Elfrida stumbled to her feet and hurried to the door. "No!" she said, holding it fast. "No! You must not go that way—I owe you too much, after all. We will—we will make the best of it."
"Not on that ground," Janet answered gravely. "Neither your friendship nor mine is purchasable, I hope."
"No, no! That was bad. On any ground you like. Only stay a little—let us find ourselves again!"
Elfrida forced a smile into what she said, and Janet let herself be drawn back to a chair.
It was nearly midnight when she found herself again in her cab, driving through the empty lamplit Strand toward Kensington. She had prevailed, and now she had to scrutinize her methods. That necessity urged itself beyond her power to turn away from it, and left her sick at heart. She had prevailed—Elfrida, she believed, was hers again. They had talked as candidly as might be of her father. Elfrida had promised nothing, but she would, bring matters to an end, Janet knew she would, in a day or two, when she had had time to think how intolerable the situation would be if she didn't. Janet remembered with wonder, however, how little Elfrida seemed to realize that it need make any difference between them compared with other things, and what a trivial concession she thought it beside the restoration of the privileges of her friendship. The girl asked herself drearily how it would be possible that she should ever forget the frank cynical surprise with which Elfrida had received her entreaty, based on the fact of her father's unrest and the wretchedness of his false hopes—"You have your success; does it really matter—so very much?"
CHAPTER XXXI.
"To-day, remember. You promised that I should see it to-day," Elfrida reminded Kendal, dropping instantly into the pose they had jointly decided on. "I know I'm late, but you will not punish me by another postponement, will you?"
Kendal looked sternly at his watch. "A good twenty minutes, mademoiselle," he returned aggrievedly. "It would be only justice—poetic justice—to say no. But I think you may, if we get on to-day."
He was already at work, turning from the texture of the rounded throat which occupied him before she came in, to the more serious problem of the nuances of expression in the face. It was a whim of his, based partly upon a cautiousness, of which he was hardly aware, that she should not see the portrait in its earlier stages, and she had made a great concession of this. As it grew before him, out of his consciousness, under his hand, he became more and more aware that he would prefer to postpone her seeing it, for reasons which he would not pause to define. Certainly they were not connected with any sense of having failed to do justice to his subject. Kendal felt an exulting mastery over it which was the most intoxicating sensation his work had ever brought him. He had, as he painted, a silent, brooding triumph in his manipulation, in his control. He gave himself up to the delight of his insight, the power of his reproduction, and to the intense satisfaction of knowing that out of the two there grew something of more than usually keen intrinsic interest within the wide creed of his art. He worked with every nerve tense upon his conception of what he saw, which so excluded other considerations that now and then, in answer to some word of hers that distracted him, he spoke to her almost roughly. At which Elfrida, with a little smile of forgiving comprehension, obediently kept silence. She saw the artist in him dominant, and she exulted for his sake. It was to her delicious to be the medium of his inspiration, delicious and fit and sweetly acceptable. And they had agreed upon a charming pose.
Presently Kendal lowered his brush impatiently. "Talk to me a little," he said resentfully, ignoring his usual preference that she should not talk because what she said had always power to weaken the concentration of his energy. "There is a little muteness about the lips. Am I very unreasonable? But you don't know what a difficult creature you are."