The next morning, after a night's agony of indecision, he plucked up courage and tapped at the studio door. He entered. Clytie was alone, busily preparing her palette. She paused with the half-squeezed tube in her hand, and looked up at him without rising, her brows slightly knitted. He remained motionless, too, on the threshold, after mechanically shutting the door behind him. He tried to utter the little address of lame excuses which he had framed, but the words stuck, somehow, in his throat. He was only conscious that she was there, in the same room with him again, looking bewilderingly fresh and beautiful in her dark dress, with its dainty painting-apron, too simple almost for the rich colour of her eyes and hair and the stately bend of her neck. Yet even then he noticed she was a trifle paler than usual. “I meant to have come to see you before,” he stammered. “Why didn't you? I rather expected you,” she replied calmly. She finished squeezing her tube, and taking up her palette-knife, went on with her occupation. Kent, instinctively conscious that it is a disadvantage to stand, when morally wrong, before a sitting person who is in the right, drew Winifred's painting-stool away from the easel and sat down. “You might have come in, if only for five minutes,” said Clytie, as he made no reply. The hand holding the palette-knife trembled a little. “I wanted to,” replied Kent, finding words with difficulty. “But I couldn't. I am very, very sorry if I have been rude. I am always doing things of this sort.” “It is not very pleasant for your friends; and I suppose we have been friends.” “Yes, we have been friends,” he replied, “and I hope we shall continue so--if you will forgive me.” His voice sounded strange in his own ears. In Clytie's it sounded cold and formal. She was puzzled. “Oh, of course I forgive you! You have made your apology.” “Believe me--things have happened. I could not come before, indeed I could not.” “I never doubted your word, Kent,” said Clytie, with a touch of her old soft manner towards him. “Only it seemed strange not to see you. One gets into a certain groove, and a change from it jars. You see how easy it is to become a Philistine. You are much more a child of the light than I am, in that you have got out of the groove quite easily.” “You have no right to say that,” said Kent, rising. “Well, perhaps I have not,” said Clytie, bending intently over her palette. “Anyhow, the fact remains that we parted friends before Christmas, and now that I have come back you are changed. I am very sorry--sorrier than I can say. I have valued your friendship and the help it has given me--I am unchanged, I think so--and, to be franker than my sex generally is, I may say, I am hurt.”