“Oh, she hated it so—she hated it so! She was so jealous. But here’s the portrait—you may have that,” Miss Tita announced, taking the little picture, wrapped up in the same manner in which her aunt had wrapped it, out of her pocket.

“I may have it—do you mean you give it to me?” I questioned, staring, as it passed into my hand.

“Oh, yes.”

“But it’s worth money—a large sum.”

“Well!” said Miss Tita, still with her strange look.

I did not know what to make of it, for it could scarcely mean that she wanted to bargain like her aunt. She spoke as if she wished to make me a present. “I can’t take it from you as a gift,” I said, “and yet I can’t afford to pay you for it according to the ideas Miss Bordereau had of its value. She rated it at a thousand pounds.”

“Couldn’t we sell it?” asked Miss Tita.

“God forbid! I prefer the picture to the money.”

“Well then keep it.”

“You are very generous.”

“So are you.”

“I don’t know why you should think so,” I replied; and this was a truthful speech, for the singular creature appeared to have some very fine reference in her mind, which I did not in the least seize.

“Well, you have made a great difference for me,” said Miss Tita.

I looked at Jeffrey Aspern’s face in the little picture, partly in order not to look at that of my interlocutress, which had begun to trouble me, even to frighten me a little—it was so self-conscious, so unnatural. I made no answer to this last declaration; I only privately consulted Jeffrey Aspern’s delightful eyes with my own (they were so young and brilliant, and yet so wise, so full of vision); I asked him what on earth was the matter with Miss Tita. He seemed to smile at me with friendly mockery, as if he were amused at my case. I had got into a pickle for him—as if he needed it! He was unsatisfactory, for the only moment since I had known him. Nevertheless, now that I held the little picture in my hand I felt that it would be a precious possession. “Is this a bribe to make me give up the papers?” I demanded in a moment, perversely. “Much as I value it, if I were to be obliged to choose, the papers are what I should prefer. Ah, but ever so much!”

“How can you choose—how can you choose?” Miss Tita asked, slowly, lamentably.

“I see! Of course there is nothing to be said, if you regard the interdiction that rests upon you as quite insurmountable. In this case it must seem to you that to part with them would be an impiety of the worst kind, a simple sacrilege!”

Miss Tita shook her head, full of her dolefulness. “You would understand if you had known her. I’m afraid,” she quavered suddenly—”I’m afraid! She was terrible when she was angry.”

“Yes, I saw something of that, that night. She was terrible. Then I saw her eyes. Lord, they were fine!”

“I see them—they stare at me in the dark!” said Miss Tita.