Her pride was not involved, and she suffered no sting of wounded vanity from its rejection: her hurt was in a tenderer place. She would not have cared how many people knew of her failure, if her mother and Mrs. Burton need not have known; but she wrote faithfully home of it, and tried to make neither much nor little of it. She forbade Charmian the indignation which she would have liked to vent, but she let her cry over the event with her. No one else knew that it had actually happened except Wetmore and Ludlow; she was angry with them at first for encouraging her to offer the picture, but Wetmore came and was so mystified and humbled by its refusal, that she forgave him and even comforted him for his part in the affair. "She acted like a little man about it," he reported to Ludlow. "She'll do. When a girl can take a blow like that the way she does, she makes you wish that more fellows were girls. When I had my first picture refused, it laid me up. But I'm not going to let this thing rest. I'm going to see if that picture can't be got into the American Artists'." "Better not," said Ludlow so vaguely that Wetmore thought he must mean something. "Why?" "Oh--I don't believe she'd like it." "What makes you think so? Have you seen her?" "No----" "You haven't? Well, Ludlow, _I_ didn't lose any time. Perhaps you think there was no one else to blame for the mortification of that poor child." "No, I don't. I am to blame, too. I encouraged her to try--I urged her." "Then I should think you would go and tell her so." "Ah, I think she knows it. If I told her anything, I should tell her no one was to blame but myself." "Well, that wouldn't be a bad idea." Wetmore lighted his pipe. "Confound those fellows! I should like to knock their heads together. If there is anything like the self-righteousness of a committee when it's wrong---but there isn't, fortunately."