried. "Not at all, Mr. Wyndham. We know we are not
worthy of the honour you do us."

"Yes, it is very good indeed of you to come," chimed in Miss Robinson,
as they shook hands. She smiled at him quite frankly now, and her soft
fingers lingered a friendly moment in his.

He shut the door and turned back into the studio; then, as the thought
struck him for the first time, his lips murmured almost involuntarily,
"I do believe Miss Robinson's half in love with me." But he checked
himself abruptly. "Good heavens! what a caddish thing to say." For, with
his innate chivalry, he had certainly never been addicted to the habit
of imagining that this or that woman was immediately enamoured of him.

He returned to the portrait, lingered over it a moment or two, putting
in here a stroke, there a touch or a smear. And somehow the train of
"caddish" thought persisted in his mind; mastered his will and desire to
suppress it. Suppose Miss Robinson should fall in love with him! He
recognised her worth as a human being, but instinctively he placed her
beyond a certain pale. It was not with that kind of woman that one
connected the idea of loving or falling in love; the true type had been
fixed for him once for all. The person, too, perhaps! As he had all but
felt in his discussion of the subject with Sadler, matrimony was really
excluded from his mind. His business in life was work, achievement--his
spirit was almost one of re