"But--" Kendal fell into the absorbed silence of his work again, leaving the sentence unfinished.

He looked up at her with a long, close, almost intimate scrutiny, under which and his careless words she blushed hotly.
"Then I hope you have chosen my most becoming disguise," she cried imperiously, jumping up.

"Now, if you please, I will see." She stood beside the canvas with her eyes upon his face, waiting for a sign from him.

He, feeling, without knowing definitely why, that a critical moment had come between them, rose and stepped back a pace or two, involuntarily pulling himself together to meet what she might say.
"Yes, you may look," he said, seeing that she would not turn her head without his word; and waited.
Elfrida took three or four steps beyond the easel and faced it.

In the first instant of her gaze her face grew radiant.