ilated with a fire which startled him beyond
self-control, her color came and went, she breathed fast. The next
instant she sprang from her chair.

"I wont stand it no longer," she cried panting: "no longer--I wont!"

Her ire was magnificent. She flung her head back, and struck her side
with her clinched hand.

"No longer!" she said; "not a minute!"

Lennox advanced one step and stood, palette in hand, gazing at her.

"What have I done?" he asked. "What?"

"What?" she echoed with contemptuous scorn. "Nothin'! _But d'ye think I
don't know ye?_"

"Know me!" he repeated after her mechanically, finding it impossible to
remove his glance from her.

"What d'ye take me me fur?" she demanded. "A fool? Yes, I was a fool--a
fool to come here, 'n' set 'n' let ye--let ye despise me!" in a final
outburst.

Still he could only echo her again, and say "Despise you!"

Her voice lowered itself into an actual fierceness of tone.

"Ye've done it from first to last," she said. "Would ye look at her
like ye look at me? Would ye turn half way 'n' look at her, 'n' then
turn back as if--as if--. Aint there"--her eyes ablaze--"aint there no
_life_--to me?"

"Stop!" he began hoarsely.

"I'm beneath her, am I?" she persisted. "Me beneath another woman--Dusk
Dunbar! It's the first time!"

She walked toward the door as if to leave him, but suddenly she stopped.
A passionate tremor shook her; he saw her throat swell. She threw her
arm up against the logs of the wall and dropped her face upon it sobbing
tumultuously.

There was a pause of perhaps three seconds. Then Lennox moved slowly
toward her. Almost unconsciously he laid his hand upon her heaving
shoulder and so stood trembling a little.

When Rebecca paid her next visit to the picture it struck her that it
appeared at a standstill. As she looked at it her lover saw a vague
trouble growing slowly in her eyes.

"What!" he remarked. "It does not please you?"

"I think," she answered,--"I feel as if it had not pleased you."

He fell back a few paces and stood scanning it with an impression at
once hard and curious.

"Please me!" he exclaimed in a voice almost strident. "It should. She
has beauty enough."

On her return home that day Rebecca drew forth from the recesses of her
trunk her neglected writing folio and a store of paper.

Miss Thorne, entering the room, found her kneeling over her trunk, and
spoke to her.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

Rebeeca sm