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 the character of the obstacles she was prepared to face, and the list resolutely excluded any idea that it might not be worth while.

Indifference and contempt cut at the very roots of her pledges to herself.

As she sat listening on this afternoon to the vivid terms of Lucien's disapproval of what the Swede had done, she had a sharp consciousness of this severance.
She had nothing to say to any one in the general babble of the anteroom, and nobody notified her white face and resolute eyes particularly--the Americans were always so pale and so _exalte_.