ittle passage, and shut the outer door, shivering.

'The kitchen's warm,' she said, at last.

She led him in, and he found the low-ceiled room bright with fire and
lamp, the table spread, and his chair beside the blaze. Kneeling down,
she tried to unlace his wet boots.

'No, no!' he said, holding her away--'I'll do that, Phoebe. What's
wrong with you?--you look so--so queer!'

She straightened herself, and with a laugh put back her fair hair. Her
face was very pale--a greyish pallor--and her wonderful eyes stared
from it in an odd, strained way.

'Oh, I'm all right,' she said; and she turned away from him to the
fire, opening the oven-door to see whether the meat-pie was done.

'How have you kept in this weather?' he said, watching her. 'I'd no
notion you'd had it so bad.'

'Oh, I don't know. I suppose I've had a chill or something. It's been
rather weariful.'

'You didn't tell me anything about your chill.'

'Didn't I? It seems hardly worth while telling such things, from such
a distance. Will you have supper at once?'

He drew up to the table, and she fed him and hovered round him, asking
the while about his work, in a rather perfunctory way, about his rooms
and the price of them, inquiring after the state of his clothes. But
her tone and manner were unlike herself, and there was in his mind a
protesting consciousness that she had not welcomed him as a young wife
should after a long separation. Her manner too was extraordinarily
nervous; her hand shook as she touched a plate; her movements were
full of starts, and checks, as though, often, she intended a thing and
then forgot it.

They avoided talking about money, and he did not mention the name of
Madame de Pastourelles; though of course his letters had reported the
external history of the portrait. But Phoebe presently inquired after
it.

'Have you nearly done painting that lady, John?--I don't know how to
say her name.'

As she spoke, she lifted a bit of bread-and-butter to her mouth and
put it down untasted. In the same way she had tried to drink some tea,
and had not apparently succeeded. Fenwick rose and went over to her.

'Look here, Phoebe,' he said, putting his hand on her beautiful hair
and turning her face to him--'what's the matter?'

Her eyelids closed, and a quiver went through the face.

'I don't know. I--I had a fright a few days ago--at night--and I
suppose I haven't got over it.'

'A fright?'

'Yes. There was a tramp one night