Yet in the beginning she had felt a splendid confidence.
Her appropriation of theory had been so brilliant and so
rapid, her instructive appreciation had helped itself
out so well with the casual formulas of the schools, she
seemed to herself to have an absolute understanding of
expression. She held her social place among the others
by her power of perception, and that, with the completeness
of her repudiation of the bourgeois, had given her Nadie
Palicsky, whom the rest found difficult, variable,
unreasonable. Elfrida was certain that if she might only
talk to Lucien she could persuade him of a great deal
about her talent that escaped him--she was sore it escaped
him--in the mere examination of her work. It chafed her
always that her personality could not touch the master;
that she must day after day be only the dumb, submissive
pupil. She felt sometimes that there were things she
might say to Lucien which would be interesting and valuable
for him to hear.

Lucien was always non-committal for the first few months.
Everybody said so, and it was natural enough. Elfrida
set her teeth against his silences, his casual looks and
ambiguous encouragements for a length of time which did
infinite credit to her determination. She felt herself
capable of an eternity of pain; she was proudly conscious
of a willingness to oppose herself to innumerable
discouragements--to back her talent, as it were, against
all odds. That was historic, dignified, to be expected!
But in the inmost privacy of her soul she had conceived