It was disloyal to Bertram and unworthy of herself, even to think such
a thing. She told herself then that it was only the portrait of Miss
Winthrop that was troubling him. She knew that he was worried over that.
He had confessed to her that actually sometimes he was beginning to fear
his hand had lost its cunning. As if that were not enough to bring the
gloom to any man's face--to any artist's!

No sooner, however, had Billy arrived at this point in her mental
argument, than a new element entered--her old lurking jealousy, of which
she was heartily ashamed, but which she had never yet been able quite to
subdue; her jealousy of the beautiful girl with the beautiful name (not
Billy), whose portrait had needed so much time and so many sittings to
finish. What if Bertram had found that he loved _her?_ What if that
were why his hand had lost its cunning--because, though loving her, he
realized that he was bound to another, Billy herself?

This thought, too, Billy cast from her at once as again disloyal and
unworthy. But both thoughts, having once entered her brain, had made for
themselves roads over which the second passing was much easier than the
first--as Billy found to her sorrow. Certainly, as the days went by,
and as Bertram's face and manner became more and more a tragedy of
suffering, Billy found it increasingly difficult to keep those
thoughts from wearing their roads of suspicion into horrid deep ruts of
certainty.

Only with William and Marie, now, could Billy escape from it all. With
William she sought new curios and catalogued the old. With Marie she
beat eggs and whipped cream in the shining kitchen, and tried to think
that nothing in the world mattered except that the cake in the oven
should not fall.

CHAPTER XXIX. KATE WRITES A LETTER

Bertram feared that he knew, before the portrait was hung, that it was
a failure. He was sure that he knew it on the evening of the twentieth
when he encountered the swiftly averted eyes of some of his artist
friends, and saw the perplexed frown on the faces of others. But he
knew, afterwards, that he did not really know it--till he read the
newspapers during the next few days.

There was praise--oh, yes; the faint praise that kills. There was some
adverse criticism, too; but it was of the light, insincere variety that
is given to mediocre work by unimportant artists. Then, here and there,
appeared the signed critiques of the men whose opinion counted--and
Be