dham found his opportunity of
arranging the little tea-party at which the ladies were to meet his
sister. Miss Robinson was to give him the final sitting on the Tuesday;
so it was therefore agreed that the tea should take place on that day
after work was over. The sitter herself crimsoned deeply at learning
that Mary "had admired her immensely," and her eyes glistened in a way
that showed her pleasure and rapturous appreciation.

XIII

The definite figure of Mr. Shanner with his magnificent appropriation of
Miss Robinson merely impelled Wyndham to smash up this rival at once and
have done with the business. The evening had obscured all the repugnance
that lay in the depths of him; had stimulated roseate conceivings of
possible felicity.

On the Tuesday he found his opportunity. Miss Robinson came alone,
explaining that her mother would not appear till the time fixed for the
tea-party. The weather was rigorously wintry now, and a biting wind blew
in as the door was opened. A new layer of snow had fallen during the
last hour, and Miss Robinson had come across wrapped in a big, heavy
cloak. He ushered her through the ante-room with a charming air of
solicitude, to which she vibrated like a struck harp, and gave him the
softest and tenderest intonations of her voice. He helped her off with
the cloak, and hung it away carefully, the whilst she stooped and warmed
her long hands at the lavishly heaped-up fire. Her throat and arms now
showed at their best, and her face had some strange, almost mystic
undertone of happiness. As she bent down there before his eyes, she
completely blotted out the impression of the insignificant plain woman
whom he had suddenly come upon in the streets; of the everyday Miss
Robinson that at one time had almost become an obsession. At that moment
she was well-nigh the idealised figure he had painted. Yet there was
something even subtler in her which he had missed, and knew that he had
missed. But, studying his own work again, he saw that that was just as
well; for the picture existed as a separate creation, a piece of
painting first and foremost, in which he had exhibited the cleverness of
his brush. It was paint--distinguished, intellectual paint--more than it
was human portraiture; in spite of all the significance with which he
had tried to invest it. As this new truth dawned upon him, he kept
glancing from sitter to canvas, and from canvas to sitter, with a
strange, surprised interest.