When Fenwick was alone, he walked to a chest of drawers in which he kept a disorderly multitude of possessions, and took out a mingled handful of letters, photographs, and sketches.

Throwing them on a table, he looked for and found a photograph of Phoebe with Carrie on her knee, and a little sketch of Phoebe--one of the first ideas for the 'Genius Loci.' He propped them up against some books, and looked at them in a passion of triumph.
'It's all right, old woman--it's all right!' he murmured, smiling.
Then he spread out Lord Findon's cheque before the photograph, as though he offered it at Phoebe's shrine.
Five hundred pounds! Well, it was only what his work was worth--what he had every right to expect.

None the less, the actual possession of the money seemed to change his whole being.

What would his old father say?
He gave a laugh, half-scornful, half-good-humoured, as he admitted to himself that not even now--probably--would the old man relent.
And Phoebe!--he imagined the happy wonder in her eyes--the rolling away of all clouds between them.

For six weeks now he had been a veritable brute about letters! First, the strain of his work (and the final wrestle with the 'Genius Loci,' including the misfortune of the paints, had really been a terrible affair!)--then--he confessed it--the intellectual excitement of the correspondence with Madame de Pastourelles: between these two obsessions, or emotions, poor Phoebe had fared ill.
'But you'll forgive me now, old girl--won't you ?' he said, kissing her photograph in an effusion that brought the moisture to his eyes.