, or no. Eugenie had no
illusions. In his sore, self-tormented state he was, she saw, at
the mercy of any passing idea, of anything that seemed to offer him
vengeance on his enemies, or the satisfaction of a vanity that writhed
under the failure he was all the time inviting and assuring.

Yet as she thought of him, she liked him better than ever. He might be
perverse, yet he appealed to her profoundly! The years of his success
had refined and civilised him no doubt, but they had tended to make
him like anybody else. Whereas this passionate accent of revolt--as of
some fierce, helpless creature, struggling blindly in bonds of its own
making--had perhaps restored to him that more dramatic element which
his personality had possessed in his sulky, gifted youth. He
had expressed himself with a bitter force on the decline of his
inspiration and the weakening of his will. He was going to the dogs,
he declared; had lost all his hold on the public; and had nothing more
to say or to paint. And she had been very, very sorry for him, but
conscious all the time that he had never been so eloquent, and never
in such good looks, what with the angry energy of the eyes, and the
sweep of grizzled hair across the powerful brow, and the lines cut by
life and thought round the vigorous, impatient mouth. How could he be
at once so able and so childish! Her woman's wit pondered it; while
at the same time she remembered with emotion the joy with which he had
greeted her, his eager, stammering sympathy, his rough grasp of her
hand, his frowning scrutiny of her pale face.

Yes, he was a great, great friend--and, somehow, she _must_ help him!
Her lips parted in a sigh of aspiration. If only this unlucky thing
had not happened!--this meeting of Arthur and of Fenwick, before the
time, before she had prepared and engineered it.

And so she came to her second topic of meditation. Gradually as her
mind pursued it, her aspect seemed to lose its new and tremulous
brightness; the face became once more a little grey and pinched. They
had somehow missed all the letters which should have warned them. To
find Arthur established here, with his poor invalid wife--nothing
had been more unexpected, and, alack, more unwelcome, considering the
relations between them and John Fenwick--Fenwick who was practically
her father's guest and hers.

Did Arthur think it strange, unkind? Wouldn't he really believe that
it was pure accident! If so, it would be only because