It is
a personality of stone, isn't it?--implacable, unchangeable.
I've often felt that."
Kendal was incapable of denying a word of what she said.
"If it is any comfort to you to know it," he ventured,
"hardly any one will see in it what you--and I--see."
"Yes," she said, with a smile, "that's true. I shan't
mind its going to the Academy."
She sat down again and looked fixedly at the picture,
her chin propped in her hand. "Don't you feel," she said,
looking up at him with a little childish gesture of
confidence, "as if you had stolen something from me?"
"Yes," Kendal declared honestly, "I do. I've taken
something you didn't intend me to have."
"Well, I give it you--it is yours quite freely and
ungrudgingly. Don't feel that way any more. You have a
right to your divination," she Added bravely.
"I would not withhold it if I could. Only--I hope you
find _something_ good in it. I think, myself, there is
something."
Her look was a direct interrogation, and Kendal flinched
before it. "Dear creature," he murmured, "you are very
true to yourself."
"And to you," she pleaded, "always to you too. Has there
ever been anything but the clearest honesty between us?
Ah, my friend, that is valuable--there are so few people
who inspire it.
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