"It's a very beautiful idea."
"I'm not sure of that—it looks well from the outside.
But it is quite incapable of any growth or much, change,"
Kendal went on musingly, "and in the end—Lord, how a
man would be bored!"
"You are incapable of being fair to her," came from the coat collar.
"Perhaps. I have something else to think of—since yesterday. Janet, look up!"
She looked up, and for a little space Elfrida Bell found oblivion as complete as she could have desired between them. Then—
"You were telling me—" Janet said.
"Yes. Your Elfrida and I had a sort of friendship too—it began, as you know, in Paris. And I was quite aware that one does not have an ordinary friendship with her—it accedes and it exacts more than the common relation. And I've sometimes made myself uncomfortable with the idea that she gave me credit for a more faultless conception of her than I possessed; for the honest, brutal truth is, I'm afraid, that I've only been working her out. When the portrait was finished I found that somehow I had succeeded. She saw it, too, and so I fancy my false position has righted itself. So I haven't been sincere to her either, Janet. But my conscience seems fairly callous about it. I can't help reflecting that we are to other people pretty much what they deserve that we shall be. We can't control our own respect."
"I've lost hers," Janet repeated, with depression, and
Kendal gave an impatient groan.
"I don't think you'll miss it," he said.
"And, Jack, haven't you any—compunctions about exhibiting that portrait?"