'You see I have taken her down.'
'Oh, why?' It was not curiosity; it was entreaty.
'Don't you think she's been up there long enough?'
'If you were the woman and she were the man you wouldn't say that.'
'What should I say?'
'You would say, "He's been up there so long that, whatever he's done, he may as well stay there now."'
'That would be rather contemptuous tolerance, wouldn't it?'
'But the picture wouldn't know that; and if the original should ever grow sorry for all the harm she—he had done, it would be something to know that the picture still hung there just the same.'
The story must have leaked out, then—the first part through Fabian, probably, and the rest through the divorce court columns of the daily papers. I said nothing in answer to the girl's pleadings, but I restored the portraits to their old places with the excuse that the landscapes would look better in the dining-room.
Our studies began again that very afternoon. Babiole had forgotten nothing, though work had, of course, grown slack during the hot days of the summer. She had had another and rather absorbing love affair, too, the details of which I extracted with the accompaniment of more blushes than in the old days.