She thus attached some importance to his not yet suspecting any change; so she decided to go across to Tite Street at tea-time, and see him, and do things below stairs just as on a normal day. But she feared to face the experience alone; she did not trust her own sangfroid. As the afternoon proved a fine one, she pressed her mother to join her in the journey across town, throwing out the inducement that they would look at the shops in town _en route_.
They found Wyndham putting his brushes in order after his long day. He had risen early, he explained, and had started work with the light. A month was not too long to finish off this great picture; he really saw a year's work yet to be done on it! So therefore he was making a tremendous effort and giving himself up to it, body and soul.
"And I'm afraid I must claim your indulgence. If I appear neglectful, you will really understand, and put up with me. I shall make it up to you afterwards," he added, smiling.
Alice was surprised at her calm, once she had mastered the first tremor at the moment of arrival. It gave her confidence, too, for the future, since it was good to know she could trust herself.
And this strange, almost inhuman, calm which had succeeded to the tempests that had swept through her of late did not desert her. She knew that the storms had worn themselves out, and that she had found a strange, an almost baffling peace.
Wyndham, for his part, only rejoiced that she seemed so contented and happy; so ready to overlook his shortcomings in the rôle of affianced husband. Poor child, how good and devoted she was! If only out of his brotherly tenderness for her, and appreciation and gratitude for all she had planned and done to smoothe his life, he would take care that his promise to Lady Betty should be carried out, not grudgingly and according to the letter, but in a generously full and human way.
Perhaps now, in this last critical month, when every stroke of the brush seemed a stroke of fate, he threw more frenzy into his work than ever before. His mind struck deep roots in it, so that the passion of it was ever in him. Yet a sense of suffering and defeat stirred sometimes in him, so that he dared not be alone with himself. He spent some of his evenings in coteries where art and other things were hotly debated, and this, too, helped him, furnishing food for reflection and sending him to books as an interested reader in search of enlightenment and suggestion.