Again and again, however, fears and doubts assailed him. He would wake suddenly in the night, aroused by no apparent cause, and would start thinking about her, wondering if she were well and happy. At first he had written to her almost daily, until she had forbidden him to do so any longer, urging that it was nearly, if not quite as harmful for him to do this as to have her chattering and laughing by his side. Her letters to him had grown more and more infrequent, shorter and shorter; mere little messages now, that stimulated a hunger they did not do anything to satisfy. A curious change had come over his imaginings. In the early days after her going away he had found no difficulty in conjuring up her face before his mind’s eye. Gradually the image had grown vaguer and more vague until at last, if he would think of her as she was, he had to look at “The Rebel.” What memories the picture called back to him! The meeting with her that foggy afternoon in Bond Street; years ago it seemed, but in reality only a few brief months; the afternoon he had first gone down to visit her at Kennington; the thought that he had then that she was deliciously beautiful, and that he would love to have her for his playmate; the birth of a better feeling, the growth of his deep love for her; the finding her alone and lonely in that stuffy Bloomsbury hotel; the long days and nights of delight that they had passed together since. Again and again he reproached himself for little attentions that he had failed to pay her, and for the few bitter words that he had spoken to her once in a moment of irritation. He was so utterly unworthy of her that in good truth he should have done for her all the little that was in his power. He had kept her apart from his friends selfishly, with the result that she must be very lonely now. He had written to Mortimer asking him to do anything he could to relieve the monotony of her existence. What a dear woman she was, he thought over and over again, to put up with all the troubles and worries he had brought upon her—all for love of him. So whenever any slightest shadow of doubt of her entered his mind, he gave it no resting-place there, but chased it away as an insult and a deep wrong to the woman who had intrusted her life’s happiness to his poor keeping. As the picture drew near completion he worked every minute that the sun gave to him, for when it was finished he would be free to go to her. It was his letter telling her that but a few more days, a week at most, kept them apart, which she had tossed aside unopened and had afterward thrown upon the fire unread.