complained of the scantiness of the dole.  She could conjure up those hours, all too short for his delight in his model and his work.  Surely it would not be long now!  Elfrida cared, by her own confession—­Janet felt, dully, there could now be no doubt of that—­and since Elfrida cared, what could be more certain than the natural issue?  She fought with herself to accept it; she spent hours in seeking for the indifference that might come of accustoming herself to the fact.  And when she thought of her father she hoped that it might be soon.

There came a day when Lawrence Cardiff gave, his daughter the happiness of being almost his other self again.  He had come downstairs with a headache and a touch of fever, and all day long he let her take care of him submissively, with the old pleasant gratitude that seemed to re-establish their comradeship.  She had a joyful secret wonder at the change, it was so sadden and so complete; but their sympathetic relation reasserted itself naturally and at once, and she would not let herself question it.  In the evening he sent her to her room for a book of his, and when she brought it to him where he lay upon the lounge in the library he detained her a moment.

“You mustn’t attempt to read without a lamp now, daddy,” she said, touching his forehead lightly with her lips.  “You will damage your poor old eyes.”

“Don’t be impertinent about my poor old eyes, miss,” he returned, smiling.  “Janet, there is something I think you ought to know.”

“Yes, daddy.”  The girl felt herself turning rigid.

“I want you to make friends with Elfrida again.  I have every reason to believe—­at all events some reason to believe—­that she will become my wife.”  Her knowing already made it simpler to say.

“Has—­has she promised, daddy?”

“Not exactly.  But I think she will, Janet.”  His tone was very confident.  “And of course you must forgive each other any little heart-burnings there may have been between you.”

Any little heart-burnings!  Janet had a quivering moment of indecision.  “Oh, daddy! she won’t! she won’t!” she cried tumultuously, and hurried out of the room.  Cardiff lay still, smiling pityingly.  What odd ideas women managed to get into their heads about one another!  Janet thought Elfrida would refuse her overtures if she made them.  How little she knew Elfrida—­his just, candid, generous Elfrida!

Janet flung herself upon her bed and faced the situation, dry-eyed, with burning cheeks.  She could always face a situation when it admitted the possibility of anything being done, when there was a chance for resolution and action.  Practical difficulties nerved her; it was only before the blankness of a problem of pure abstractness that she quailed—­such a problem as the complication of her relation to John Kendal and to Elfrida Bell.  She had shrunk from that for months, had put it away habitually in the furthest corner of her consciousness, and had done