ifying
her presence, for she reminded him:

"After all, what's the difference? What do you care for this, or
anything again if Billy is lost to you?"

But the artist told himself fiercely that he did care--that he must
care--for his work; and he struggled--how he struggled!--to ignore the
horrid visions and the sickening thoughts, and to pierce the veil of
fear so that his hand might be steady and his brush regain its skill.

And so he worked. Sometimes he let his work remain. Sometimes one hour
saw only the erasing of what the hour before had wrought. Sometimes the
elusive something in Marguerite Winthrop's face seemed right at the tip
of his brush--on the canvas, even. He saw success then so plainly that
for a moment it almost--but not quite--blotted out The Thing. At other
times that elusive something on the high-bred face of his model was a
veritable will-o'-the-wisp, refusing to be caught and held, even in his
eye. The artist knew then that his picture would be hung with Anderson's
and Fullam's.

But the portrait was, irrefutably, nearing completion, and it was to be
exhibited the twentieth of the month. Bertram knew these for facts.

CHAPTER XXVIII. BILLY TAKES HER TURN

If for Billy those first twenty days of March did not carry quite the
tragedy they contained for Bertram, they were, nevertheless, not really
happy ones. She was vaguely troubled by a curious something in Bertram's
behavior that she could not name; she was grieved over Arkwright's
sorrow, and she was constantly probing her own past conduct to see
if anywhere she could find that she was to blame for that sorrow. She
missed, too, undeniably, Arkwright's cheery presence, and the charm
and inspiration of his music. Nor was she finding it easy to give
satisfactory answers to the questions Aunt Hannah, William, and Bertram
so often asked her as to where Mary Jane was.

Even her music was little comfort to her these days. She was not
writing anything. There was no song in her heart to tempt her to write.
Arkwright's new words that he had brought her were out of the question,
of course. They had been put away with the manuscript of the completed
song, which had not, fortunately, gone to the publishers. Billy had
waited, intending to send them together. She was so glad, now, that she
had waited. Just once, since Arkwright's last call, she had tried to
sing that song. But she had stopped at the end of the first two lines.
The full meaning of