atisfied. Presently, as Angela said nothing
more, he was going to move the canvas, to show it in a better light,
but she thought he meant to take it away.

'No!' she cried imperatively. 'Not yet! Let me see it--let me
understand----'

Her words died away and she was silent again, her eyes fixed on the
portrait. At last she rose, came forward, and laid both her thin hands
on the narrow black and gold frame.

'I must have it,' she said. 'You must let me have it, though I cannot
pay for it. But I will some day. I will work till I can earn enough
money, or till I die--and if that comes soon, they will give you back
the picture. You cannot take it away!'

Durand saw that she had not understood.

'It is for you,' he said. 'I painted it to give to you. You see, after
your father died, I kept yours--I never meant them to have it, but it
seemed as if I owed you something for it, and this is to pay my debt.
Do you see?'

'How kind you are!' she cried. 'How very, very kind! I do not quite
follow the idea--my head is always so tired now--but I knew you would
understand how I should feel--if I accepted it without any return!'

So far as arithmetic went, the man of genius and the broken-hearted
girl were equally far from ordinary reckoning. Durand knew that by a
turn of luck he had been able to keep the only portrait he had ever
been sorry to part with when it was finished, and he was intimately
convinced that he owed somebody something for such an unexpected
pleasure; on her side, Angela was quite sure that unless the portrait
of the man she had loved was to be an equivalent for some sort of
obligation she could not be satisfied to keep it all her life unpaid
for.

It filled the little sitting-room with light and colour, as a Titian
might have done; it was as intensely alive as Giovanni Severi had
been--the eyes were full of those quick little coruscations of fire
that had made them so unlike those of other men, the impulsive
nostrils seemed to quiver, the healthy young blood seemed to come and
go in the tanned cheeks, the square shoulders were just ready to make
that quick, impatient little movement that had been so characteristic
of him, so like the sudden tension of every muscle when a thoroughbred
scents sport or danger. No ordinary artist would ever have seen all
there was in the man, even in a dozen sittings, but the twin gifts of
sight and memory had unconsciously absorbed and held the whole, and a
skill that was n