CHAPTER XXV.
Before he had been back in Norway a week Kendal felt his
perturbation with regard to Elfrida remarkably quieted
and soothed. It seemed to him, in the long hours while
he fished and painted, that in the progress of the little
drama, from its opening act at Lady Halifax's to its
final scene at the studio, he had arrived at something
solid and tangible as the basis of his relation toward
the girl. It had precipitated in him a power of
comprehending her and of criticising her which he had
possessed before only, as it were, in solution. Whatever
once held him from stating to himself the results of his
study of her had vanished, leaving him no name by which
to call it. He found that he could smile at her
whimsicalities, and reflect upon her odd development,
and regret her devouring egotism, without the vision of
her making dumb his voluble thought; and he no longer
regretted the incident that gave him his freedom. He
realized her as he painted her, and the realization
visited him less often, much less often, than before.
Even the fact that she knew what he thought gradually
became an agreeable one. There would be room for no
hypocrisies between them. He wished that Janet Cardiff
could have some such experience.
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