This particular canvas was roughly blocked in, and it was elementally simple, but each brush stroke had been thrown against the surface with the concentrated fire and energy of a blow, except the strokes that had painted the face, and there the brush had seemed to kiss the canvas. The picture showed a barefooted girl, standing, in barbaric simplicity of dress, in the glare of the arena, while a gaunt lion crouched eying her. Her head was lifted as though she were listening to faraway music. In the eyes was indomitable courage. That canvas was at once a declaration of love, and a _miserere_. Adrienne set it up beside her own portrait, and, as she studied the two with her chin resting on her gloved hand, her eyes cleared of questioning. Now, she knew what she missed in her own more beautiful likeness. It had been painted with all the admiration of the mind. This other had been dashed off straight from the heart--and this other was Sally! She replaced the sketch where she had found it, and Samson, returning, found her busy with little sketches of the Seine. * * * * * "Drennie," pleaded Wilfred Horton, as the two leaned on the deck rail of the _Mauretania_, returning from Europe, "are you going to hold me off indefinitely? I've served my seven years for Rachel, and thrown in some extra time. Am I no nearer the goal?" The girl looked at the oily heave of the leaden and cheerless Atlantic, and its somber tones found reflection in her eyes. She shook her head. "I wish I knew," she said, wearily. Then, she added, vehemently: "I'm not worth it, Wilfred. Let me go. Chuck me out of your life as a little pig who can't read her own heart; who is too utterly selfish to decide upon her own life." "Is it"--he put the question with foreboding--"that, after all, I was a prophet? Have you--and South--wiped your feet on the doormat marked 'Platonic friendship'? Have you done that, Drennie?" She looked up into his eyes. Her own were wide and honest and very full of pain. "No," she said; "we haven't done that, yet. I guess we won't.... I think he'd rather stay outside, Wilfred. If I was sure I loved him, and that he loved me, I'd feel like a cheat--there is the other girl to think of.... And, besides, I'm not sure what I want myself.... But I'm horribly afraid I'm going to end by losing you both." Horton stood silent. It was tea-time, and from below came the strains of the ship's orchestra. A few ulster-muffled passengers gloomily paced the deck. "You won't lose us both, Drennie," he said, steadily. "You may lose your choice--but, if you find yourself able to fall back on substitutes, I'll still be there, waiting." For once, he did not meet her scrutiny, or know of it. His own eyes were fixed on the slow swing of heavy, gray-green waters. He was smiling, but it is as a man smiles when he confronts despair, and pretends that everything is quite all right. The girl looked at him with a choke in her throat.