Vard threw back his head and swept the studio with a sovereign eye. “The back way, Mr. Vard, the back way,” Cornley whimpered. “For God’s sake, sir, don’t lose a minute.” Vard transfixed his abject henchman. “I have never yet taken the back way,” he enunciated; and, with a gesture matching the words, he turned to me and bowed. “I regret the disturbance”--and he walked to the door. His daughter was at his side, alert, transfigured. “Stay here, my dear.” “Never!” They measured each other an instant; then he drew her arm in his. She flung back one look at me--a paean of victory--and they passed out with Cornley at their heels. I wish I’d finished the face then; I believe I could have caught something of the look she had tried to make me see in him. Unluckily I was too excited to work that day or the next, and within the week the whole business came out. If the indictment wasn’t a put-up job--and on that I believe there were two opinions--all that followed was. You remember the farcical trial, the packed jury, the compliant judge, the triumphant acquittal?... It’s a spectacle that always carries conviction to the voter: Vard was never more popular than after his “exoneration”... I didn’t see Miss Vard for weeks. It was she who came to me at length; came to the studio alone, one afternoon at dusk. She had--what shall I say?--a veiled manner; as though she had dropped a fine gauze between us. I waited for her to speak. She glanced about the room, admiring a hawthorn vase I had picked up at auction. Then, after a pause, she said: “You haven’t finished the picture?” “Not quite,” I said. She asked to see it, and I wheeled out the easel and threw the drapery back. “Oh,” she murmured, “you haven’t gone on with the face?” I shook my head. She looked down on her clasped hands and up at the picture; not once at me. “You--you’re going to finish it?” “Of course,” I cried, throwing the revived purpose into my voice. By God, I would finish it! The merest tinge of relief stole over her face, faint as the first thin chirp before daylight. “Is it so very difficult?” she asked tentatively. “Not insuperably, I hope.” She sat silent, her eyes on the picture. At length, with an effort, she brought out: “Shall you want more sittings?” For a second I blundered between two conflicting conjectures; then the truth came to me with a leap, and I cried out, “No, no more sittings!” She looked up at me then for the first time; looked too soon, poor child; for in the spreading light of reassurance that made her eyes like a rainy dawn, I saw, with terrible distinctness, the rout of her disbanded hopes. I knew that she knew ...