and interpreted
so perversely! And yet the fierce and blind bewilderment with which
Phoebe read or misread them was natural enough. She never doubted for
a moment but that the bad woman who wrote them meant to offer herself
to John. She was separated from her husband, John had said, declaring
of course that it was not her fault. As if any one could be sure
of that! But, at any rate, if she were separated, she might be
divorced--some time. And then--_then_!--_she_ would be so obliging as
to make a 'cushion,' and a home, for Phoebe Fenwick's husband! As to
his not being grand enough for her, that was all nonsense. When a man
was as clever as John, he was anybodies equal--one saw that every day.
No, this creature would make people buy his pictures--she would push
him on--and after a while--

With a morbid and devastating rapidity, a whole scheme, by which the
woman before her might possess herself of John, unfolded itself in
Phoebe's furious mind.

Yet, surely, it would only want one word from her--from her, his
wife?--

She felt herself trembling. Her limbs began to sink under her. She
dropped upon a chair, sobbing. What was the use of fighting, of
protesting? John had forgotten her--John's heart had grown cold to
her. She might dismay and trample on her rival--how would that give
her back her husband?

Oh, how could he, how _could_ he have treated her so! 'I know I
was ill-tempered and cross, John,--I couldn't write letters like
that--but I did, _did_ love you--you know, you know--I did!'

It seemed as though she twined her arms round him, and he sat rigid as
a stone, with a hard, contemptuous mouth. A lonely agony, a blackness
of despair, seized on Phoebe, as she crouched there, the letters on
her lap, her hands hanging, her beautiful eyes, blurred with tears and
sleeplessness, fixed on the picture. What she felt was absurd; but how
many tragedies--aye, the deepest--are at bottom ridiculous! She had
lost him; he cared no more for her; he had passed into another world
out of her ken; and what was to become of her?

She started up, goaded by a blind instinct of revenge, seizing she
scarcely knew what. On the table lay a palette, laden with some dark
pigment with which Fenwick had just been sketching in part of his new
picture. In a pot beside it were brushes.

She caught up a large brush, dipped it in the paint, and going to
the picture--panting and crimson--she daubed it from top to bottom,
blotting out the eye