ace, would very
likely see the must on the other side. Of course it's a terribly
complicated thing--a situation like this. I haven't the slightest idea
how one ought to be guided. One could argue and reason all day long
about it--as I have done with myself for weeks past."

"Try just to tell me the reason which seems to you the strongest," said
Bertha.

"That's very simple. I thought I loved him, and I find I don't."

"Exactly. But I hardly see how the change came about."

"I will try to tell you," replied Rosamund. "It was that picture,
'Sanctuary,' that began it. When I first saw it, it gave me a shock.
You know how I have always thought of him--an artist living for his own
idea of art, painting just as he liked, what pleased him, without
caring for the public taste. I got enthusiastic; and when I saw that he
seemed to care for my opinion and my praise--of course all the rest
followed. He told me about his life as an art student--Paris, Rome, all
that; and it was my ideal of romance. He was very poor, sometimes so
poor that he hardly had enough to eat, and this made me proud of him,
for I felt sure he could have got money if he would have condescended
to do inferior work. Of course, as I too was poor, we could not think
of marrying before his position improved. At last he painted
'Sanctuary.' He told me nothing about it. I came and saw it on the
easel, nearly finished. And--this is the shocking thing--I pretended to
admire it. I was astonished, pained--yet I had the worldliness to smile
and praise. There's the fault of my character. At that moment, truth
and courage were wanted, and I had neither. The dreadful thing is to
think that he degraded himself on my account. If I had said at once
what I thought, he would have confessed--would have told me that
impatience had made him untrue to himself. And from that day; oh, this
is the worst of all, Bertha--he has adapted himself to what he thinks
my lower mind and lower aims; he has consciously debased himself, out
of thought for me. Horrible! Of course he believes in his heart that I
was a hypocrite before. The astonishing thing is that this didn't cause
him to turn cold to me. He must have felt that, but somehow he overcame
it. All the worse! The very fact that he still cared for me shows how
bad my influence has been. I feel that I have wrecked his life,
Bertha--and yet I cannot give him my own, to make some poor sort of
amends."

Bertha was listening with a face t