"All this summer, while I have been forced to endure the company of all sorts of stupid people, I have been thinking of you and your work.

And, you see, I have come to you, the first possible moment after my return home." The man--being a man--could not remain wholly insensible to the alluring physical beauty of the splendid creature who stood so temptingly before him; but, to the honor of his kind, he could and did remain master of himself.
The woman, true to her life training,--as James Rutlidge had been true to his schooling when he approached Sibyl Andres in the mountains,--construed the artist's manner, not as a splendid self-control but as a careful policy.

To her, and to her kind, the great issues of life are governed, not at all by principle, but by policy.

It is not at all what one is, or what one may accomplish that matters; it is wholly what one may skillfully _appear_ to be, and what one may skillfully provoke the world to say, that is of vital importance.

Turning from the painter to the easel, as if to find in his portrait of her the fuller expression of that which she believed he dared not yet put into words, she was about to draw aside the curtain; when Aaron King checked her quickly, with a smile that robbed his words of any rudeness.
"Please don't touch that, Mrs.Taine.I am not yet ready to show it." As she turned from the easel to face him, he took her portrait from where it rested, face to the wall; and placed it upon another easel, saying, "Here is your picture." With the painting before her, she talked eagerly of her plans for the artist's future; how the picture was to be exhibited, and how, because it was her portrait, it would be praised and talked about by her friends who were leaders in the art circles.