'What about the past?'
'Are we so proud of the past and of the part we have played in it'—asked Roland—'that we should desire its story published to all the world?'
Effie shook her head, approvingly.
'As for me,' he continued, 'I wish never to hear of it again. It makes me sick and ashamed even to think of it. Let it be forgotten. I was an unknown artist—I had few friends—I had exhibited one picture only—so that my work was unknown—I had painted for him six or seven pictures which are mostly bought by an American. As for the resemblance of style, that may make a few men talk for a season. Then it will be forgotten. I shall remain—he will have disappeared. I am content to take my chance with future work, even if at first I may appear to be a mere copyist of Mr. Alec Feilding.'
'And you, Effie?'
'I agree with Mr. Lee,' she replied briefly. 'Let the past alone. I shall write more verses, and, perhaps, better verses.'
'Then I will go to him and tell him that he need fear nothing. We shall hold our tongues. But he is not to exhibit the picture that is in his studio. I will tell him that.'
'You will not actually go to him yourself, Armorel—alone—after what has passed?' asked Effie.
'Why not? He can do me no harm. He knows that he has been found out, and he is tormented by the fear of what we shall do next. I bring him relief. His reputation is secured—that is to say, it will be the reputation of a man who stopped at thirty, in the fulness of his first promise and his best powers, and did no more work.'
'Oh!' cried Effie. 'I thought he was so clever! I thought that his desire to be thought a poet was only a little infirmity of temper, which would pass. And, after all, to think that——' Here the poet looked at the painter, and the painter looked at the poet—but neither spoke the thought: 'How could you—you, with your pencil: how could you—you, with your pen—consent to the iniquity of so great a fraud?'