Chapter 4

"But has she any idea herself, poor thing?" was the way I had put it to
Mrs. Munden on our next meeting after the incident at my studio; with the
effect, however, only of leaving my friend at first to take me as alluding
to Mrs. Brash's possible prevision of the chatter she might create. I had
my own sense of that--this provision had been nil; the question was of her
consciousness of the office for which Lady Beldonald had counted on her and
for which we were so promptly proceeding to spoil her altogether.

"Oh I think she arrived with a goodish notion," Mrs. Munden had replied
when I had explained; "for she's clever too, you know, as well as good-
looking, and I don't see how, if she ever really KNEW Nina, she could have
supposed for a moment that she wasn't wanted for whatever she might have
left to give up. Hasn't she moreover always been made to feel that she's
ugly enough for anything?" It was even at this point already wonderful how
my friend had mastered the case and what lights, alike for its past and its
future, she was prepared to throw on it. "If she has seen herself as ugly
enough for anything she has seen herself--and that was the only way--as
ugly enough for Nina; and she has had her own manner of showing that she
understands without making Nina commit herself to anything vulgar. Women
are never without ways for doing such things--both for communicating and
receiving knowledge--that I can't explain to you, and that you wouldn't
understand if I could, since you must be a woman even to do that. I
daresay they've expressed it all to each other simply in the language of
kisses. But doesn't it at any rate make something rather beautiful of the
relation between them as affected by our discovery--?"

I had a laugh for her plural possessive. "The point is of course that if
there was a conscious bargain, and our action on Mrs. Brash is to deprive
her of the sense of keeping her side of it, various things may happen that
won't be good either for her or for ourselves. She may conscientiously
throw up the position."

"Yes," my companion mused--"for she is conscientious. Or Nina, without
waiting for that, may cast her forth."

I faced it all. "Then we should have to keep her."

"As a regular model?" Mrs. Munden was ready for anything. "Oh that would
be lovely!"

But I further worked it out. "The difficulty is that she's not a model,
hang it--that she's too good for one, that she's the very thing herself.
When Outreau and I have each had our go, that will be all; there'll be
nothing left for any one else. Therefore it behoves us quite to understand
that our attitude's a responsibility. If we can't do for her positively
more than Nina does--"

"We must let her alone?" My companion