"I am sorry for the sort of women you seem acquainted with," she answered rather sadly. "You have formed a very low opinion of the sex. It is not a compliment that you have paid me, and you know it. Don't say anything more please; I decline to discuss that, or any other subject with you. I must request you to leave my rooms, and never to enter them again. You have made further intercourse an impossibility, and our past friendship something to be remembered only with regret." "Don't say that," he began pleadingly; but Jill cut him short. "Please understand that I am quite in earnest," she said. "When Jack comes home I shall explain to him what has happened; it is well that he should understand the true character of his friend. I can never thank heaven sufficiently that my husband is both a man of honour, and a gentleman." "For that matter so should I have been if I had met you first," he answered gloomily. "You are rather hard on me, Jill. Perhaps I have been too precipitate; but I love you so madly, and to-day you seemed so sad, and sweet, and lonely, that I wanted to comfort you." "Enough!" exclaimed Jill excitedly. "If you don't go I shall ask Mr Thompkins to come and protect me from further indignity. How contemptible you are!--how mean! Why don't you insult me when my husband is at home? The sight of you is hateful to me. Why won't you go?" "I will," he answered quietly, "as you wish it. I do not want to frighten you; but remember--always remember that I love you with all my heart." Jill stood quite still and watched him as he gravely quitted her presence, and then listened dully to his footsteps clattering down the stairs. When they died away along the narrow passage and she heard the street door bang behind him she put her hand to her forehead in a dazed kind of way, and glanced vaguely round the little room seeing nothing but Markham's cynical face with the ugly expression in his eyes that was in the painted eyes of the canvas on the easel. Her glance travelled to the portrait, and rested there for a moment. The sight of it seemed to rouse her into action, and, with a catch in her voice that sounded like an angry sob, she took up a brush, and in a few vigorous strokes painted the whole thing out again as she would have liked to blot the incident from her memory.