Not that she crudely supposed that, in his conduct to her, he was swayed by ulterior considerations. She saw that he had genuinely an affection for her, more kind and brotherly than a lover's affection; she knew that he was trying to like her better, to raise her in his estimation far higher than the truth. And she conceded that his hesitation was natural, that she was no mate for him, that his world would openly despise her. No, he must not marry her for the safety her fortune would bring him. She would marry only for love, and, as that she could never win, she would consequently never marry. She dreaded now lest the situation should take a more definite turn, lest he should begin to woo her in earnest. She wished to be left in contentment with her deep secret happiness which could never be effaced from her life. She had had her way. It was she who had brought him the succour he needed; she--of whose existence he had never dreamed, whom he had often met face to face yet never glanced at. It was she who had rescued for the world's benefit this splendid genius that the world had rejected. This was joy enough. To anything else the end must be disillusion. For awhile she lived in terror lest he might speak. But as the work progressed, and he became more and more enthusiastic over her portrait, she could not but fall a victim to the subtle implication, and begin to believe that he must really think more of her than she had ever dared to imagine. It was then that her stern control of herself began to slip away. Wilfully she shut her eyes to all that she understood only too well, and surrendered herself to the spell and wonder of the vista that opened before her. It was the best thing that life had brought her, she told herself, and in an impulse of pagan desire she was impelled to wring from it the last drop of passionate happiness it could afford her. Her love for him reached out into new depths; the dull, despairing, impossible love of before became a fever, a frenzy, a great yearning passion that must pour itself out or kill her.