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Once when he did this he saw that it had changed. She had moved a little, her eyes were dilated with a fire which startled him beyond self-control, her color came and went, she breathed fast. The next instant she sprang from her chair.

“I wont stand it no longer,” she cried panting: “no longer–I wont!”

Her ire was magnificent. She flung her head back, and struck her side with her clinched hand.

“No longer!” she said; “not a minute!”

Lennox advanced one step and stood, palette in hand, gazing at her.

“What have I done?” he asked. “What?”

“What?” she echoed with contemptuous scorn. “Nothin’! But d’ye think I don’t know ye?”

“Know me!” he repeated after her mechanically, finding it impossible to remove his glance from her.

“What d’ye take me me fur?” she demanded. “A fool? Yes, I was a fool–a fool to come here, ‘n’ set ‘n’ let ye–let ye despise me!” in a final outburst.

Still he could only echo her again, and say “Despise you!”

Her voice lowered itself into an actual fierceness of tone.

“Ye’ve done it from first to last,” she said. “Would ye look at her like ye look at me? Would ye turn half way ‘n’ look at her, ‘n’ then turn back as if–as if–. Aint there”–her eyes ablaze–“aint there no life–to me?”

“Stop!” he began hoarsely.

“I’m beneath her, am I?” she persisted. “Me beneath another woman–Dusk Dunbar! It’s the first time!”

She walked toward the door as if to leave him, but suddenly she stopped. A passionate tremor shook her; he saw her throat swell. She threw her arm up against the logs of the wall and dropped her face upon it sobbing tumultuously.

There was a pause of perhaps three seconds. Then Lennox moved slowly toward her. Almost unconsciously he laid his hand upon her heaving shoulder and so stood trembling a little.

When Rebecca paid her next visit to the picture it struck her that it appeared at a standstill. As she looked at it her lover saw a vague trouble growing slowly in her eyes.

“What!” he remarked. “It does not please you?”

“I think,” she answered,–“I feel as if it had not pleased you.”

He fell back a few paces and stood scanning it with an impression at once hard and curious.

“Please me!” he exclaimed in a voice almost strident. “It should. She has beauty enough.”

On her return home that day Rebecca drew forth from the recesses of her trunk her neglected writing folio and a store of paper.

Miss Thorne, entering the room, found her kneeling over her trunk, and spoke to her.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Rebeeca smiled faintly.

“What I ought to have begun before,” she said. “I am behindhand with my work.”

She laid the folio and her inkstand upon the table, and made certain methodical arrangements for her labor. She worked diligently all day, and looked slightly pale and wearied when she rose from her seat in the evening. Until eleven o’clock she sat at the open door, sometimes talking quietly, sometimes silent and listening to the wind among the pines. She did, not mention her lover’s name, and he did not come. She spent many a day and night in the same manner after this. For the present the long, idle rambles and unconventional moon-lit talks were over. It was tacitly understood between herself and her aunt that Lennox’s labor occupied him.

“It seems a strange time to begin a picture–during a summer holiday,” said Miss Thorne a little sharply upon one occasion.

Rebecca laughed with an air of cheer.

“No time is a strange time to an artist,” she answered. “Art is a mistress who gives no holidays.”

She was continually her bright, erect, alert self. The woman who loved her dearly and had known her from her earliest childhood, found her sagacity and knowledge set at naught as it were. She had been accustomed to see her niece admired far beyond the usual lot of women; she had gradually learned to feel it only natural that she should inspire quite a strong sentiment even in casual acquaintances. She had felt the delicate power of her fascination herself, but never at her best and brightest had she found her more charming or quicker of wit and fancy than she was now.