Hence she was not to be banished.

She even, in a taunting way, seemed sometimes to be justifying her presence, for she reminded him: "After all, what's the difference?
What do you care for this, or anything again if Billy is lost to you ?" But the artist told himself fiercely that he did care--that he must care--for his work; and he struggled--how he struggled!--to ignore the horrid visions and the sickening thoughts, and to pierce the veil of fear so that his hand might be steady and his brush regain its skill.
And so he worked.

Sometimes he let his work remain.

Sometimes one hour saw only the erasing of what the hour before had wrought.

Sometimes the elusive something in Marguerite Winthrop's face seemed right at the tip of his brush--on the canvas, even.