ow that you are going to
misjudge me, and that, because you see certain things from an ethical
and I from a purely aesthetic point of view."

"I can't admit the division. But no; I hope I shall never _misjudge_
you." She gave me a brief little smile and walked quickly away.

Carrington did not come in that evening, and I was glad that my mental
anguish had no observer.

The next afternoon at two I awaited Miss Jones. My picture, virtually
finished, stood regally dominant in the centre of the studio.

I hated and I adored it. I saw it with Miss Jones's eyes and I saw it
with my own; but her crude ethics had, on the whole, poisoned my
aesthetic triumph.

At two there came the familiar rap. Miss Jones entered. I was sitting
before the picture and rose to meet her. Her face was very white and
very cold, and from under the tipped brim of the little hat her eyes
looked sternly at me. I looked back at her silently.

"I have read 'Manon Lescaut,'" said Miss Jones. I found nothing to say.

"You will understand that I cannot sit to-day. You will understand that
I never should have sat for you at all had I _known_," Miss Jones
pursued.

I said that I understood.

"I have come to-day to bring you back the money that I have earned under
false pretences."

She laid the little packet down upon the table. I turned white. "And to
ask you"--here Miss Jones observed me steadily--"whether you do not feel
that you owe me apologies."

"Miss Jones," I said, "I have unwittingly, unintentionally, given you
great pain; that, with my present knowledge of your exceptional
character, I now see to have been inevitable. I humbly beg your pardon
for it, but I also beg you to believe that from the first I never
thought of you but with respect and admiration."

Miss Jones's face took on quite a terrible look.

"Respect! Admiration! While you were looking from me to _that_!" She
pointed to Manon. "While I was clothing your imagination, personifying
to you that vile creature!"

I tried to stop her with an exclamation of shocked denial, but she went
on, with fierce dignity:

"Exceptional! You call it exceptional to feel debased by that
association? Can I ever look at my face again without thinking: 'The
face of Manon Lescaut?' Can I ever forget that we were thought of as
one? No"--she held up her hand--"let me speak. Do you suppose I cannot
see now the cleverness, yes, the diabolical cleverness, of your picture
of me there? The likeness