It was only, he felt, when his spirit was wholly in bondage to the charm of his work that he could do it well, and he needed to be bound afresh.

Literally, he told himself, the only thing he had painted in months that pleased him was that mere sketch, from memory, of the Halifax drawing-room episode.

He dragged it out and looked at it, under its damaging red stripes, with enthusiasm.

Whatever she did with herself, he thought, Elfrida Bell was curiously satisfying from an artistic point of view.

He fell into a train of meditation, which quickened presently into a practical idea that set him striding up and down the room.
"I believe she would be delighted!" he said aloud, coming to a sudden standstill; "and, by Jove, it would be a kind of reparation!" He delved into an abysmal cupboard for a crusted pen and a cobwebby bottle of ink, and was presently sitting among the fragments of three notes addressed, one after the other, to "Dear Miss Bell." In the end he wrote a single line without any formality whatever, and when Elfrida opened it an hour later she read: "Will you let me paint your portrait for the Academy?
"JOHN-KENDAL.
"P.S .-- Or any other exhibition you may prefer." The last line was a stroke of policy.