He saw the intimacy between the two girls from a new point of view; he comprehended the change the months had made, and he had a feeling of some displeasure that Janet Cardiff should have allowed herself to be so subdued, so seconded in it.
Kendal came back a day or two before Elfrida's disappearance, and saw her only once in the meantime.
That was on the evening--which struck him later as one of purposeless duplicity--before the Peach-Blossom Company had left for the provinces, when he and Elfrida both dined at the Cardiffs'.

With him that night she had the air of a chidden child; she was silent and embarrassed, and now and then he caught a glance which told him in so many words that she was very sorry, she hadn't meant to, she would never do it again.

He did not for a moment suspect that it referred to the scene at Lady Halifax's, and was more than half real.

It was not easy to know that even genuine feeling, with Elfrida, required a cloak of artifice.

He put it down as a pretty pose, and found it as objectionable as the one he had painted.