"Why, what's wrong with it? It's beautiful."
"Yes; I got on all right with the upper half, but, as you see, I've been a little unfortunate with the feet and legs."
"Of course!" interrupted Katherine, "because you got tired of the whole thing. That's what a man's idealism comes to!"
Audrey looked up with a quick sidelong glance.
"And what does a woman's idealism come to?"
"Generally to this—that she's tried to paint her own portrait large, with a big brush, and made a mess of the canvas."
There was a sad inflection in the girl's voice, and she looked away as she spoke. The look and the tone were details that lay beyond the range of Audrey's observation, and she felt hurt, though she hardly knew why. She rose, carefully adjusting her veil and the lace about her throat.
"I adore idealists—I can't help it; I'm made that way, you see."
She shrugged her shoulders, in delicate deprecation of the decrees of Fate.
Katherine did not see, but she went down with Miss Craven to the door. Ted had proposed tea on the leads, and Audrey had agreed that it would have been charming—idyllic—if she could have stayed. But she had looked at the skylight, and then at her own closely fitting gown, and Propriety, her guardian angel, had suggested that she had better not.