Then Jean lost her temper.
"It is cruel of you to persecute me like this, Charlie. It is not gentlemanly. You know my defenceless position, and you take advantage of it. I have no parents, no brother to take my part. I never wish to see you again—never!"
Charlie took up his hat and walked off in high dudgeon, and for the time his gifts ceased.
Jean was working very hard just now. She was painting the portrait of an alderman's wife, giving lessons in the place of one of the teachers in the art school, and attempting a fancy picture of her own, which she hoped might be accepted for the next Academy. In the midst of this, she received another invitation from Mrs. Fergusson, begging her to come to her for a little rest and relaxation. It was a bitter disappointment to her to decline, but she literally could not afford to go. She had neither the time nor the money to do it.
Sometimes when she came back to her lodgings tired and weary, she wondered if this incessant grind for daily bread would be her lot in life. Yet she was not unhappy, and she pluckily and cheerfully put her shoulder to the wheel. Few of her fellow-students, hearing her bright tones and ringing laugh, realised that she had changed from the comfortable amateur into the struggling professional.
[CHAPTER XXII]
IN DIRE STRAITS
"I do not ask my cross to understand,
My way to see;
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand
And follow Thee."—Adelaide Procter.
"SURELY it is Jean Desmond? How strange that I should not have run up against you before. I have been in town for six weeks. Are you still studying art?"
It was Meta Worth. She met Jean out of doors one day, and was looking very bright and pretty. Jean was conscious of her own shabbiness by the side of this stylish young woman.