Some weeks later still, in August, De Rivaz came to Ivy Cottage, hat in hand, stammering, deferential, to ask Janet to allow him to paint her. He would do anything, take rooms in the neighbourhood, make his convenience entirely subservient to hers if she would only sit to him. He saw with a pang that she was not conscious that they had met before. She had forgotten him, and he did not remind her of their first meeting. He knew that hour had brought trouble upon her. Her face showed it. The patient, enduring spirit was beginning to look through the exquisite face. Her beauty overwhelmed him. He trembled before it. He pleaded hard, but she would not listen to him. She said apathetically that she did not wish to be painted. She was evidently quite unaware of the distinction which he was offering her. His name had conveyed nothing to her. He had to take his leave at last, but, as he walked away in the rain, he turned and looked back at the house. "I will come back," he said, his thin face quivering. It was a wet August, and the harvest rotted on the ground. No one came to Ivy Cottage along the sodden footpath from Easthope. A slow anger was rising in Janet's heart against her lover, the anger that will invade at last the hearts of humble sincere natures, when they find that love and trust have not gone together. George never openly broke with Janet, never could be induced to write the note to her which, his mother told him, it was his duty to write. No. He simply stayed away from her, week after week, month after month. When his mother urged him to break off his engagement formally, he said doggedly that Janet could see for herself that all was over between them. The day came at last when Janet met him suddenly in the streets of Mudbury, on market day. He took off his hat in answer to her timid greeting, and passed on looking straight in front of him. Perhaps he had his evil hour that night, for Janet was very fair. Seen suddenly, unexpectedly, she seemed more beautiful than ever. And she was to have been his wife. After that blighting moment, when even Janet perceived that George was determined not to speak to her; after that Janet began to see that when foundations are undermined that which is built upon them will one day totter and--fall. CHAPTER XIII "The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering; And then, to go to sleep; And then if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die." --EMILY DICKINSON. There are long periods in the journey of life when "the road winds uphill all the way." There are also long periods when the dim plain holds us, endless day after day, till the last bivouac fires of our youth are quenched in its rains.