"Doesn't he believe me?" flashed through her brain.
He sprang up, seized Richard's photograph, which stood on the escritoire in a frame, and brought it close to the light of the shaded lamp.
She knew that he was thinking of Walter, and said, "That is not his photograph."
"Who is it, then?"
"His friend ... the manufacturer."
Disappointed, he threw the frame on one side. "Have you no picture of him?"
Yes ... she had, but where was it? The big pastel portrait was in the attic; the smaller photograph she must have crammed away in some drawer.
"I put it away," she said apologetically; "I could not bear seeing it before me every day."
The reason was not very clear. He could, if he liked, interpret it as her growing love for him. Yet, how pitiable and ludicrous it all was! She would rather have thrown herself at his feet, and cried, "Forgive ... forgive. Take me as I am; don't cast me off!" Instead, she was obliged to go on lying, disgracefully, desperately, like a common adventuress on the verge of being found out.
"Will you mind very much if I ask you to look for the photograph?"