“We are just finishing!” Hubert answered. “It is my portrait, you see. You must look at it.” The artist made way for her before the easel, laid down his implements, and took up his hat and gloves. She looked mechanically at the picture, while Hubert accompanied him to the door, and they talked awhile about another sitting, and about a frame that was to be sent home. The portrait was clever, but superficial; better looking, at once, and worse looking than Hubert,—elegant, effeminate, unreal. An impulse of wonder passed through her mind that she should happen just then to find him engaged in this odd self-reproduction. It was a different Hubert that turned and faced her as the door closed behind his companion, the real, the familiar Hubert. He had gained time; but surprise, admiration, conjecture, a lively suggestion of dismay, were shining in his handsome eyes. Nora had dropped into the chair vacated by the artist; and as she sat there with clasped hands, she felt the young man reading the riddle of her shabby dress and her excited face. For him, too, she was the real Nora. Dismay in Hubert’s face began to elbow its companions. He advanced, pushed towards her the chair in which he had been posturing, and, as he seated himself, made a half-movement to offer his hand; but before she could take it, he had begun to play with his watch-chain. “Nora,” he asked, “what is it?” What was it, indeed? What was her errand, and in what words could it be told? An inexpressible weakness had taken possession of her, a sense of having reached the goal of her journey, the term of her strength. She dropped her eyes on her shabby skirt and passed her hand over it with a gesture of eloquent simplicity. “I have left Roger,” she said. Hubert made no answer, but his silence seemed to fill the room. He sank back in his chair, still looking at her with startled eyes. The fact intimidated him; he was amazed and confused; yet he felt he must say something, and in his confusion he uttered a gross absurdity. “Ah,” he said: “with his consent?”