“If you don’t mind, Frank, I won’t have the picture exhibited. After all, a portrait is a personal thing. Send it home to me as soon as it is finished.” She wanted to add “and I will send you a cheque for it,” but she was afraid of hurting his feelings. Nothing had ever been said about payment. It had been tacitly assumed that it was a labour of love.
“I don’t think it’s fair to me,” he protested, still sulky, the man submerged in the artist. “It’s the best picture I have ever done. No woman can judge her own portrait. Besides, you never objected to it before.”
“I always saw it quite close at hand and in the light of day. To-night, at the end of the room, it looks different.”
“Well, commend me to women-sitters for changeability!” he exclaimed bitterly.
She put her hand on the cushion that concealed the telegram. He had evidently been sitting in her position when it arrived.
“Perhaps—if the Bridgemans had come—they might have liked it, and their opinion is more valuable than mine. You only heard of her illness this evening?”
“Yes,” he responded moodily, “just before you came in.”
Petty trickery! She had nearly lent herself to that. Afterwards—yes, circumstances might have made it necessary, but before—— It was not, and it never could have been, love on either side. Love was a bigger, finer thing than that! Perhaps too large always to be confined within a wedding-ring, but this did not of itself overleap the bounds. Only the trickster passion again! And passion she had proved to be a cheat, a miserable, mean cheat, that preyed on the emotions and ignorance of women.
She suddenly felt very tired, and her face had gone pathetically white as she rose from the divan.
“Frank, I am sorry I have hurt your feelings. I can only say again that I admire it as a piece of painting, immensely.... Now I must go home. It is getting rather late, and I think a day in the country tires one, don’t you?”