Janet, look up!" She looked up, and for a little space Elfrida Bell found oblivion as complete as she could have desired between them.

Then-- "You were telling me--" Janet said.
"Yes.

Your Elfrida and I had a sort of friendship too--it began, as you know, in Paris.

And I was quite aware that one does not have an ordinary friendship with her--it accedes and it exacts more than the common relation.

And I've sometimes made myself uncomfortable with the idea that she gave me credit for a more faultless conception of her than I possessed; for the honest, brutal truth is, I'm afraid, that I've only been working her out.
When the portrait was finished I found that somehow I had succeeded.