_Perhaps, after all, she was right and he was wrong._ It was almost the first time in Flint's life that he had ever definitely formulated a confession that his attitude towards life in general was not what it might be. Once formulated, it began to grow upon him curiously. He found himself reviewing whole courses of conduct, and testing them by new rules and standards.
At first these rules and standards were cold and rigid abstractions; but gradually they took on a faint echo of personality, and he found himself speculating on what Winifred Anstice would have done or said, on occasions when he felt himself to have been harsh and hard. This haunting influence was intensified by the presence of the portrait which he had brought away from Nepaug; the picture of the gray-robed Quakeress, with the soft dark eyes, and the white lace, and the point of flame at her breast.
He had lost all appreciation of its artistic qualities. The mottled softness of the curtained background against the folds of the woollen stuff gave him no pleasure now,--at least, he never thought of it. His whole attention was absorbed in that faint hint of resemblance to Winifred Anstice which lay chiefly in the full eyelids and the subtle, shadowy, evanescent smile which said at once so much and so little.
He could not tell how it fell out, but at last the time came when he admitted the source of its charm. He recalled the time sharply long after, and how he had risen hastily, and paced the floor with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. That it should come to this--he, Jonathan Flint, a man whose gray hairs--here he stepped before the mirror and studied the tuft of prematurely white locks upon his forehead--whose gray hairs ought to have brought with them wisdom, or at least common sense,--that he should fall to sitting for hours in front of a picture like any schoolboy of eighteen! Really, it was too absurd!
He would send off the portrait to the cleaner to-morrow, and then when it was properly framed, it should be sent to Miss Anstice with his compliments, and so an end of the whole matter. He would never see it again.
This query was so insistent that it seemed to come from outside his consciousness, and to demand an answer. He stopped short in his walk as it struck him. Then, alone as he was, he colored to the temples, and gave a little gasp. Like an overwhelming tidal wave there swept over him the realization that his will was mastered by a power above it, mightier than itself; that his seeing Winifred Anstice again was hardly a question of volition any longer, any more than breathing was a matter of will--that he _must_ see her--that the chief question of his future was whether she cared to see him.