ing
eyes, but she faced them again to rectify: "I see you against his
express command."

"Ah then thank God I came!"--it was like a bland breath on a _feu de
joie_: he flamed so much higher.

"Thank God you've come, yes--for my deplorable exposure." And to justify
her name for it before he could protest, "I _offered_ him here not to
see you," she rigorously explained.

"'Offered him?"--Hugh did drop for it. "Not to see me--ever again?"

She didn't falter. "Never again."

Ah then he understood. "But he wouldn't let that serve----?"

"Not for the price I put on it."

"His yielding on the picture?"

"His yielding on the picture."

Hugh lingered before it all. "Your proposal wasn't 'good enough'?"

"It wasn't good enough."

"I see," he repeated--"I see." But he was in that light again mystified.
"Then why are you therefore not free?"

"Because--just after--you came back, and I _did_ see you again!"

Ah, it was all present. "You found you were too sorry for me?"

"I found I was too sorry for you--as he himself found I was."

Hugh had got hold of it now. "And _that_, you mean, he couldn't
stomach?"

"So little that when you had gone (and _how_ you had to go you remember)
he at once proposed, rather than that I should deceive you in a way so
different from his own----"

"To do all we want of him?"

"To do all I did at least."

"And it was _then_," he took in, "that you wouldn't deal?"

"Well"--try though she might to keep the colour out, it all came
straighter and straighter now--"those moments had brought you home to
me as they had also brought _him_; making such a difference, I felt, for
what he veered round to agree to."

"The difference"--Hugh wanted it so adorably definite--"that you didn't
see your way to accepting----?"

"No, not to accepting the condition he named."

"Which was that he'd keep the picture for you if you'd treat me as too
'low'----?"

"If I'd treat you," said Lady Grace with her eyes on his fine young
face, "as impossible."

He kept her eyes--he clearly liked so to make her repeat it. "And
not even for the sake of the picture--?" After he had given her time,
however, her silence, with her beautiful look in it, seemed to admonish
him not to force her for his pleasure; as if what she had already told
him didn't make him throb enough for the wonder of it. He _had_ it, and
let her see by his high flush how he made it his own--while, the next
thing, as it was but part of her