"Because he must hate
me so. And are you, Mina? Oh, I hope not that too! Come, to London! To
seek our fortunes in London! Oh, you tiresome old Blent, how glad I am
to leave you!"

"But your father----"

"We'll do things quite nicely, Mina dear. We won't distress father.
We'll leave a note for him. Mina, I'm sure Addie Tristram used just to
leave a note whenever she ran away! We'll sleep in London to-night!"

Suddenly Mina understood better why Harry had surrendered Blent, and
understood too, as her mind flew back, why Addie Tristram had made men
do what they had done. She was carried away by this sudden flood of
enraptured resolution, of a resolve that seemed like an inspiration, of
delight in the unreasonable, of gay defiance to the limits of the
possible.

"Oh, yes, you tiresome old Blent!" cried Cecily, shaking her fair hair
toward the open window. "How could a girl think she was going to live on
river scenes and bric-a-brac?" She laughed in airy scorn. "You must
grow more amusing if I'm to come back to you!" she threatened.

River scenes and bric-a-brac! Mina was surprised that Blent did not on
the instant punish the blasphemy by a revengeful earthquake or an
overwhelming flood. Cecily caught her by the arm, a burlesque
apprehension screwing her face up into a fantastically ugly mask.

"It was the Gainsborough in me!" she whispered, "Gainsboroughs can live
on curios! But I can't, Mina, I can't. I'm a Tristram, not a
Gainsborough. No more could Harry in the end, no more could Harry!"

Mina was panting; she had danced and she had wondered; she was on the
tip of the excitement with which Cecily had infected her.

"But what are we going to do?" she cried in a last protest of
common-sense.

"Oh, I don't know, but something--something--something," was the not
very common-sense answer she received.

It was not the moment for common-sense. Mina scorned the thing and flung
it from her. She would have none of it--she who stood between beautiful
Addie there on the wall and laughing Cecily here in the window, feeling
by a strange and welcome illusion that though there were two visible
shapes, there was but one heart, one spirit in the two. Almost it seemed
as though Addie had risen to life again, once more to charm and to defy
the world. An inexplicable impulse made her exclaim:

"Were you like this before you came to Blent?"

A sudden quiet fell on Cecily. She paused before she answered:

"No, not till I came t