"We only register a change in ourselves," he thought, "by the impression that other things make on us. If our taste changes we say that a thing we used to think beautiful is ugly. It is not so--it is the same as it always was. I cannot paint this picture without changing myself. What will the change be?" The yellow, crumpled programme and the copy of _Jekyll and Hyde_ lay together unregarded on the table. When we have drunk our medicine we do not concern ourselves with the medicine-bottle--unless, like the immortal Mrs. Pullet, we take a vague, melancholy pleasure in recalling how much medicine we have taken. But that dear lady's worst enemies could not have found a single point in common between her and Frank Trevor. CHAPTER II Jack Armitage, as we know, though he was aware it was tea-time, was filling his pipe. He had accomplished this to his satisfaction, and had just got it comfortably under way when Mrs. Trevor, also with tea in her mind, came down the steps leading from the terrace and strolled towards him. "Where's Frank?" she asked. "I thought he said he was going to sit about with you till tea?" "He said so," said Jack; "but he went into his studio to get a book, and he has not appeared since." "Well, I suppose he's in the house," she said. "In any case it's five, and we sha'n't get more than two hours on the river. So come in." Jack often caught himself regretting he was not a portrait-painter when he looked at Mrs. Trevor. She was, he told himself, one of the beauties of all time, and her black hair, black eyes, and delicately chiselled nose had caused many young men on the slightest acquaintance to wish that she had not decided to change her maiden name to Trevor. It was also noticeable that as their acquaintance became less slight their regret became proportionately keener. Frank had done a portrait of her, the first that brought him prominently into notice, and, as Jack thought, his best. By one of those daring experiments which in his hands seemed always to succeed, he had represented her a tall, stately figure, dressed in white, standing in front of a great Chinese screen covered with writhing dragons in blue and gold, a nightmare of hideous forms in wonderful colors. It was a bold experiment, but certainly, to Jack's mind, he had managed with miraculous success to bring out what was almost as characteristic of his wife's mind as her beauty was of her body, and which, for want of a better word, he called her wholesomeness. The contrast between that and the exquisite deformities behind her hit eyes, so to speak, straight in the face. But it hit fair, and it was triumphant. Mrs. Trevor paused on the edge of the gravel-path and picked up the lonely tennis-ball. "To think that it should have been there all the time!" she said. "How blind you are, Mr. Armitage!"