"
"Heavens!" Kendal cried, as if the contingency had been
physically impossible. "It is a man's privilege to fall
in love with a woman, darling--not with an incarnate
idea."
"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.
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