nothing in particular it was she herself who said
all. She couldn't help that it came; and the reason
it came was that she found herself, for the first mo
ment, looking at the mysterious portrait through
tears. Perhaps it was her tears that made it just
then so strange and fair as wonderful as he had
said: the face of a young woman, all magnifi
cently drawn, down to the hands, and magnificently
dressed; a face almost livid in hue, yet handsome in
sadness and crowned with a mass of hair rolled back
and high, that must, before fading with time, have
had a family resemblance to her own. The lady in
question, at all events, with her slightly Michael-
angelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her
full lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her bro
caded and wasted reds, was a very great personage
only unaccompanied by a joy. And she was dead,
dead, dead. Milly recognised her exactly in words
that had nothing to do with her. " I shall never be
better than this."

He smiled for her at the portrait. " Than she?
You'd scarce need to be better, for surely that's well
enough. But you are, one feels, as it happens, bet
ter; because, splendid as she is, one doubts if she
was good."

He hadn't understood. She was before the pict
ure, but she had turned to him, and she didn't care
if, for the minute, he noticed her tears. It was prob
ably as good a moment as she should ever have with
him. It was perhaps as good a moment as she

[[242]]

p241 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p242w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p243

v?