"Ah!" she said gravely, "how good
it is to see that! I wish I could remember by myself so
much, half so much, of the sunlight of that country. In
three days of these fogs I had forgotten it. I mean the
reality of it Only a pale theory staid with me. Now it
comes back."
"Then you _have_ been in London?" he probed, while she
looked wistfully at the fringe of a wood in Brittany that
stood upon his canvas. Her eyes left the picture and
wandered around the room.
"I!" she said again. "In London? Yes, I have been in
London. How _splendidly_ different you are!" she said,
looking straight at him as if she stated a falling of
the thermometer or a quotation from the Stock Exchange.
"But are you sure, _perfectly_ sure," she went on, with
dainty emphasis, "that you can stay different? Aren't
you the least bit afraid that in the end your work may
become--pardon me--commercial, like the rest? Is there
no danger?"
"I wish you would sit down," Kendal said ruefully. "I
shouldn't feel it so much, perhaps, if you sat down. And
pending my acknowledgment of a Londoner's sin in painting
in London, it seems to me that you have put yourself
under pretty much the same condemnation."
"I have not come to paint," Elfrida answered quickly.
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