, even with old
Foinet--that's why he takes so much trouble about her--and now two of you,
you and Lawson. It makes me sick."

"Oh, what nonsense! She's a very decent sort. One treats her just as if
she were a man."

"Oh, don't speak to me, don't speak to me."

"But what can it matter to you?" asked Philip. "It's really no business of
yours where I spend my summer."

"I was looking forward to it so much," she gasped, speaking it seemed
almost to herself. "I didn't think you had the money to go away, and there
wouldn't have been anyone else here, and we could have worked together,
and we'd have gone to see things." Then her thoughts flung back to Ruth
Chalice. "The filthy beast," she cried. "She isn't fit to speak to."

Philip looked at her with a sinking heart. He was not a man to think girls
were in love with him; he was too conscious of his deformity, and he felt
awkward and clumsy with women; but he did not know what else this outburst
could mean. Fanny Price, in the dirty brown dress, with her hair falling
over her face, sloppy, untidy, stood before him; and tears of anger rolled
down her cheeks. She was repellent. Philip glanced at the door,
instinctively hoping that someone would come in and put an end to the
scene.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said.

"You're just the same as all of them. You take all you can get, and you
don't even say thank you. I've taught you everything you know. No one else
would take any trouble with you. Has Foinet ever bothered about you? And
I can tell you this--you can work here for a thousand years and you'll
never do any good. You haven't got any talent. You haven't got any
originality. And it's not only me--they all say it. You'll never be a
painter as long as you live."

"That is no business of yours either, is it?" said Philip, flushing.

"Oh, you think it's only my temper. Ask Clutton, ask Lawson, ask Chalice.
Never, never, never. You haven't got it in you."

Philip shrugged his shoulders and walked out. She shouted after him.

"Never, never, never."

Moret was in those days an old-fashioned town of one street at the edge of
the forest of Fontainebleau, and the Ecu d'Or was a hotel which still
had about it the decrepit air of the Ancien Regime. It faced the winding
river, the Loing; and Miss Chalice had a room with a little terrace
overlooking it, with a charming view of the old bridge and its fortified
gateway. They sat here in the evenings after dinner, drinking coffe