say themselves seldom. Within a fortnight she had made
a niche for him in that private place where she kept the
images of those toward whom she sustained this peculiarly
sacred obligation, and to meet him had become one of
those pleasures which were in Sparta so notably
unattainable. I cannot say that considerations which from
the temperamental point of view might be described as
ulterior had never suggested themselves to Miss Bell.
She had thought of them, with a little smile, as a possible
development on Kendal's part that might be amusing. And
then she had invariably checked the smile, and told
herself that she would be sorry, very sorry. Instinctively
she separated the artist and the man. For the artist she
had an admiration none the less sincere for its
exaggerations, and a sympathy which she thought the best
of herself; for the man, nothing, except the
half-contemptuous reflection that he was probably as
other men.

If Elfrida stamped herself less importantly upon the
surface of Kendal's mind than he did upon hers, it may
be easily enough accounted for by the multiplicity of
images there before her. I do not mean to imply that all
or many of these were feminine, but, as I have indicated,
Kendal was more occupied with impressions of all sorts
than is the habit of his fellow-countrymen, and at twenty
eight he had managed to receive quite enough to make a
certain seriousness necessary in a fresh one. There was
no seriousness in his impression of Elfrida. If he had
gone so far as to trace its lines he would have found