Elfrida felt the keenest pleasure of her whole life in the knowledge that Kendal was talking to her more seriously, more carefully, because of that piece of work in the _Decade_; the consciousness of it was like wine to her, freeing her thoughts and her lips.

Kendal felt, too, that the plane of their relations was somehow altered.

He was not sure that he liked the alteration.

Already she had grown less amusing, and the real _camaraderie_ which she constantly suggested her desire for he could not, at the bottom of his heart, truly tolerate with a woman.

He was an artist, but he was also an Englishman, and he told himself that he must not let her get into the way of coming there.