som.

And not less eagerly had Miss Robinson followed his work, scanning the
magazines for his drawings, and haunting the galleries in the search for
his paintings. No one guessed how much he was the interest of her life:
her parents had no suspicion at all, though they knew of their unusual
neighbour, and spoke of him occasionally at table. But Alice Robinson
was the humblest of womankind. Her youth lay already in the past: she
accounted herself the plainest of the plain. So she idealised and
worshipped her hero at a distance, feeling immeasurably farther from him
than the hundred yards of respectable Hampstead pavement that separated
their lives.

One morning at breakfast her father read out from his paper the news of
a sensational bankruptcy. A world-famous house of solicitors had
fallen, and some of the first families in England were losers. Immense
trust funds had gone for building speculations, and amongst the
fashionable creditors who had been hit the worst were Mr. Walter Lloyd
Wyndham, the artist, of Hampstead, and Miss Mary Wyndham, his sister. It
seemed a curious little fact to Mr. Robinson that this affair should
vibrate so near to them, and a mild and not unpleasant stimulation was
thereby imparted to the breakfast-table. But Miss Robinson was hard put
to it to dissimulate her deeper interest in the announcement. Her
agitation was profound, shattering: she was glad to escape, and sit
alone with her secret. It seemed a sacrilege that earthly vicissitude
should touch this brilliant existence. And thereafter she watched her
hero more narrowly than ever, reading in his bearing a stern defiance of
adversity.

At first indeed there was little difference visible in Wyndham's outward
seemings, and Miss Robinson was thankful that the calamity had ruffled
him so imperceptibly. Yet, as the year went by, it began to dawn upon
her that things nevertheless were changing. She had learnt to read with
consummate skill all the little activities that beat around the studio,
and it did not escape her attention that he was going into society
rarely, that smart visitors were fewer, and that pictures were being
returned to him after astonishingly brief intervals. And gradually, as
if in corroboration of her own conclusions, she found his work missing
from the exhibitions, and knew with a sinking of her heart that his
brilliant days were waning.

And as time further passed, and one year merged into another, she
realised defin