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+Project Gutenberg's An Engagement of Convenience, by Louis Zangwill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Engagement of Convenience
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Louis Zangwill
+
+Release Date: September 17, 2010 [EBook #33747]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENGAGEMENT OF CONVENIENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Pat McCoy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  _An Engagement
+  of Convenience_
+
+  _A Novel_
+
+  _By_
+
+  _Louis Zangwill_
+
+  _Author of "The World and a Man,"
+  "One's Womenkind," &c., &c._
+
+  _London
+  Brown, Langham & Co., Ltd.
+  78 New Bond Street, W.
+  1908_
+
+
+
+
+        "In tragic life, God wot,
+  No villain need be!"
+
+  GEORGE MEREDITH.
+
+
+
+
+  An
+  Engagement of Convenience
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Miss Robinson had first seen Wyndham and fallen in love with him on the
+day that he appeared in the road as a neighbour and set up his studio
+there. But that was years before, and she had never made his
+acquaintance. He was the Prince Charming of the romances, handsome, of
+knightly bearing, with a winning smile on his frank face. From her magic
+window in the big corner house where the road branched off into two, she
+had narrowly observed his goings and comings, had watched eagerly all
+that was visible of his romantic, mysterious profession--the picturesque
+Italian models that pulled his bell, the great canvasses and frames
+that, during the earlier years at least, were borne in through his door,
+to reappear in due course as finished pictures on their way to the
+exhibitions--and it was sometimes possible to catch glimpses of stately
+figure-paintings and fascinating scenes and landscapes.
+
+Then, too, there was the suggestion of his belonging to a brilliant
+social world: she had indeed felt that at her first sight of him. Smart
+broughams and victorias in which nestled stylish people not unfrequently
+drew up at his studio about tea-time, and in the season he could be seen
+going off every night in garb of ceremony; not to speak of his
+occasional departures--to important country-houses, no doubt--with
+portmanteaus and dressing-bags stacked on the roof of his hansom.
+
+And not less eagerly had Miss Robinson followed his work, scanning the
+magazines for his drawings, and haunting the galleries in the search for
+his paintings. No one guessed how much he was the interest of her life:
+her parents had no suspicion at all, though they knew of their unusual
+neighbour, and spoke of him occasionally at table. But Alice Robinson
+was the humblest of womankind. Her youth lay already in the past: she
+accounted herself the plainest of the plain. So she idealised and
+worshipped her hero at a distance, feeling immeasurably farther from him
+than the hundred yards of respectable Hampstead pavement that separated
+their lives.
+
+One morning at breakfast her father read out from his paper the news of
+a sensational bankruptcy. A world-famous house of solicitors had
+fallen, and some of the first families in England were losers. Immense
+trust funds had gone for building speculations, and amongst the
+fashionable creditors who had been hit the worst were Mr. Walter Lloyd
+Wyndham, the artist, of Hampstead, and Miss Mary Wyndham, his sister. It
+seemed a curious little fact to Mr. Robinson that this affair should
+vibrate so near to them, and a mild and not unpleasant stimulation was
+thereby imparted to the breakfast-table. But Miss Robinson was hard put
+to it to dissimulate her deeper interest in the announcement. Her
+agitation was profound, shattering: she was glad to escape, and sit
+alone with her secret. It seemed a sacrilege that earthly vicissitude
+should touch this brilliant existence. And thereafter she watched her
+hero more narrowly than ever, reading in his bearing a stern defiance of
+adversity.
+
+At first indeed there was little difference visible in Wyndham's outward
+seemings, and Miss Robinson was thankful that the calamity had ruffled
+him so imperceptibly. Yet, as the year went by, it began to dawn upon
+her that things nevertheless were changing. She had learnt to read with
+consummate skill all the little activities that beat around the studio,
+and it did not escape her attention that he was going into society
+rarely, that smart visitors were fewer, and that pictures were being
+returned to him after astonishingly brief intervals. And gradually, as
+if in corroboration of her own conclusions, she found his work missing
+from the exhibitions, and knew with a sinking of her heart that his
+brilliant days were waning.
+
+And as time further passed, and one year merged into another, she
+realised definitely that his vogue had ended. She could not even find
+anything of his in the magazines, though she purchased them prodigally,
+and searched them through with a hope that was desperation, and a fear
+that was well-nigh frenzy.
+
+The last year or two a dead unnatural calm had settled over the studio.
+Pictures were neither despatched nor returned: if models rang the bell,
+it was only to turn away the next minute with disappointed faces. Of
+fashionable visitors there was never a sign now: not even a comrade or
+fellow-artist came to look him up. But only a tall, sad-faced girl, who
+somehow resembled him, called there at long intervals, and Miss Robinson
+envied this sister the sympathy she could bring him.
+
+He did not leave London now. All through the summer he kept in town,
+lying low, as Miss Robinson could well see from the pallor of his face
+on her return from her own conventional holiday at the seaside. She
+could cherish no delusions--he was a beaten man!
+
+Time and again she brushed close to him, passing him by chance in the
+street, and observed the languor of his step, the growing sadness of his
+features. Other details did not escape her. There was no one to attend
+on him; no one to care for him. Even a charwoman was a rarity at last,
+and Wyndham could be seen shopping almost furtively in the adjoining
+streets, and bearing back his own provisions to the studio. Miss
+Robinson divined, under their wrappings, the tin of sardines, the potted
+tongue, the loaf of bread. She knew that he never took a meal out now,
+and that, if he left the studio in the daytime, it was only to escape
+from the misery of solitude and hopelessness.
+
+She alone observed him so minutely. Her mother had in some degree shared
+her interest in his work, and had sometimes accompanied her to the
+galleries; but the common interest of the family in their neighbour was
+casual and fitful. Miss Robinson hardly dared mention his name now: it
+seemed to her that to draw attention to his poverty was to humiliate
+him. Besides, she feared to reveal her own emotion.
+
+One day Miss Robinson's own life caught her with a breathless upheaval.
+An honoured and intimate friend of her father's, successful, opulent,
+came forward with an avowal of esteem for her; deferentially desired her
+association with him in his second essay in matrimony! Mr. Shanner
+seemed to spring it on her with untempered abruptness; though the
+attentive courtesies that had preceded the crisis might have glimmered
+some little warning. But Mr. Shanner's footing in the house was as
+old-established as the rest of his appertainings; and Miss Robinson's
+spirit was ever at the nadir of diffidence. Men as a rule shunned her:
+women cared as little to talk to her. That anybody might ever wish to
+marry her had seemed impossible, inconceivable. Mr. Shanner had many
+pretensions to style, yet, to her spoiled eye, he seemed merely of clay
+indifferent.
+
+She strung herself to the ordeal of refusing him, though her real
+strength knew no faltering. For he proved insistent; wooed
+her--soberly--decorously--as became the dignity of five decades
+completed; wooed her with reasons of urgency, and implications of
+sentiment. He was to depart on a mission to the New World; wished to
+bear her promise with him. He would treasure it; would think of the new
+light to shine in his household. But within her lay an unfailing
+inspiration, and her innermost soul stood like a tower impregnable;
+though she was all wounds and distress, and quivered with the hurt. Was
+not her heart with her Prince Charming? her one dream in life the
+privilege of helping him?
+
+Mr. Shanner had to sail away disconsolate!
+
+But, though Miss Robinson's mind was occupied day and night with this
+problem of Wyndham's salvation, she could arrive at no plausible
+solution. For how should she ever dare to give him a sign? She who would
+have yielded her life for him could only watch him drifting downwards
+with an agonised sense of her helplessness.
+
+And he all the while unsuspecting of this obscure, loving historian of
+his existence; of the warm heart that beat for him in these evil days on
+which he had fallen!
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+For hours the rain had beaten against his windows, and at last, now that
+a lull had declared itself, Wyndham dragged himself to the door, and
+looked out into the gray afternoon. His eye took in the familiar vista,
+but, as it rested on the great bow-windowed house at the corner where
+the road branched into two, he turned away with a shudder. For years the
+sight of that house had irritated him: its ugly brick bulk had been
+symbolic of all Suburbia, of everything in life to which he was
+instinctively hostile as an artist and a gentleman.
+
+But presently he laughed: it had struck him as comic that he should have
+preserved in its freshness his full youthful contempt for all this
+Philistine universe!--he, a half-starved devil of an artist, down in the
+mouth, with a solitary half-crown in his pocket, speculating with bitter
+humiliation whether his hard-worked sister had yet a little to spare for
+him, after all the life-blood which, leech-like, he had sucked out of
+her! Nay, more, he was conscious that his distaste for this surrounding
+wilderness of affluent homes, in the midst of which he had so long
+dwelt as an isolated superior intelligence, had grown more marked in
+direct proportion as he had become poorer and poorer.
+
+The prosperous figure of the owner of the bow-windowed house rose before
+him. Immersed in his own existence, Wyndham had deigned to notice very
+few indeed of his neighbours. But old Mr. Robinson was one of the few,
+not only because of the regularity with which he passed the studio every
+day at six o'clock as he came home from business, but also because he
+invariably bore something in a plaited rush-bag that had a skewer thrust
+through it, suggesting visits to Leadenhall Market, and purchases of
+game or salmon for the good wife according to season. But Mr. Robinson's
+mild aspect, benevolent white beard, and gentle amble had never
+impressed Wyndham with much of a sense of human fellowship. He might
+concede that the old man was "a decent sort, no doubt, in his own way";
+but they were creatures belonging to different planets.
+
+Still amused at his own disdain, though the corners of his mouth were
+set a trifle grimly, Wyndham turned back into the studio with the idea
+of making himself presentable and going to see his sister--since it now
+seemed possible to get across town without the prospect of an absolute
+drenching. Happily his wardrobe had substantial resources: in the old
+days he had kept it well replenished, and his simple life of late here
+in the studio had made small demands on it. Thus he could still go out
+faultlessly clad and shod. Nobody need suspect his poverty, he flattered
+himself, if he ever chose to dip into his own world again. Only he did
+not choose; there was always so much questioning to face. "We've seen
+nothing of yours in the last two or three Academies--when are you going
+to give us another masterpiece?" "Still on the big picture? How is it
+getting along?" However genially thrown out, such usual interrogation
+annoyed him beyond measure. It was so long since anything had been
+"getting along." On all sides he was regarded as a doomed man, and
+suspected it: suspecting it, he was morbidly sensitive. His life was
+unnatural and not worth the living. Months and months had been wasted in
+apathy. Each day he dreamt of a new lease of energy and courage to begin
+on the morrow; but, after making his bed and clearing away his breakfast
+and purchasing his food for the day, he would find himself dejected and
+incapable of a single stroke.
+
+And yet he could not wholly realise the change that had come over the
+scene. He rubbed his eyes sometimes, as if expecting to awake from an
+unhappy dream. Was not the flourish of early trumpets still in his ears?
+The dazzle of admiration still on his retina? The gush of extensive and
+important family connections still tickling his self-esteem? The
+sweeter approval of a superior art-clique still flattering his deeper
+vanity?
+
+He had been born with a silver spoon; his childhood and youth had been
+ideally happy. From the playing-fields of Eton he had passed to the
+quadrangles of Oxford. A distinguished student of his college?--not in
+the ordinary grooves; yet favourably known as an intellect with
+enthusiasms. Phidias was more of an inspiration to him than Aristotle;
+Titian more actual than Todhunter. Ruskin, Pater, Turner, had stirred
+him; left his mind subdued to their colours. From boyhood had been his
+the swift skill with pencil that ran as easily to grace as to mockery.
+And, left early arbiter of his own existence, with gold enough for
+freedom, he had made for the one career that called to him.
+
+Genius cannot prove itself at a stroke: it has its adventurings to make.
+Seldom it realises at the outset that it is adventuring in the dark,
+therein to grope as best it may to self-discovery. Even this first stage
+may be long deferred; yet, however sure of himself at last, the artist
+has still to tread the unending road with the great light of
+self-realisation ever in the distance. There are the years of strenuous
+search, of faithful labour; of bitterest failure on failure to bring the
+deep, mysterious impulses to bloom and fruition. But there is yet
+another, if independent, adventuring. The great light that crowns the
+artist's journey shines only in his own spirit. The world sees and knows
+nothing of it. He has none the less to find his way into that other
+light--the lurid, mocking limelight of the world's acceptance; to seek a
+place beside or beneath the charlatan. This is the bitterest stage of
+all--- to stand shivering in marketplaces that are knee-deep with dung
+and offal; to be upholding precious things to the vision of swine. What
+wonder if in the course of so harsh a journeying, as he lives and
+breathes in his own universe of striving, his precise moral relation to
+things external grows dim, intangible; and, if money one day give out,
+he clutches at any crust for sustenance.
+
+Wyndham began his journeyings. His advantages were many and obvious; his
+disadvantages subtle and unseen. There was the danger that facile talent
+and social prestige might bring him an early delusive success; a
+failure, rightly seen, however tricked out with glamour.
+
+His beginnings, indeed, were pleasant: it was great fun throwing himself
+into this new queer Bohemian world of art. He worked hard as a student,
+the sheer interest of his labours lightening them astonishingly. And,
+after some preliminary swayings in varying directions, he at last "found
+himself," as he supposed; developing a dexterous imitative craft, and
+joining an advanced crowd with Whistler and Sargent for his deities.
+
+Wherever he pursued his studies--in London, or Paris, or Italy--there he
+was remarkably popular. Everybody said: "Wyndham belongs to very good
+people. They're swells--tip-top!" And indeed he had obviously the stamp
+of being "the real thing," and even the elect of Bohemia were flattered
+and fascinated by personal association with him.
+
+When ultimately he set up his studio here in Hampstead, he had his
+policy definitely before him. With the means and the leisure to aim at a
+high career, he would make no concessions to popularity or the market.
+He had chosen the locality deliberately. It was London, and within reach
+of the world; but not so near the world as to endanger his labours. The
+little tide of fashion that rolled up to his door was not a tribute to
+fame, but merely the fuss and interest of his non-Bohemian circle
+pleased for a time with the novelty of having a studio and a genius
+connected with them.
+
+So in the early years he worked enthusiastically, and was able to win
+some footing in the galleries. But, in the eyes of his numerous family
+connections, he was seriously launched; especially when a couple of his
+pictures at last attracted buyers, and he moreover found himself earning
+guineas from the patronage of friendly editors whose humbler commissions
+he carried out in the same spirit of the dignified, ambitious worker.
+
+Then the financial crash came, leaving brother and sister entirely
+dependent on their labours. Both met the crisis with commendable
+philosophy. Mary, who had long before taken up educational work as an
+amateur, was soon able to establish herself as a professional, and had
+taught ever since at a high school in Kensington; picturesquely settling
+herself in a tiny flat in an artisan's building, and living as a homely
+worker. The dignity and serene simplicity of her life had of late
+furnished the one ideal thing for Wyndham's contemplation.
+
+Wyndham himself had stood up straight and felt very strong; had
+reassured his fussy, frightened folk that he could rely on his
+profession. He felt in himself an endless ardour for achievement, a
+confidence of triumph in the contest with men. Nay, more, he would gain
+his bread without descending from his high standpoint! The task was
+fully as difficult as he had anticipated; but at any rate he contrived
+to live for a couple of years. Then, somewhat to his surprise, the
+Academy began to return his pictures; and somehow, to his greater
+surprise, everything else went against him at the same time. He could
+not even get "illustrating" to do. Those who had acclaimed him before
+because he was a "swell" were now turning against him apparently for the
+same reason. Your aristocrats were never to be taken seriously; they
+were necessarily amateurs! It was all so unanimous, so settled and
+persistent, that it had almost the air of a conspiracy. Wyndham saw well
+enough that everybody had tired of his work, that he had had his hour
+and his vogue; his career lay like a squib that had blazed itself out.
+All bangs and fizzings, and then a blackened bit of casing, silent,
+extinguished! Yet he had the discernment to recognise that the
+dying-down had been really inevitable; that his present relative poverty
+had little or nothing to do with it. He had been dexterous on the
+surface, but the sameness of his note--without even the saving grace of
+convention--had destroyed him commercially.
+
+Well, he believed in himself, and he refused to accept this erasure. On
+the contrary, he would launch out more daringly than ever. An end to
+facile imitation of other people's styles! He must express his own
+deeper self. The strict Whistlerian creed was much too narrow. Art was
+not merely a bare abstract aesthetics: humanity counted for something
+after all. Was woman's loveliness something really apart from woman
+herself? True that art meant beauty--in the largest sense, of course;
+but why should not humanity and beauty fuse together?
+
+So, scraping together all he could command in the way of money, he set
+himself to work out a large dramatic idea, suggested by the sight of a
+May-day demonstration. The canvas was gigantic, and he strove to depict
+a mob of strikers straggling out of the Park after their great meeting,
+with elements of fashion caught in this _mêlée_ of labour. The pictorial
+irony had greatly interested him, and he felt that this painting on the
+grand scale was being sincerely born out of his own emotion, that it
+would trumpet out a warning to the age.
+
+The beginnings were full of promise, and he decided to stake everything
+on it. But for so realistic a representation of Hyde Park Corner he
+needed to make a great many sketches on the spot. So, through the
+friendly offices of an amiable acquaintance, he obtained access to a
+convenient window in Grosvenor Place, and made free use of the
+privilege. The master of the house, a nobleman of the old school, who at
+first sight seemed stately as the portraits in his own dining-room,
+proved on acquaintance to be singularly bluff and genial, sometimes
+almost slap-dash. He had made Wyndham welcome and at his ease, bidding
+him come and go as he pleased, and "never to mind a bit about turning
+the room into a studio." And this charming nobleman had likewise a
+charming daughter, who sometimes came for a minute or two to talk to
+Wyndham and interest herself in the sketches. Lady Betty was a brilliant
+figure of a girl; had travelled a good deal and knew the world. She was
+sunny and friendly, yet naturally on a pedestal. She was clear-headed
+and capable; in the home supreme mistress. Wyndham was the subject of
+many graceful little attentions. If he came in the morning she saw that
+his glass of sherry and biscuit was never neglected; in the afternoon
+she presided over tea in the drawing-room and expected him to appear
+there.
+
+Of course poor Wyndham never dared tell himself that he was in love with
+her. A girl like that must naturally be reserved for a great match, as
+regards both position and fortune. He could not think of her save as
+presiding over a plurality of palaces or voyaging in a magnificent
+yacht. Palaces and yachts were not the rewards of painters, so Wyndham
+kept his mind sternly fixed on the purpose for which he was there. Even
+so, the intervals between his appearances grew wider and wider. And
+when, after some couple of years of toil, discipline, searching, it had
+come home to him that in this terrible picture he had undertaken a task
+beyond his strength and experience, he found himself too shamefaced to
+"abuse" further the courtesy that had been extended to him. The
+consciousness, too, of his growing poverty was becoming acuter and
+acuter. Already he was drawing back into his shell, and, once he had
+ceased going to Grosvenor Place for the sake of his work, he had not the
+heart to continue his visits as an ordinary acquaintance. More than a
+year afterwards he read of Lady Betty's engagement in the papers--it
+was the very match one would naturally look for. Yet the news "shattered
+him to bits"--absurdly enough, he told himself, since he had known her
+at best irregularly, and not in the ordinary course of social intimacy.
+He was really half-surprised at receiving an invitation to the wedding.
+He could not prevail on himself to go; but, remembering she had once
+admired one of his Academy pictures, he sent her a photograph of it on a
+miniature silver easel as a trifling wedding gift. She wrote back a
+gracious acknowledgment, which had since remained one of his treasures.
+
+Meanwhile he had been struggling on with the picture, determined to
+conquer. But its difficulties and problems were endless. After all his
+toil it stood on his easel in a terribly unfinished condition, though he
+had stinted his own body to lavish his money on it. At last, gulping
+down the humiliation, he was forced to accept of Mary's little store of
+savings to pay his rent and his models. It was his first step of the
+kind, and he paid the full proverbial cost of it. But he had still the
+hope of returning the loan a thousandfold. Was not his success to redeem
+her life as well as his?
+
+Certainly Mary believed in him and the picture, and looked forward to
+its scoring a great triumph. The whole heart and hope of the sister
+centred on that vast canvas. She sometimes ran across town to see it,
+though--poor child!--Hyde Park Corner always looked the same to her at
+every stage of its long creation. But the picture was Wyndham's
+backbone; it was his stock-in-trade before his world. He was more and
+more of a recluse now, refusing all invitations, discouraging his
+friends from coming to interrupt him--as he put it. Certainly Wyndham
+would rather have died than confess to failure after all the magnificent
+trumpeting. Even as it was, the time came soon enough when the big
+picture no longer served to protect his dignity. He imagined
+half-pitying glances and ironic smiles, and so eventually he found
+himself avoiding everybody without exception.
+
+It was only on Lady Betty's wedding day, after more than three years of
+futile striving, that he had the resolution to remove the great canvas
+from the easel and stand it with its face to the wall.
+
+He was tired now, but he must make an effort to emancipate himself from
+Mary's exchequer. Till then he could not hold his head up. So he painted
+some smaller and pleasanter pictures, but again he could do nothing with
+them. The Academy sent them back, the minor galleries sent them back,
+the Salon sent them back the following year. The dealers offered less
+than the cost of the frames. Meantime he had ceased to count up the
+five-pound notes Mary had starved herself to keep for him. He knew he
+was a coward and dared not. He had reached that stage of moral
+confusion which Nietzsche registers as in the natural history of the
+artist-type, and which may not be eyed too harshly from the point of
+vantage of ordered and organised existence in this outer universe. One
+idea stood clear beyond all others; grew into his mind; grew till it
+became his mind. He must cling to his studio, hold desperately to this
+atmosphere of paint and canvasses.
+
+He was getting on in years now--past thirty-three. It was like the
+striking of a pitiless clock, this adding of swift year after year to
+his unsuccessful life. His hand began to fail him. The necessity of now
+doing his own house-work; of bothering with coals and cinders, preparing
+his makeshift monotonous meals, pouring oil into lamps, and boiling
+kettles, and washing plates and teacups, had begun by encroaching on his
+time and energies, and ended by absorbing them altogether. The care of
+ministering to his own primary needs had at last superseded art as his
+profession. Even so, the cobwebs multiplied and the dust lay thick.
+
+Months now slipped by, he scarcely knew how; he was astonished to
+realise how time might elude one, how a colourless day might be trifled
+away without appearing to hold the possibility of even a morsel of
+achievement. Yet he still grasped the hope that something would
+"arrive"--an unexpected magazine commission, a request from a dealer.
+Ideas for a new start would teem in his head as he lay tossing on the
+narrow iron bed up in the gallery at the end of the studio. Why not do
+some pretty little things--to fetch ten guineas apiece, say--Cupids
+playing amid wreathed flowers with pale Doric structures in the
+background? If Mary could manage just another few pounds for him, he
+would have time to turn out a number of such decorative trifles. Such
+things were in constant demand and were a sure source of livelihood. He
+had stood out long enough, much longer indeed than he had had the right.
+He had consistently worked on a basis of high endeavour, but now he must
+withdraw his dignity and enter on the pot-boiler phase. Better that than
+this abominable leech-like existence. Continued misfortune had befogged
+his wits, and this last year certainly he had been half mad.
+
+So be it! He must wake up now, and no longer lose his days in this
+stupid pottering about!
+
+Every dog had his day, and his own turn would come in time. He was an
+artist. He felt it in his bones and blood. Art was his life and destiny.
+He had blundered in attempting too big a feat too early in his career,
+but he did not intend that that should wreck his existence. No, no! he
+would never throw up the sponge. He would rather die than admit defeat,
+with all those who knew him looking on at the game.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He dressed himself carefully to go to Mary's, trying hard not to think
+of the real purpose of his visit--he had merely informed her that he
+would be in the neighbourhood and would look in for a cup of tea. But,
+though it was distasteful to dwell on these unending demands on her
+earnings, he was anything but profligate in spending them. He had spun
+out her previous five-pound note so that it had kept him going for weeks
+and weeks, and he had grudged himself even a newspaper. In view of the
+newly-projected work to tickle the dealers, he regretted more than ever
+that he had not been able to pull himself together sooner: in these past
+precious weeks he might have knocked off half a dozen of such
+pretty-pretty things.
+
+A series of omnibuses took him across London to Kensington Church, where
+he descended, presently turning out of the High Street. The "Buildings"
+where Mary resided were in a side alley at the back, and Wyndham made
+direct for them. He walked straight in through the large front door that
+stood perennially open, and followed the trail of muddy footmarks up
+the worn stone stairway. On the third landing he came to a stop, and
+pulled a bell half hidden in the obscurity of a corner. The door opened,
+and Mary stood before him. He could not help seeing how unnaturally slim
+she appeared to-day; how her simple stuff dress seemed to hang loosely
+on her.
+
+"This is so good of you. I am so glad to see you, dear." Her earnest
+face brightened with a wistful yet pleasant smile.
+
+He stooped and kissed her, then followed her into her tiny sitting-room.
+It was evidently the home of a gentlewoman. With the shelf or two of
+books, the escritoire, the few prints, and the little trinkets and
+photographs she valued, she had contrived to make a dainty little nest
+of it, and all these simple things gave the place a peculiar personal
+stamp. The table was laid for tea, and the kettle sang on the fire.
+
+"You have had a dreary journey," she said, as she gave him a chair.
+
+"No, the weather has been unexpectedly kind," he reassured her. "The sun
+peeped out just for one moment. I believe I was the only person in
+London that noticed it: the rest of the world were intent on other
+things. Have you been keeping well?"
+
+"You forget I am just back from vacation."
+
+"Of course--I had forgotten," he laughed. "How did you spend your time?"
+
+"I passed the first three weeks with Aunt Eleanor, as I told you I
+should. We were a big, merry party, and everybody made a great fuss of
+your little sister." Again that wistful smile. "They all spoiled and
+petted me shamefully."
+
+"Ah, that was good for you."
+
+"I am not so sure about that," she returned thoughtfully. "I am
+certainly not used to the sort of thing, and I really found it restful
+and refreshing to go on to old Lady Glynn, who had me to herself."
+
+"So that's your idea of a holiday--taking care of paralytic, deaf old
+people whom everybody else shuns like the plague." He shook his finger
+at her. "And you call it restful and refreshing."
+
+"Service is the greatest of all happiness," she answered gently. "Even
+as it is, I'm sadly afraid I'm a sham and a fraud. I'm not really a
+worker--in the same sense as others I know. They have no fashionable
+friends with big houses in the country."
+
+She brewed the tea and gave him his cup.
+
+"Do people inquire much about me?" he asked, as the uncomfortable
+thought recurred to him.
+
+"Certainly not of me," she returned. "You neglect them, you refuse their
+invitations, they never hear a word from you, and naturally they suppose
+you wish to be quit of them all. And so, no doubt, they feel it the
+proper thing not to appear to wish to discuss you with your sister."
+There was a pause. Both seemed lost in thought for the moment. "And so
+you, poor Walter, have had no holiday at all!"
+
+"Ah, well," he sighed. "I try to content myself with the thought that
+I'm saving it up. One of these days I daresay I shall go off to Rome or
+Venice, and recuperate from several points of view. I daresay a bit of
+luck will be coming my way presently, and I'm keen on getting back to
+Italy again. I've often planned it out. A month or so at Paris, a couple
+of months in the South of France, three at Rome, and three at
+Venice--with a look-in at Naples some time, of course."
+
+"What a lovely holiday that would be!" He did not surprise her quick
+flash of longing. Both remained pensive.
+
+"But tell me about everybody," he said at last. "You see I take more
+interest in them all than they suppose."
+
+"That's natural enough. After all, Hertfordshire's your home."
+
+He winced visibly, half sorry that he had set her mind in that
+direction. She, however, proceeded to draw for him various pictures, and
+he presently found himself listening with a deeper eagerness than he had
+foreseen. She brought him close again to his own world, uplifted him in
+his own eyes: he had almost the sensation of being restored to a sphere
+which it had been more painful to abandon than he had ever admitted.
+The minutes passed, bringing him a warm, happy sense of social
+comradeship with his sister. The little fire burned brightly, and the
+feeling of the well-ordered nest was fragrant and exquisite. He felt his
+bitterness softening under its influence; a deep peace seemed to
+surround him, filling the little haven, radiating from Mary's wistful
+face, from her gentle smile and voice. How thankful he was this terrible
+London yet held her sympathy!
+
+"It is a great thing for me to have you to come to, Mary," he broke in
+on her suddenly. "It helps me tremendously."
+
+"Poor Walter!" she breathed. Her eyes filled with tears.
+
+For a moment both were too moved to speak again. But abruptly, as with a
+courage and firmness long since resolved upon, she looked straight at
+him.
+
+"Why don't you give it up, darling? This art is ruining your life."
+
+He did not seem surprised at this sudden turn of the conversation,
+though such a suggestion had never before fallen from her lips. He took
+her words as a cry of despair rather than an attempt at a stern
+reckoning.
+
+"Why don't I give it up?" he echoed. "That's an easy question to ask.
+The answer is difficult. But I can't give it up. It is impossible."
+
+"It is not so impossible as it seems."
+
+"What can I turn to? I am fitted for nothing."
+
+"Go to the Colonies. Labour on the soil--or work with hammer and saw."
+
+"I am willing to labour, willing to face anything in life. But,
+Mary--the confession of failure--you don't see how deep, how mad the
+pride is in me."
+
+"You have nothing to confess. The whole world knows you are a failure.
+They talk about it openly. They spare me as much as possible, but I
+can't shut my ears."
+
+It was a staggering blow. "They despise me!" he breathed.
+
+Her lips hesitated, clenched together, the corners convulsed with pain.
+
+"They despise you!"
+
+He found his defence. "Because I have not succeeded commercially." His
+voice was full of scorn. "It matters little that these gross Philistines
+misjudge me. They will yet regret it. I shall yet show them that I am
+not so self-deceived as they imagine. I am an artist--art was born in my
+blood, art is my whole existence. I shall stick to it till I fall dead.
+I ask you, Mary, to believe in me a little longer."
+
+"Heaven knows I have never wavered in my belief a moment. But it is not
+my belief that can save you. You have made a brave attempt, but you have
+been defeated. I am only facing the simple facts. The present position
+seems to me a hopeless one to start from. You have no means behind you
+now, so what is there before you save to go on in the same miserable way
+as you have lived the last year or two? I see no possibility of anything
+but repetition of the same unhappy experience--the world is not going to
+step out of its way for your sake. And remember it has already made up
+its mind about you."
+
+"Then I have lost your sympathy!" he exclaimed. He stared gloomily into
+the fire.
+
+She saw now that the morbid sensibility of the man who had failed would
+never face clear, cold reason, however gently administered.
+
+"No, dear; you have not lost my sympathy. Please don't think that," she
+pleaded. "Don't you see I want to be a real friend to you; don't you see
+that you are more to me than your art?"
+
+"I must fight it out," he insisted. "To-morrow I am starting a fresh lot
+of things--to sell! I have always stood out for the big accomplishment,
+but now I offer my labour in the market. Pretty designs, prettily
+coloured--Cupids and pearly clouds and wreaths of flowers. The dealers
+will take them. You will see, Mary, I shall manage to pull through yet."
+
+She shook her head incredulously. "Better to give it up altogether
+before it is too late."
+
+"You can't mean it," he exclaimed. "You have stood by me so long that I
+can't believe you are going to turn against me."
+
+"I repeat that I care for you more than for your art, and I cannot see
+you sacrificed. No, I have not turned against you. I have been against
+you all this long, unhappy time. To-day I am your friend for the first
+time. Listen, darling. When I got your letter yesterday, I knew that
+things were as bad as ever, that you were at your wits' ends again for
+money."
+
+He maintained a shamefaced silence, not daring to make any pretence to
+the contrary. She looked straight at him as she continued: "I am sure
+you will be the last to think I have ever considered the few pounds I
+have been able to put aside for you--my heart's best affection has
+always gone out to you with them. But the whole of last night I kept
+awake, and prayed for strength to refuse you any more money."
+
+He held his head down; he was too abased to speak.
+
+"Strength has been granted me at last. You are dear to me, and I will
+not help to continue this unhappy state of affairs. Sell off your
+studio, try your fortune in the Colonies, and you will yet pull your
+life out of the mire."
+
+He rose, and took up his hat. "I daresay you are right, Mary. But I am
+an artist. Art is my life. Outside that there is nothing for me. Don't
+think I am ungrateful for all you have done. Goodbye!"
+
+"Goodbye, darling. Perhaps you will yet think it over."
+
+He shook his head wearily and turned away, not seeing that she had held
+her lips to him. The next moment he was descending the muddy staircase,
+slipping and stumbling on the bare stone. He was conscious that Mary was
+standing in the doorway a moment, but he did not see the convulsive
+working of her face, nor know that as soon as he was out of sight she
+had thrown herself on her bed, heart-broken, her body shaken in a
+terrible burst of sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+In the High Street Wyndham waited impatiently for an omnibus to take him
+home again. Instinctively he turned for refuge to the bleak studio, from
+whose loneliness he had so often been impelled to escape. But it was his
+own corner, and all he had. He would not light his lamp; he would lie
+there in the gloom till his pain and self-abasement should have worn
+themselves out. Merciful sleep might come; perhaps--and the idea seemed
+sweet to him--the sleep of all sleeps.
+
+So he possessed his spirit as best he could, while the vehicle lumbered
+along through the endless streets; shivering a little in the autumn dusk
+as now and then a gust of wind arose. The sky clouded heavily, and, when
+finally he descended, the rain was falling swiftly again.
+
+At last he was at home! He thought of the studio now with affection, and
+quickened his pace feverishly. Then he became aware that a familiar
+figure, holding a familiar rush-bag with a skewer thrust through it, was
+trudging just ahead of him in the growing darkness. But he was not
+surprised at catching sight of Mr. Robinson, since it was the regular
+hour of the merchant's appearance after his homeward journey from the
+City. As usual, Mr. Robinson's house filled the centre of vision,
+looming vast at the cross-roads, and softened in the evening mist; and
+for the first time the figure plodding towards it under the dripping
+umbrella struck Wyndham as interesting and strangely human.
+
+Steadily, steadily, Wyndham gained on his neighbour; then, acting on
+some vague instinct, slackened his step so as not to have to pass him to
+get to his own door. But just outside the studio Mr. Robinson slipped,
+swayed, then came to the ground heavily. Wyndham at once hurried
+forward, and helped him to his feet.
+
+"You are not hurt, I hope?" he inquired.
+
+"I think not," returned the old man. He leaned against the studio door,
+whilst Wyndham took the rush-bag from his clenched fingers, and gathered
+up the umbrella from the gutter into which it had rolled. Mr. Robinson
+surveyed his soiled garments ruefully, and shook his head sadly.
+
+"It _is_ beastly," assented Wyndham.
+
+"It can't be helped," said the old man; "though mud like this on a new
+suit of clothes puts a hard strain on a man's philosophy." There was a
+good-natured gleam in his eye and a brave smile on his face. Wyndham
+found himself unexpectedly attracted, and was much concerned when Mr.
+Robinson tried to take a step or two, but was pulled up painfully.
+
+"Pray, don't alarm yourself, sir," said Mr. Robinson, as Wyndham caught
+at his arm solicitously. "I am only a little bruised, and have had
+rather a wrench. I must just breathe for an instant."
+
+"Won't you come into my studio, and rest for a moment or two?" suggested
+Wyndham. "I shall be delighted if you will."
+
+He produced the key from his pocket, turned it in the lock, and threw
+open the door. Then he offered Mr. Robinson the support of his arm.
+
+"It is very kind of you, sir," said the old man, as he linked his arm in
+Wyndham's. "My name is Robinson. I live just up the road. I daresay you
+may have noticed me: I have often noticed you."
+
+"I am enchanted to make your acquaintance, though I regret the
+particular circumstances," said Wyndham, as they passed through the
+little ante-room into the dim interior.
+
+"I cannot share your regret," returned Mr. Robinson, with a touch of
+suave conviction. "No, not even if the accident were more serious, since
+I have been afforded the pleasure of knowing you."
+
+Wyndham was surprised at the sweetness and old-world courtesy revealed
+in the old man's personality. "You are very kind," he said with a smile.
+"I hope indeed I am worth so pretty a sentiment. But please take this
+arm-chair."
+
+He pushed it forward, then set the rush-bag down on the table, hastily
+throwing a serviette over the litter of his last meal, which he had not
+had the energy to clear away, and which now brusquely offended his
+fastidiousness. But as Mr. Robinson, good careful soul, hesitated to
+soil the chair, Wyndham got a rag and wiped away the more lurid splashes
+from his garments. Then, whilst the old man rested, Wyndham trimmed his
+lamp; and presently the glooms vanished before a cosy illumination. Mr.
+Robinson at once began to scrutinise the studio on all sides with
+amusingly deep interest. The old Normandy presses, the model's throne,
+the giant easel, the well-worn Persian carpet, the hosts of canvasses of
+all sizes standing with their faces to the wall, the disorder and
+informality everywhere--all seemed to strike for him a note of youth and
+gaiety, to animate him with a sense of a new romantic universe. His face
+lighted with pleasure. He gazed up at the lofty roof and the oak
+cross-beams that supported it, and finally his eye rested on the little
+stairway and gallery at the far end, now almost lost in the shadows.
+
+"Is your bedroom up there?" he hazarded, his naïve interest slipping out
+on his tongue.
+
+"Yes," smiled Wyndham, as he tackled the dying fire. "It's the
+traditional arrangement."
+
+"What a fascinating place you've got here! It's all a new world to me."
+
+"Ah, it's a very ordinary sort of world--when once you've settled down
+to work."
+
+"I have never known an artist before," pursued the old man, "and it is
+all fresh to me. I think that if I were a youngster again, I shouldn't
+at all dislike having a place like this, and making my home of it. Not
+that I mean I should ever have made anything of an artist," he added
+with a smile. "It's the spirit of the thing that appeals to me. You must
+be very happy here."
+
+"Not necessarily," said Wyndham. He saw the old man's eyes fixed on him
+gravely. "You see, I'm not one of your successful artists, and the years
+have a way of passing on." He struggled with the fire, making the sticks
+blaze, then piled up the coals unsparingly. Mr. Robinson was the only
+person in the world to whom he had ever admitted failure, but somehow it
+did not seem to matter.
+
+The old man gazed at him in frank astonishment. "Why, you are in the
+prime of early manhood!" he exclaimed. "Really it is most extraordinary
+to hear a splendid young man like you complain of the years passing!"
+
+"I'm thirty-three," volunteered Wyndham. "And an unlucky devil of
+thirty-three, who has as much trouble in getting rid of his work as I,
+feels old enough in all conscience."
+
+"But you artists have to expect these adverse experiences," said Mr.
+Robinson. "Art of course isn't like other things--it isn't exactly a
+business or profession in the ordinary sense, and so long as a man has
+the gift, he ought not to get disheartened. In our business world, of
+course, pounds, shillings and pence are everything, but in the world of
+art it wouldn't do to set up a standard of that kind."
+
+Such sentiments on the part of a Philistine who came home every evening
+from the City at six o'clock struck Wyndham speechless.
+
+"The struggle of genius is proverbial," Mr. Robinson added, before the
+younger man could find his tongue; "and genius wouldn't be genius
+without it."
+
+"Ah, if I were only a genius!" said Wyndham, laughing.
+
+"I am sure you are a genius," said the old man very gravely. "I have
+often thought what a clever face yours was. At home we have often spoken
+of you."
+
+"I suppose then I must be a conspicuous figure in the road. I had no
+idea of it!" Wyndham laughed again.
+
+"You've been in the neighbourhood some years now," said Mr. Robinson
+half apologetically; "and neighbours naturally notice one another.
+Besides, if I may say so, you are quite unlike the ordinary run of
+people. You are not the sort of man one sees in the City."
+
+"You interest me. In what way do I differ from others?"
+
+"You have the stamp of belonging to leisured people; it is plain from
+your walk and bearing, from your voice and manner of speech. And then
+there is something about your clothes even--I don't quite know what."
+The old man's eyes rested on him with a sort of approval and
+satisfaction.
+
+Wyndham was amused. "You are really an original character," he
+exclaimed. "I like you."
+
+Mr. Robinson smiled with gratification. "I more than return the
+compliment, I can assure you."
+
+"But pray go on," said Wyndham. "I believe you're a wizard. I must get
+you to cast my horoscope."
+
+Mr. Robinson raised his hands. "I don't think I could manage that," he
+laughed. "I am only a quiet observer of my fellow-men. In the present
+case it is very easy to see that yours is the face of a gentleman by
+birth. There is a certain composure in your whole style. Whatever you
+had to face, you would never have that appearance that men get in the
+City--of wearing themselves out."
+
+"Better to wear out than to rust out," said Wyndham meditatively. "I
+rust out."
+
+He was astonished at his own frankness. But there was a deep pleasure in
+being natural for once, in throwing off the cover of sham and pretence
+that had characterised his intercourse with his kind in the past. He did
+not even consider it was strange that the person he should be baring
+himself to so freely was one whose existence hitherto he had merely
+deigned to notice. But nothing could exceed Mr. Robinson's amazement at
+this last profession of his.
+
+"Rust out!" The old man's eyes opened wide. "Why, you have done an
+immense amount of work!" He waved his hand significantly towards the
+army of canvasses ranged against the walls.
+
+Wyndham affected to be impressed by the consideration. "Yes," he
+admitted; "I have used up a considerable amount of material in my time,
+I must admit." He had suddenly perceived that Mr. Robinson was largely
+discounting his ingenuous frankness, and was really taking his
+profession of failure, which, as it happened, he had thrown out in an
+offhand way, as rather affectation than literal truth.
+
+"And no doubt will be using up still larger amounts in the future." The
+old man smiled and rose. "But I am taking up your time!"
+
+"No, indeed," Wyndham assured him. "I hope you have quite recovered
+now."
+
+"Oh, quite," returned Mr. Robinson. "I had altogether forgotten the
+little accident in the pleasure of our conversation."
+
+There was a pause. "I am sorry there's no light," said Wyndham; "else I
+should show you some of my work--that is, if you cared to see it."
+
+The old man looked eager. "Couldn't you make the lamp do?" he exclaimed.
+"I'm sure it would give me a very good idea of your pictures. But I am
+presuming on your kindness."
+
+"Oh, no," protested Wyndham.
+
+He began to move about the studio, conscious of a new energy. Somebody
+was here to appreciate him; somebody desired to see his work, was
+looking up to him in admiration! He felt strangely rejuvenated--it was
+as if he had taken a dose of some wonderful elixir. He selected half a
+dozen of the smaller pictures, and brought them forward. Then, as he
+wheeled the great easel into position, the whim took him to see how his
+huge "masterpiece" looked after all this long interval of time.
+
+For, since he had stood it with its face to the wall on Lady Betty's
+wedding-day, he had never had the heart to glance at it again. Not
+merely failure and wasted years were associated with it, but it stirred
+memories of the hours he had spent at Grosvenor Place in the first
+freshness of his hopes, when he had worked with the passion of youth.
+Then, too, there was the silent drama that had played itself out in the
+depths of his own spirit. Looking back, it seemed to him that no man
+could ever have cherished a more hopeless love, or have encountered a
+more inevitable one. Nor had the lapse of time softened the bitterness
+of that strange romantic chapter. Lady Betty's figure and personality
+would remain with him as his ideal of woman for the rest of his life;
+and he clung to the memory of his hurt as typical of his whole fortune.
+
+But though the thought of the picture to-night inevitably stirred up
+some of these old emotions, there was joined to them a sudden
+overwhelming curiosity. What would be his impression at the first
+glance? Would all its deficiencies and crudities stand out in relief,
+and make him turn away from it in sickness and loathing? Or would it
+strike him, however unfinished it might be, as having yet promise in it,
+as justifying some at least of the time--nay, even life-blood--he had
+consecrated to it?
+
+"What a huge thing!" ejaculated Mr. Robinson, as Wyndham tilted it back
+from the wall.
+
+"It _is_ tremendous," smiled Wyndham. "I'm afraid I shall have to ask
+you to give me a hand with it."
+
+Together they carried it to the easel, and Wyndham hoisted it to its old
+place. "I don't know whether we shall be able to make head or tail of
+it," he said; "but I'll do what I can with the lamp. As you see, it's a
+powerful one."
+
+"Of course I don't profess to be a connoisseur of oil paintings," Mr.
+Robinson warned him. "But I know what I like, though I daresay you will
+think me extremely benighted."
+
+"No, indeed," protested Wyndham; "I shall value your opinion highly." He
+worked away at the little wheel at the back of the easel as he inclined
+the canvas at the most favourable angle, whilst the old man watched the
+process fascinated.
+
+The next moment Wyndham was holding the big lamp high in the air, and
+carefully illumining the surface of the picture. For a moment everything
+before his eyes was blurred, and he could see nothing at all; but he
+stood his ground firmly, and gripped the lamp heroically. And before the
+mist could clear he heard Mr. Robinson's voice rise in admiration.
+
+"Wonderful!" exclaimed the old man, his tone vibrating with an immense
+conviction; and at that moment Wyndham received the picture full on his
+vision and felt at once he had there a basis that could be worked up
+into a splendid achievement.
+
+"The crowd of strikers with their banner is the most life-like thing
+I've ever seen. Wonderful!" Mr. Robinson gazed and gazed, his interest
+overflowing into a running comment. "It's Hyde Park Corner! Why, of
+course--there's the Duke of Wellington's house, and there's Lord
+Rothschild's. Marvellous! What a variety of faces and characters! And
+the old fellow there in the corner--what powerful features full of
+despair! And the old woman with the red shawl--she hasn't had a morsel
+of food, poor creature, for twenty-four hours, I'll wager. Why don't you
+leave her alone, you old ruffian of a policeman! And then that
+fashionable lady in her brougham with her over-fed poodle--what contempt
+on her face for all these artizans! How real everything is--the
+perspective is grand! Why, you could take a walk out there in the
+distance! Marvellous! It doesn't need an art education to see that's a
+work of genius."
+
+Wyndham stood listening in elation, though, in his own perception of the
+work just now, he felt as aloof from it as if it had sprung from
+another's labours. His brain seemed emancipated from the tangle of its
+old problems and all his old flounderings. And as Mr. Robinson continued
+his admiring ejaculations, Wyndham put in now and again a word of
+explanation, drawing attention to a point here and there, though this
+was at first rather by way of soliloquy than conversation. But,
+presently, as he moved the lamp to and fro, up and down, he warmed to
+the occasion; even enlarging on his pet ideas, and pointing out where he
+had failed to realise his own scheme and formula. Mr. Robinson listened,
+wholly absorbed and fascinated by these new horizons that opened before
+him. His respect and worship for art was contagious: Wyndham began to
+worship it more himself.
+
+And the younger man grew eloquent, expatiated on the old art and the
+new, on academies and masters, on realism and symbolism, on plein air
+and sunlight, on colour and technique. And as he spoke, he was enchanted
+with his own voice. It was splendid to feel himself speaking again after
+all this long suppression--he was realising the strength and
+infallibility of his own artistic convictions. Never before had he felt
+so sure of his conceptions; his former humility had only led to
+confusion and hesitation. In future, his own mind should dominate--he
+would not be blown about by all these conflicting schools and critics.
+
+He was conscious of standing more vigorously upright; and, as he
+enlarged on the picture, he seemed to get a new and sure hold of it,
+seeing more and more the potentiality of a great and powerful structure
+that no Academy could dare refuse to recognise. He saw now that his long
+interval of hibernation had not been unfruitful. And it had made a
+necessary sharp division between the two parts of his life--the first,
+uncertain, stumbling, unsuccessful; the second, confident, mature,
+triumphant.
+
+The picture before him was transformed. Problems that had baffled him
+seemed to solve themselves in a flash. Effects he had vainly sought
+through maddening months stood at once revealed, flowing naturally out
+of what he had already set down. His hand longed to be wielding the
+brush again.
+
+"But if I may make the remark," interposed Mr. Robinson at length; "it
+seems matter for surprise that a gentleman like you should be attracted
+to the choice of such a subject. I should hardly suppose that you have
+ever come into any real contact with labour, and workmen on strike would
+therefore scarcely come within the sphere of your sympathy."
+
+"The artist is of universal sympathy," said Wyndham gravely, and himself
+believed it. At that moment he felt his endless sympathy spreading
+itself out, embracing all creation. "And then it was not only the
+humanity of the scene that touched me, and inspired me to attempt to put
+it down finely and greatly; there was also the pure art part as it
+appealed to the trained vision--the splendid difficulties to be
+vanquished, the opportunities for draughtsmanship and subtle colour, the
+sense of far-stretching space to be produced from only a narrow gamut of
+light and shade."
+
+"Marvellous!" echoed Mr. Robinson again.
+
+"But if I may make the remark in my turn," said Wyndham, "your sympathy
+with labour surprises me equally."
+
+"Why so?" asked Mr. Robinson.
+
+"The natural antagonism between capital and labour!" smiled Wyndham.
+
+"Oh, I started as a poor boy--right at the foot of the ladder,"
+explained Mr. Robinson. "My father was a carpenter. Wages were low in
+those days, and prices of all necessaries were high. I remember in my
+childhood we had a pretty hard time of it. In my own firm we share the
+profits with all the employees. So you see I'm rather partial to labour
+so long as it's decent and reasonable. When I think of my own struggles,
+I like to see every man get fair opportunities. When a man has no
+particular talent--such as myself, for instance--it is ever so much the
+harder to go through discouragements. But, at the worst of times, it
+must be a great thing for a gifted man like yourself to be conscious of
+his own powers."
+
+"So you set up to have no particular talent!" explained Wyndham. "You
+amuse me. Haven't you made your fortune unaided? I confess that that
+seems to me the most difficult thing in the world--immensely cleverer
+than anything in the way of art or painting."
+
+Mr. Robinson laughed. "Now you're making fun of me."
+
+"I was never more serious in my life," insisted Wyndham, now wheeling
+forward a smaller easel, in order to display the pictures he had at
+first selected. "I consider it frightfully clever to make money."
+
+"My dear sir, fools often make money," Mr. Robinson assured him.
+
+Wyndham shook his head incredulously. "Do you care much about this
+landscape?" he asked.
+
+"Very much indeed. It is so green and fresh and airy, and those are
+grand old trees."
+
+"It's our old home in Hertfordshire. I lost the property and a modest
+fortune through a rascally set of lawyers."
+
+Mr. Robinson's face expressed deep concern. "Yes, I remember the affair
+well," he said. "I remember reading it over the breakfast-table to my
+wife and daughter. We saw your name among the creditors. It was a bad
+business."
+
+"They had managed all our family concerns for thirty years."
+
+Wyndham was now wound up to enter into more personal matters than he had
+so far touched upon. As before, he was perfectly frank, recounting in
+the intimacy of the moment all the details of this financial
+catastrophe. He spoke freely of his relations in the country, and of his
+sister Mary, and the independent way in which she was earning her bread;
+passing from canvas to canvas the while, and breaking off frequently to
+discuss the paintings.
+
+At last they had gone through all the selection, but the unfailing
+appreciation of his visitor was so pleasant to the artist that he could
+not help bringing forward two or three more, and then finally another.
+And still yet another after!--like the preacher's "one word more."
+
+"I have passed a very happy time here with you," the old man declared,
+as Wyndham restored the lamp to its usual place on the table. "You see I
+was right; the occasion was well worth the accident that brought it
+about."
+
+"Happily you were not really hurt. So all's well that ends well."
+
+The old man took hold of his rush-bag. "I mustn't forget my middle of
+salmon," he smiled. "I generally fetch something home for my wife--some
+game or fish fresh from the market."
+
+"You make me wish _I_ had a husband in the City," sighed Wyndham.
+
+Mr. Robinson laughed. "Well, I suppose I must make up my mind to be off,
+else my wife and daughter will be wondering what has become of me."
+
+Wyndham came forward hurriedly. "I hope I have not been keeping you," he
+murmured. Somehow he did not like being left alone now. The old man's
+coming had saved him for the time being from the clutch of a terrible
+despair, and he saw it waiting to descend swiftly on him. The half-hour
+of self-respect would vanish like an illusion.
+
+But Mr. Robinson's voice was breaking in on his mood again.
+
+"Would it be presuming too much on our slight acquaintance if I
+suggested----" The old man hesitated with an evident shyness that was
+very winning.
+
+"Pray suggest anything you like," said Wyndham.
+
+Thus encouraged, Mr. Robinson launched out boldly. "Would you come home
+and dine with us--quite without ceremony. We're the simplest of people,
+but we shall offer you the heartiest of welcomes."
+
+"That is very kind of you," said Wyndham. "I should not be deranging
+your household?"
+
+"I am sure my wife and daughter will be as delighted to see you as I am.
+Will you not come home with me now--in a simple, friendly way?"
+
+"Since I am to meet ladies," smiled Wyndham, "I should like to make
+myself presentable. I have just been across town, and in this filthy,
+murky atmosphere one gets to feel so utterly unclean."
+
+"Oh, yes; am I not in the same plight myself?" smiled Mr. Robinson.
+
+Wyndham escorted him to the door, and the old man again thanked him for
+the pleasure the visit had afforded him.
+
+"We dine at half-past seven," was his parting reminder, and Wyndham,
+promising faithfully to be punctual, closed the door after him.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+But his visitor had no sooner departed than Wyndham experienced a sharp
+revulsion of feeling. How stupid to have accepted this invitation! His
+isolation in this suburban wilderness had always afforded him a certain
+satisfaction--he had consistently maintained his magnificent want of
+interest in all this Philistine population. His studio was his castle,
+and if he chose to starve therein it was at least a mitigation of his
+misery to be able to do so without the sense of others' eyes prying at
+him. And now he had surrendered his privacy. The indiscretion was really
+inexplicable! And he had let his tongue run on so recklessly and
+confidentially! He might even have drawn back at the very last--alleged
+an engagement, and cut short the acquaintanceship there and then.
+Perhaps it was not yet too late!
+
+In his annoyance he started pacing the length of the studio. But the
+great canvas, still glistening there on the easel, suddenly claimed his
+attention again, and brought him to a standstill. Impulsively he caught
+up the lamp, and once more directed its light on to the surface. The
+picture took deep hold of him, and he stood absorbed in it. And somehow
+Mr. Robinson's wondering voice began to sound its praises. "Marvellous!"
+the old man seemed to be saying. "It doesn't need an art education to
+see that's a work of genius." And as he recalled each stroke of
+admiration, he nodded his head in agreement.
+
+Was not the old man's appreciation of good augury? Surely it
+foreshadowed a popular Academy success. Whatever one's personal art
+ideals, it did not detract from their worth if one could carry them out
+and please the crowd at the same time--incidentally, of course--without
+deliberate intention. Did not Molière first try his comedies on his
+housekeeper? Mr. Robinson's tastes were the tastes of the great
+public--nay, of even the better classes that went to the galleries. Like
+him, they dwelt entirely on the illustrative aspect of painting, and
+were altogether swayed by the humanity of a picture, by its dramatic or
+anecdotal interest. No wonder some of his fellow-craftsmen had been
+driven to the opposite extreme, and tried to rule out humanity
+altogether. But the human side of art need not be necessarily on a low
+plane, or descend to mere anecdote. In his hands art should be the
+vehicle of real intellect and emotion.
+
+If only he were not forced to do those idiotic trifles! After holding
+out so long, to capitulate absolutely for want of bread! No, he would
+not dine with Mr. Robinson--he would starve rather!
+
+"Better to starve than stoop to inferiors!" he exclaimed, as he set down
+the lamp again. How little, indeed, he had eaten all that day! And with
+the thought a distressing weakness came over him. There was a humming at
+his temples: the studio disappeared in a mist, then reappeared
+oscillating. He was constrained to steady himself by clutching at the
+table.
+
+In a minute or two the vertigo passed off, leaving him with a dull
+craving for food and drink. He might make some sort of a meal from such
+poor provender as his larder afforded--a portion of a loaf, the
+remainder of a tin of sardines, a hunk of cheese; but somehow the
+prospect was singularly uninviting. He might, indeed, add variety to the
+store by laying out his last shilling in the streets adjoining, but the
+shilling was too precious, and anyway he had not the energy to go
+shopping. There swam up before him the picture of a well-lighted,
+comfortable dining-room with a heavily laden table, and of a middle of
+salmon, piping hot, that was being served with a dainty white sauce. And
+then there were hosts of bottles on a mahogany sideboard: fat,
+gold-tipped bottles; tall, long-necked bottles; fantastic twisted
+bottles. Good well-cooked food was nourishing him, a delicate wine was
+moistening his feverish palate, touching his whole dull self to a
+lighter mood.
+
+He had accepted the invitation. The Robinsons were expecting him, would
+be troubled and put out if he did not arrive. He carried the lamp up to
+the gallery, and began his preparations. And then the whim took him to
+change his clothes again. Not that he supposed the Robinsons affected to
+be fashionable of an evening, but the pride of the half-starved man rose
+in irrational self-assertion.
+
+So he dressed carefully, tying his bow to perfection, and arranging the
+set of his waistcoat fastidiously. It was so long since he had put on
+evening clothes, and as he saw himself in the glass, well set up, and
+bearing himself exquisitely, the fact of his poverty seemed absurd and
+incredible. His face, too, seemed to have recovered some of its olden
+confidence as he scanned it critically. True the cheeks were a trifle
+thin and shrunken, but the lines of dejection and sadness had lightened
+at the new stirring within him.
+
+Then for the first time in all these years he made his way up the road
+to the ugly house at the corner that had stamped itself upon him as the
+symbol of all Suburbia, as the stronghold of a type of life that Bohemia
+mocked at and Belgravia waved aside as impossible.
+
+If he had not yet entirely overcome his distaste, it was at least
+mitigated by a splendid sense of condescension.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+A handsome Phyllis, in cap and apron, opened the door, and Wyndham
+stepped into a broad corridor, carpeted in red, and hung with popular
+engravings that he had seen in the windows of all the carvers and
+gilders in London. Next, he was ushered under a crimson door-hanging
+into a resplendent drawing-room, lighted by a dazzling crystal
+chandelier, and sensuously warmed by a great red-hot fire. There was
+nobody to receive him yet, and he was left to amuse himself with the
+show-books on the tables--padded photograph albums full of old-fashioned
+naïve people posing against rococo backgrounds, collections of views of
+the Valley of the Thames and of the Lake District, and richly bound
+volumes of Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott.
+
+The interest of these treasures was soon exhausted, and Wyndham, sinking
+into a remarkably soft arm-chair, impatiently beat with his foot at a
+cluster of roses on the brand-new "Aubusson" carpet. The room was almost
+triangular, a large bow window commanding the vista of the main road,
+and pairs of other windows, straight and tall, overlooking the streets
+that branched on either hand. And all these windows were elaborately
+draped in a would-be Renaissance style, with many loops and festoons,
+and with big gilt cornices above. And between each pair of them stood a
+gilded consol table surmounted by a mirror that reached to the ceiling.
+Oval mirrors with lighted candles in sconces glittered from several
+points of vantage, and crimson couches and the immense piano completed
+the tale of splendours.
+
+At length the door opened softly, and Mr. Robinson entered. Wyndham
+rose, not displeased to observe that his host was likewise in evening
+clothes; as he had been already regretting the self-assertion to which
+he had yielded.
+
+"Ah, you are in good time," said the old man, coming forward in his
+quiet, gentle way, and shaking hands again. "I am sorry to say that my
+wife and daughter are not down yet."
+
+His tone was apologetic, and Wyndham smiled, readily understanding that
+the announcement of a guest to arrive had scared the ladies to a more
+elaborate toilette than usual.
+
+"They were enchanted when I told them you were coming," Mr. Robinson
+continued. "As for commiseration over my fall--not a word!"
+
+The two men had conversed for some few minutes before the hostess and
+her daughter came sweeping into the room; and, as he had half expected,
+Wyndham found he knew them more or less vaguely by sight. Mrs. Robinson
+was a tall dame, fully sixty, with gray hair, and a most amiable
+expression; stately, even handsome, in her black silk dress with its
+tasteful lace at the throat and wrists. The daughter who followed rather
+shyly behind her gave Wyndham the impression that he was beholding the
+most simple, homely person he had ever met; and this despite the
+complexity of her costume, which seemed to be built up almost entirely
+of old lace that lay over itself in thick folds and rich creamy masses.
+Timidity of temperament and modesty to the verge of self-distrust were
+at once suggested by the almost awkward constraint of her bearing and
+the quiet, half-averted glance of her dark eyes. He could see that she
+hardly dared look at him. He gallantly supposed that she was a year or
+two younger than himself, and as he met her desperately friendly smile
+(intended for him but hardly bestowed in his direction) with his
+choicest bow, he received a further impression that was distinctly more
+favourable than the first of unrelieved plainness. For, once his eye had
+taken in her features, the artist in him was ready to do justice to her
+throat and arms, which were really good: and her dark hair, her greatest
+glory, lay in a superb coil, which, with a surprising touch of
+coquetry, was set off by a velvet band and some lilies of the valley. It
+was curious that the figure of Lady Betty should swim up before him just
+then, as if to emphasise his real ideal of woman's beauty, and to make
+him feel once for all how impossible it was ever to step down from that
+standard. But he could not help smiling covertly at the thought that the
+family were making such a serious business of so casual an
+invitation--these toilettes were really so very much more elaborate than
+anything he might conceivably have looked for; though at any rate it
+reassured his pride in the fullest degree--evidently, his frank
+admissions to Mr. Robinson notwithstanding, they were not taking him as
+a poor devil of an artist, but were looking up to him with a perfect
+appreciation of the respect that was his due.
+
+Wyndham's presentation to the ladies over, there followed an instant of
+general embarrassment. Mrs. Robinson smiled again, and quickly tried to
+make conversation.
+
+"How pleasant to become acquainted at last, after being neighbours so
+many years!" she murmured. "And so unexpectedly, too."
+
+"When the unexpected does happen," said Wyndham, "it generally is
+delightful. I suppose that's because most of us in this hard life get
+into the habit of expecting only the opposite sort of thing."
+
+Miss Robinson laughed shyly, whilst her mother seemed somewhat puzzled.
+
+"They say that the unexpected always happens," ventured the younger
+woman tremulously. "I'm sure the proverb must be wrong, because nice
+things happen so seldom." Her voice was soft, vibrating with gracious
+amiability.
+
+"I disagree with Mr. Wyndham," said her father. "I was not at all
+expecting to slip down. When the unexpected happened, I am bound to say
+I did not find it delightful."
+
+They all laughed; and then Mrs. Robinson resumed the interrupted tenour
+of her discreet, agreeable way. She herself had often thought how
+pleasant it would be to know him; but in London one could live for ever
+so many years and yet know absolutely nothing of one's next-door
+neighbour. In the country, of course, things were different: there
+etiquette was more human, and people called of their own accord. Was Mr.
+Wyndham exhibiting anything just now? They had seen pictures of his in
+the Academy in past years, and were great admirers of his. Wyndham was
+by now too faint and exhausted to do more than hold his own in a
+smiling, conventional way: the splendours of the room, too, dazzled him
+to the verge of confusion. He was thankful when Phyllis appeared with
+the announcement that dinner was served; and Mr. Robinson, giving his
+arm to his daughter, led the way across the hall, under another crimson
+door-hanging, and into a long dining-room, wherein was set out a great
+table with flowers and fruit and silver. The covers were laid at one
+end, which gave the dinner an air of informality and family intimacy.
+
+A glass of sherry at the start revived Wyndham considerably, and soon he
+fell to conversing at his ease. Presently he found he was somehow taking
+the lead, and their evident respect and admiration for his lightest word
+made him clearly perceive that he was an important and brilliant figure
+for them. Such grains of resentment as he still cherished at having
+entered on the acquaintanceship were dying away. Meanwhile the seductive
+prevision of material joys that had risen before him at the studio at
+that moment of physical weakness was being literally realised, almost
+comically so. There on the immense mahogany sideboard stood bottles and
+decanters galore, and now up came the middle of salmon with a piquant
+sauce accompanying it! God! how delicious it tasted, after all these
+months of bread and cheese! Wine gave him inspiration, and food the
+strength to live up to the rôle they were allotting to him. He was
+good-looking and knew it; his voice, his bearing, his choice of words,
+were alike distinguished; his experiences were of worlds that were to
+them far-seeming and romantic. He was the sort of hero they had read
+about in novels--a handsome guardsman nonchalantly looking in at a Park
+Lane dance at midnight, or a brilliant attaché to an embassy in touch
+with wonderful horizons.
+
+Meanwhile the supply of dainty food continued; a leg of lamb, spinach,
+fat, luscious asparagus, a melon from a Southern clime, a chicken, and
+the juiciest of French lettuces. The hock was of the most delicate, the
+champagne subtle and sparkling. Even so he felt himself sparkling in the
+eyes of the others. He was the lion to whom all this homage was his
+rightful due, holding them fascinated with his wide knowledge of men and
+cities, of social life in European capitals. He drew upon his wanderings
+in by-ways known only of artists; fascinated them with sketches of the
+art life of Rome and Paris. Reminiscences bubbled up of his student
+days, and with them were mingled deft touches of Eton and Oxford, and
+charming cameos of county life; this last developing insensibly into
+discussions of Anglo-Saxon character, its comparison with the Latin,
+relative estimations of intelligence, industry, ambition. Mr. Robinson
+here had many shrewd observations to offer, for they had now wandered
+into the domain of affairs. Wyndham was genuinely interested in his
+host's experiences, in his accounts of unusual men of business from
+strange, even barbarous parts of the world, with whom he had had
+personal relations. They even touched upon financial operations; and
+Wyndham felt perfectly at ease amid complications in which millions were
+bandied about like tennis-balls, and the credit of banks and States was
+pawned as simply and swiftly as he might pawn his own watch. At last,
+over the dessert, there was a perceptible slackening. Wyndham, who so
+far had taken care not to let his eye rest on the many heavy-framed "oil
+paintings" that hung on the walls, for fear some discussion of them
+might thence arise, was now incautious enough to fix his gaze markedly
+on some sheep pasturing just opposite him. But Mr. Robinson seemed to
+welcome the opportunity thus afforded.
+
+"Oh, of course I know you won't find any of _those_ things worth
+glancing at," he threw out with a laugh; and the others chimed in,
+highly amused at the thought of the impression "the things" must be
+making on their guest.
+
+"Oh, some aren't at all half bad," conceded Wyndham politely, his eye
+now promenading freely. "The girl with the mandoline is laid in with
+rather a charming touch, and the fruit-and-flower piece is really
+decorative."
+
+"We always considered those two the best," declared Mr. Robinson. "I
+bought them at an auction in the City, many years ago now--more, in
+fact, than I care to remember."
+
+Wyndham still affected to be examining the collection.
+
+"Now, of course," resumed Mr. Robinson, "that Highland scene is the
+merest pot-boiler--a stream in the middle, a mountain on one side, and a
+cow on the other. I've seen hundreds of them for sale. But it's not
+likely I shall ever be taken in again that way, especially after
+examining the work I saw at your studio, Mr. Wyndham."
+
+Wyndham inclined his head smilingly, and Mr. Robinson duly proceeded to
+describe to the others the great masterpiece which that afternoon he had
+had the privilege of inspecting. His memory of the details proved to be
+extraordinarily minute, and his face glowed all over again with the
+wonder and enthusiasm he had displayed at the studio. "The figures, the
+faces," he wound up, "were simply marvellous. I can't give you the
+faintest idea of how magnificent it all is. I could spend hours looking
+at it."
+
+Wyndham could do no less than suggest that the ladies should come and
+see the picture for themselves, though just then a whiff of unpleasant
+thoughts urged on him again the imprudence of such further social
+developments.
+
+"We shall be only too delighted; it will be a great pleasure," exclaimed
+Mrs. Robinson, and Miss Robinson's eyes shone with unmistakable
+excitement.
+
+"We must really take down that Highland scene, my dear," proceeded Mrs.
+Robinson, addressing her husband. "It is altogether too bad. We ought
+to have something better in its place."
+
+It passed through Wyndham's mind that one of his projected panels would
+do excellently, but of course it was far too below the dignity of the
+brilliant lion to appear to snatch at the opportunity of turning a few
+honest guineas through the grace of his humble entertainers.
+
+"Let us have the Highland scene down by all means," said Mr. Robinson.
+"And I've an idea! If we can induce Mr. Wyndham to paint our Alice's
+portrait, why, then we should have something first-rate to hang in its
+place."
+
+Miss Robinson turned fiery red; the quick glance she flashed at her
+father was the more conspicuous. "How splendid!" she exclaimed
+breathlessly. Her bosom heaved. Wyndham was almost painfully aware of
+the thumping of her heart.
+
+But he himself was caught quite unprepared. True that the unexpected had
+happened again, but that very quality of the event was in this instance
+disconcerting. No doubt they observed his slight hesitation.
+
+"Of course it would be a great privilege for us," interposed Mrs.
+Robinson; "but it seems to me we are counting without Mr. Wyndham's
+authority."
+
+Wyndham inclined his head graciously with a smile; swiftly master of the
+situation again, and improving the occasion with a compliment.
+
+"Oh! I shall be most delighted." He gave his proposed subject the
+professional glance that the occasion authorised. "Miss Robinson will
+afford me the opportunity of a most distinguished piece of portraiture."
+
+Miss Robinson gazed at her plate, nervously peeling a banana. She had
+not spoken much during the dinner, but she had hung on Wyndham's words
+with a naïve, unconscious admiration, which, from a prettier and more
+brilliant woman, he would scarcely have passed with so little a sense of
+appreciation.
+
+"Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Wyndham," she said simply. "I am
+afraid the distinction will be due more to your work than to your
+sitter."
+
+"No, indeed, Miss Robinson," he protested, with a suave gravity that
+made his polished assurance the more impressive and charming. "I did not
+intend any compliment--I spoke only as the artist." He was rather
+surprised that a woman should display so little vanity. And, in a subtle
+way, it did not enhance his estimation of her.
+
+Miss Robinson's banana occupied her more earnestly than ever; but her
+mother came to the rescue by raising the important question of costume.
+Wyndham, after further professional consideration of his client,
+preferred to paint Miss Robinson as he saw her now. And with a ready
+sense of detail he saw, too, that certain rings she wore, though he had
+not observed them closely at first, would make excellent spots in a
+scheme of decoration. These rings were unusually chosen, and were more
+artistic than extravagant. The one on her right hand was a small, subtle
+cat's-eye surrounded by fine pearls. On her left hand were an
+aquamarine, and a scarab that shone like the patina of an ancient
+bronze. Almost without a pause he dashed at once at a scheme, which he
+elucidated there and then, much to their overwhelming. He would pose her
+on an Empire chair. In a blue and white Oriental vase on a high stand at
+the side should be arranged three tall arum lilies amid some vivid
+carnation blossoms. Why, the Nankin bowl on the mantelpiece was the very
+thing! The background of the picture should be vague and of an
+olive-grey tone, laid in with free brushwork, against which the masses
+of creamy lace would show deliciously decorative. The great surmounting
+coil of hair would give character to the whole scheme, and the lilies of
+the valley in the velvet band afford a final contrast of lightness and
+graciousness against the intense note of the coiffure.
+
+The parents were radiant with pleasure, though poor Miss Robinson looked
+more and more scared each instant. In her trepidation she could only
+echo stammeringly the elder people's wonder at his great skill and
+cleverness. The scheme unfolded itself before them richly beautiful--not
+one of your dull black portraits, but a canvas glowing with exquisite
+light and colour.
+
+"There, Alice, you ought to be proud of yourself," said her father,
+rallying her good-naturedly as a parting shot, when the women rose to
+retire; and Wyndham attended their exit under the crimson hanging with
+his most engaging air.
+
+Left alone, the men drew their chairs to the fire, and Mr. Robinson
+brought forward boxes of fragrant-smelling cigars, large and rotund. The
+atmosphere of comfort enveloped Wyndham soothingly: the sense of
+unlimited abundance seemed a miracle after his long privation.
+Fortunately he had not been tempted to have his glass filled too often:
+he had appreciated all these good and luscious things with commendable
+moderation, and had been stimulated to brilliancy without losing cool
+command of himself. He lighted his cigar at the little silver smoker's
+lamp that just then came in with the coffee, and, as he puffed, a
+splendid warm feeling of well-being took possession of him. He helped
+himself to cream and sugar with the masterful calm and something of the
+gesture of a stage hero.
+
+Presently Mr. Robinson raised the subject of Wyndham's fee for the
+portrait, approaching the point apologetically.
+
+"Of course, we could hardly discuss this side of the matter before my
+wife and daughter," said the old man. "But I must insist on your
+accepting a fair remuneration for the work--shall we say two hundred
+guineas?"
+
+"To be frank," said Wyndham, "if you had left it to me, I should hardly
+have mentioned so large a sum."
+
+"Naturally a gentleman of your disposition would think more of the
+artistic pleasure of the work than of the money it brought. Still, in
+this life money has to be considered. In all things, sublime or humble,
+the labourer is worthy of his hire. I do not for a moment suggest that
+the sum I have named in any way expresses our appreciation of the work,
+even in anticipation, and certainly not in any way our sense of the
+privilege and honour you are bestowing upon us."
+
+"I shall endeavour to merit your kind words," said Wyndham, not to be
+outdone in polished courtesy, though he conceded that, by force of
+simple sincerity and good feeling, Mr. Robinson seemed a past master in
+the delicate art. "At any rate," he pursued, "the work is developing in
+my mind. The more I dwell upon it, the better and better I like the
+scheme, and I shall work at it enthusiastically from start to finish."
+
+It being thus assumed that two hundred guineas were to be the artist's
+reward, Mr. Robinson seemed by no means loth to wander from a point
+which he had approached with great hesitation and an immense sense of
+its difficult delicacy. As yet Wyndham did not measure the radical
+change in his personal situation; nor did he display any undue elation.
+But his cool demeanour was no mere pose. Indeed, he was surprised
+himself at the ease with which he was accepting the transaction, as if
+it were commonplace in his experience. But he merely supposed that he
+was meeting good fortune with the natural dignity of the artist--to whom
+commissions are due as a matter of right, however long they may be
+deferred.
+
+They did not linger in the dining-room, but joined the ladies after
+their first cigar; though not before Mr. Robinson had sedulously
+inquired as to his liking for the particular brand, which, he assured
+Wyndham, was not readily obtainable in London, and had made, him promise
+to take a box away with him.
+
+In the drawing-room Miss Robinson played to them, at first tremulously,
+but gaining confidence with the experience. She displayed a degree of
+trained taste and a certain individual choice, favouring the tenderer
+and gentler works of Mendelssohn and Mozart. She sang also one or two of
+Heine's love songs in the German with a touch of passion and regret,
+whilst Wyndham accompanied her; and he himself wound up the evening in
+more jovial mood with a rousing student's song from his old Munich days.
+
+Their parting with him had almost a touch of affection; and the final
+understanding was that he was to plan out the arrangements for the
+sittings, and to communicate with them in the morning.
+
+He was forgetting his box of cigars at the end, but Mr. Robinson
+carefully caught it up from the hall table, and brought it after him
+just as the servant was opening the door.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The next morning early Wyndham jumped out of bed with a bewildered sense
+of some change in his life, and it was an instant or two before his
+faculties cleared and he remembered his adventure of the previous
+evening. His next thought was one of pleasure that he had at last
+carried out his resolution of rising early. The autumn had developed
+with unusual severity, but the morning was intensely clear, and the
+studio full of a strong light. He pushed aside the hanging, and looked
+down from the gallery on the familiar scene below. Ordinarily, on
+rising, the sight had filled him with disgust and apathy, but now a
+freshness and vigour pervaded him, a new imperious desire, not merely in
+his mind but in all his limbs and muscles, to enter again on the contest
+with men. As his thought ran back through the past intolerable year or
+two, his inaction and sloth seemed almost incredible. He saw himself
+rising at midday, suffering moral tortures before the work he was
+powerless to begin, letting the barren hours drift away into the deep,
+then regretting them passionately. Was it not all a nightmare from which
+he had been curiously released?
+
+He dressed, and, whilst his little kettle was boiling, took careful
+stock of his professional materials. Colours, brushes, varnishes--all
+needed renewing; there seemed nothing but impracticable odds and ends,
+mere bits of wreckage from his disastrous life's venture. Then, too, the
+filth and disorder all around him struck him brusquely, stung him to
+annoyance. On every surface where dust might accumulate it lay in serene
+possession. Wherever spiders could spin, there the webs hung thick,
+amazing and complicated citadels, prodigious masses and networks.
+
+He felt he could not endure it a day longer. There must be a thorough
+physical cleansing at once. And he must return to the luxury of a daily
+bed-maker. This preoccupation with household things took off the keenest
+edge of one's first energy and enthusiasm; he must reserve himself
+jealously for his high calling.
+
+As he sipped his coffee he mused over the little financial difficulties
+that immediately beset him. Now that at last he had a valid ground for
+appealing to Mary, he felt reluctant; anxious to bring her only the
+sense of his success without alloy. He might explain the situation to
+Mr. Robinson, and ask for money in advance; but that seemed as impolitic
+as it was repugnant in this new rapture of fine upstanding dignity.
+Payment of the quarter's rent that was already due could be easily
+deferred--for the bare humiliation of making the request. But he needed
+something for equipment, and must face the sacrifice of some of the
+older pictures to which he had clung so long, accepting any sum in
+exchange, if only shillings.
+
+He still felt no disposition to invest the accident that had turned the
+tide for him with any touch of superstition or romance. He regarded the
+whole matter in the same dry light as at his first acceptance of it the
+evening before. He had sat waiting for clients, and at last they had
+turned up. But he did not at all dislike the Robinsons: they were very
+much better than the great run of their class--they had evidently
+ideals, and aspired to a higher degree of refinement than they as yet
+possessed, or, perhaps, were capable of possessing. They were neither
+smug nor self-satisfied, and, in giving him this work, they had avoided
+indulging in any semblance of bourgeois patronage, whereas other people
+of their class, even if well meaning, might easily have been gross and
+intolerable.
+
+He had studied his sitter pretty closely. The profile, as is not
+unfrequently the case with "plain" women, had a curious individual
+interest. He felt it offered scope for "construction," and he could
+import subtly into the drawing a certain distinguished sentiment that
+was not really in the original, though somehow it might easily have been
+there, and, in moments of enthusiasm on the part of the observer, might
+even be conceived to be there. Yes, the profile was undoubtedly the
+thing: that way, too, the great coil of hair could be handled the more
+effectively. Indeed, it seemed to him that, taking into consideration
+her dark eye with its soft lashes, and the long shapely arms, and the
+exquisite ivory tones of the old lace dress, the scheme should really
+turn out, as he had so promptly put it to Miss Robinson herself, "a most
+distinguished piece of portraiture." He was shrewd enough to understand
+the essential shyness of her disposition, and he felt he might well
+invest her expression with some suggestion of this, though it should
+come out as a sort of gentle spiritual modesty.
+
+And now his imagination returned to the contemplation of his own
+fortunes, and went soaring skywards. His luck having once changed, who
+could say what might not turn up next? Another sitter might appear, one
+of your great heroines, stately and brilliant--a sort of Lady Betty, in
+fact: he might as well admit he _had_ Lady Betty in mind! Such a
+portrait, appropriately conceived, would form a remarkable pendant to
+this one. Then, too, he might make another dash at his masterpiece! Such
+a display of versatility in the next year's exhibitions must place his
+name on everybody's lips, must surely pave the way to his reputation not
+only as a great decorative portrait painter, but also as a modern of the
+moderns, touched to inspiration by all the stress and striving of his
+age!
+
+This roseate flight was abruptly disturbed by the advent of the postman.
+The rat-tat, one of the double sort, imperiously summoned him to the
+door. Had the "something else" already turned up? He rather prided
+himself on the coolness with which he rose to meet it. The postman
+handed him a packet and a letter. But at a glance he saw that the packet
+was a rejected drawing and the letter Mary's, and he went straight down
+into the depths again. He, however, affected a cheerful good morning to
+the postman; then, no sooner alone, tore open the letter, with the
+bitter taste of yesterday's scene with his sister full in his throat. To
+his astonishment, he pulled out two five-pound Bank of England notes,
+and only a few words accompanied them. "DEAREST," she wrote,--
+"Since you left me to-day I have suffered beyond endurance. That you
+will ever forgive me for my harshness I cannot hope. I am the only soul
+you have to turn to, and yet I struck at you as with a whip. Your face
+as you turned away will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have been
+sobbing and sobbing, feeling my heart must break. I ask you to be good
+to me now, and take this little money. Darling, don't punish me by
+sending it back. Better times are coming presently, and, if God is good,
+this little help now may bring you the best of fortune.--Your loving
+sister, MARY."
+
+Wyndham was unnerved; realising to the full the torture her gentle,
+sympathetic nature was inflicting on her. What it must have cost her to
+gather up her strength for that critical interview he could only
+remotely surmise. Yet it had failed her after all!
+
+However touched he was by her sweetness, however much he was moved to
+respond to this prostration and surrender, he yet saw only too clearly
+that at bottom it _was_ a failure of strength. The idea of using the
+money was singularly distasteful; even though he told himself he would
+have his hand cut off rather than doubt her perfect goodness and
+sincerity in sending it.
+
+This necessity of a difficult decision disturbed the nice cool balance
+with which he had started out to face the day. There was nothing for it
+but to put aside the letter for the present in the hope that counsel
+would come to him later. And in the meanwhile he went on with his
+programme. He tidied his papers, went to hunt out his old charwoman,
+and, ultimately leaving her in possession of the studio, he ran into
+town to get his new materials, and look up the various accessories for
+the scheme of the picture.
+
+His first visit was to a shop in Oxford Street, where he had dealt ever
+since his student days, and where he could order what he needed without
+immediate payment. A burly man in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers
+was making purchases at one of the counters, and his back seemed not
+unfamiliar. Wyndham brought out his list and was going through the
+various items with one of the assistants when a heavy hand was placed on
+his shoulder, and, turning, he beheld the big powerful head and pointed
+beard of one of the old gang of his Latin Quarter days.
+
+"Sadler!" he exclaimed.
+
+The big head was convulsed with laughter, and Wyndham's hand wrung in a
+mighty grip.
+
+"How jolly! I was coming to look you up! I've just ferreted out your
+address; you're still fixed out there at Hampstead?"
+
+"Oh, do come--I shall be delighted," said Wyndham genially. "Have you
+been in London long?"
+
+"Three weeks. After knocking about for five years--what do you think of
+that, my boy? First went all over Spain--made scores of studies. Gee!
+First-rate! Cheapest place in Europe--exchange thirty-five to the
+sovereign--and lots of good eating. Went to see a bit of Velasquez down
+at Madrid. Gee-rusalem! And the Titans, stuck up in a funny little
+room! You never see anything so fine in your life."
+
+"Oh, I've been there," smiled Wyndham.
+
+The vigour and enthusiasm of his old friend, the nasalities of the deep
+voice, had almost a complete freshness for him, after the long interval
+since their last meeting. He was pleased at the encounter--it brought
+him whiffs of old days of happy comradeship. He felt the stirring of the
+war-horse.
+
+"Then I put in a nice couple of years at Munich; saw some Boecklin. Gee!
+He's great!"
+
+"I once saw some wretched things of his, though," said Wyndham. "I
+remember--at a modern exhibition at Venice."
+
+"I grant there are one or two rotten ones," conceded Sadler; "but
+they're interesting, if you take them in the right way--experiments that
+failed, though they were fine as he had them in him. Well--then I did a
+bit of a tour all over the shop--came along through Holland--made
+cart-loads of sketches; and then I came right along here. Been getting
+lots of fun in London; been round with the boys, and had a rattling good
+time. Taking the opportunity, too, of getting some nice suits of
+clothes." And here Sadler turned abruptly from art, and plunged into
+sartorial details. His interest in such matters was astonishing, almost
+touching. He revelled in fancy waistcoats and rioted in tweeds and
+broadcloths. London was the only place in the world where you could get
+the rakish cut. He, Sadler, had never suspected what a lovely figure he
+had, till this latest cutter had revealed him to himself!
+
+He paused at last for breath.
+
+"Anything particular on with you?" he was presently impelled to ask,
+observing that Wyndham was exercising a marked fastidiousness in the
+choice of his canvas.
+
+"A portrait," said Wyndham. "Not a bad little commission."
+
+"Good!" ejaculated Sadler, his face shining enthusiastically. "A lady?"
+
+"Yes," answered Wyndham, "and I've rather a charming scheme."
+
+"Good!" roared Sadler again. "I heard you hadn't been doing much of
+late. They were running your work down--some of the boys, and I said
+they were talking rot. We nearly came to blows about it. I think I
+fairly shut them up."
+
+Wyndham had at first winced a little. Then he felt like shrugging his
+shoulders. After all, the past had to be lived down. Besides, Sadler's
+championship was genuine and influential.
+
+"That was very kind of you. You always did stick up for me."
+
+"Don't you mind 'em a bit, my boy. You just go ahead, and you'll come
+out at the top of the tree."
+
+"I'll do my best," said Wyndham, smiling.
+
+"That'll be good enough, I guess," said Sadler. "Perhaps this portrait
+will open up other things for you."
+
+"How so?" inquired Wyndham.
+
+"It all depends on the crowd you strike--I heard you came a bit of a
+cropper, and I daresay you're not too well off now to despise a job or
+two--you can always put decent work into them. Now there's Jim
+Harley--he struck a rich middle-class lot ten years ago, rotten
+out-and-out Philistines, twenty guineas apiece--and they've been keeping
+him going ever since. Does fifty of 'em a year."
+
+"The prospect hardly tempts me. After all, the main thing is to get back
+to big work."
+
+Sadler smiled. "I guess I should be the first to drag you back
+again--after a while. But Jimmy married young. A boy and girl affair.
+His wife's family weren't satisfied with his financial position, and
+there was a mighty row at the time. Of course the girl had only her
+pretty eyes."
+
+"Ah, you don't approve of idealistic love affairs."
+
+"Not of that kind. I'm forty, and I've seen something in my time."
+
+Wyndham had finished his purchases, and was telling the assistant to
+send the parcel to his studio. As they left the shop presently, Sadler
+pressed Wyndham very hard to lunch with him at a particular restaurant
+he mentioned, and Wyndham could not do otherwise than accept the
+invitation, though he confessed the place was unknown to him. Whereat
+Sadler expressed great astonishment. It was one of the very few places
+in London where the food was fit to eat! Why, the cooking was even
+better than at Lavenue's in the Quarter, and that was saying a great
+deal. He, Sadler, could not endure any other place during his
+sojournings in London. Wyndham let the dear fellow gallop on to his
+heart's content. Sadler was a fine painter, and in the old days Wyndham
+as the junior had sat at his feet, and in the matter of technique had
+been greatly indebted to him. But he had observed with covert amusement
+at a very early stage in the acquaintanceship that Sadler, like so many
+others in the hard-working, hand-to-mouth world of the arts, had an
+amiable weakness for "being in the know" anent the good things of life,
+and affected a lavishness in public that was off-set by a sharp economy
+in the less visible phases of his existence.
+
+At the restaurant Sadler scrutinised the carte with the confident eye of
+a man about town, grumbled a little, held a fussy colloquy with the
+waiter, and finally ordered oysters and chablis to begin upon, the while
+a chateaubriand was being prepared for them.
+
+Over the meal Sadler talked a great deal of old times. He seemed to have
+kept himself well in touch with scores of men they had known in common,
+despite scatterings and vicissitudes. His mind kept leaping across the
+world, beating them all out of their lairs for Wyndham's enlightenment.
+Did he remember Pycherley--the biggest duffer of them all? Well, he had
+married an heiress on the strength of his genius, and was painting awful
+stuff out in California; and Snyders, who had shared his studio, had
+built himself a Moorish house high up on a mountain-side overlooking the
+Gulf of Salerno; a third had settled down to "black-and-white" in a
+queer little creeper-clad house in St. John's Wood; a fourth was
+decorating a municipal building at Toronto. Marlowe was still in the
+avenue du Maine, where the fascinating American actress he had wed had
+since borne him a sheaf of daughters: and the beautiful Mrs. Smith they
+had known at Fontainebleau, the summer they had spent there together,
+had long ago divorced her husband, and married the Italian sculptor, in
+whose studio she had made such sensational progress. She now exhibited
+regularly, and had already received a gold medal of the second class.
+
+And so the conversation continued--for the most part about men who were
+now pretty well getting on into middle life, whose destinies had found
+definite declaration and were visible to all Wyndham expressed his
+pleasure that his own future, on the contrary, still lay wrapped in
+mystery; that, though the curtain was full up, the interest of the drama
+was by no means played out.
+
+"You can afford to talk like that, Wyndham," shouted Sadler. "What are
+you? You're only a boy! But I'm forty, and I tell you I'd give up the
+interest of the drama for a safe income, and think it a damned good
+bargain. I get along, I sell my stuff, but I tell you I sweat and
+groan."
+
+"I admit I should like my old income back again," said Wyndham; "not for
+itself, but for the sake of the splendid freedom to work."
+
+"That's just my point," shouted Sadler. "What the hell do I care about
+money for itself? And I tell you what, my boy, the right thing for an
+artist is to marry a woman with money." He struck the table hard with
+his big fist, making the whole restaurant rattle.
+
+Wyndham almost jumped. "Good gracious! So that's what you were driving
+at! The idea to me is perfectly loathsome."
+
+"That's just what I used to think," exclaimed Sadler. "But you can't go
+on for ever with your head in the clouds."
+
+"The thing's so awfully brutal and sordid," insisted Wyndham, shuddering
+visibly. "It makes my blood run cold."
+
+"You make me tired," snapped Sadler pettishly. "Where's the sordidness?
+I don't say a man ought to run after a fortune--but enough to steady
+things. Taking it all round, we artists have less chance of making money
+for ourselves than other men of the same worth; and since most of us do
+marry some time or other, we ought to look to marriage to help our work,
+and not to drag it down."
+
+Wyndham was unconvinced. "If you take away the poetry out of life, the
+rest of it is too hideous to bother about. If a man marries to make
+himself comfortable, he's no better than a contented pig wallowing in
+muck. Rather than surrender the ideal, I'd give up marriage altogether,
+stand by my guns, and die fighting."
+
+"We artists are a damned sentimental lot," shouted Sadler. He lifted a
+juicy morsel to his mouth. "This chateau's jolly good, isn't it?"
+
+"Excellent," admitted Wyndham.
+
+"Now you see I wasn't exaggerating when I said it's as good here as at
+Lavenue's." Sadler swallowed his mouthful. "We all begin with your
+idyllic ideas--Rossetti, Meredith, and all the rest of it. But I tell
+you it's hell! You dig the work out of yourself with sweat, with blood!"
+The veins began to swell in Sadler's mighty forehead. "And when you're
+not one of the lucky ones, what does the world do to help you to work
+for it?" He had wrought himself up to a tense excitement, and put the
+question with a hoarse shout. "Nothing! It prints your name in the
+papers, it talks about you at dinner parties! Painting is
+starvation--painting is death! By the time you've worried along till
+you're forty, you begin to see a bit straight, my boy. Look around
+you--what do you see on all sides? You see the best of us and the
+luckiest of us fixing up some pretty little nook here in town or in the
+country, and then trying to clear a few hundreds or so by tempting
+somebody to buy it for double what it cost. We begin with ideals, and
+afterwards we are glad to come down to the level of the common
+speculator. Let us have no delusions about it--there's nobody keener for
+necessary money than we artists when we begin to feel the years slipping
+by. I tell you it's hell!" He gulped down a glass of wine and wiped his
+lips.
+
+"I see your point of view," said Wyndham; "but I detest it. Better to
+fight to the end, and stand alone."
+
+"You make me tired," snapped Sadler again. "There are plenty of women of
+the right sort who'd prefer an artist with a name to some damned bore of
+a booby who hasn't an idea in his head. They're not fools, those women,
+I tell you. They know there's no money in the profession; they know you
+can't get everything in life. Life's a compromise. You've got to give
+and take. And when women have money, you'll find they understand these
+things better than when they haven't. A romantic boy runs after a
+rosy-cheeked, bread-and-butter miss with nothing. The chit gives
+herself airs, expects what they call 'an establishment'--the rotten
+Philistines!--and then starts out to please herself in every way, places
+her whims and caprices first, and the happiness of the household
+nowhere. The brute exacts every sacrifice, and if she has to make the
+tiniest concession, it rankles in her all her life."
+
+Wyndham dissented. The same things might happen even if the chit were a
+millionaire.
+
+Sadler dissented in his turn. He insisted that in woman money and good
+sense somehow went together. It was a fact. "Look how much happier
+French marriages are; look how the husband and wife are comrades and
+stick together. I tell you the French system is the best in the world.
+Every girl brings her husband a dowry of some kind, and they both work
+together for the common good. When the time comes it is easier to pass
+on the money to their own daughter in their turn."
+
+Wyndham contended that these things were all a matter of temperament.
+"Even at the best you'd have to keep your mind very elastic as to the
+type of person, whereas, for my own part," he declared, with the Lady
+Betty type in his mind, "I not only hold on to my poetic standpoint, but
+there are certain personal ideals I couldn't possibly surrender."
+
+"If you stick out too much for ideals, you'll never get anywhere at
+all," said Sadler.
+
+"There are things one must stick out for," insisted Wyndham. "For
+instance, I could never marry a woman who wasn't intelligent, and
+certainly never one who wasn't beautiful."
+
+"Intelligent--yes. But what is beauty?" asked Sadler, shrugging his
+shoulders. "And if you get a woman too obviously beautiful, you'll have
+every man a mile round making love to her, like flies round a honey-pot.
+It's a sort of primitive law of the universe, and it'll hold good for
+all time, I suppose."
+
+"Oh, I should chance all that," said Wyndham.
+
+"But what is beauty?" insisted Sadler.
+
+"I know when I see it," laughed Wyndham.
+
+"Give me character," said Sadler. "Unselfishness and loyalty are the
+chief points, and a sort of sweet reasonableness, of course. If a
+woman's features aren't quite classical, it's wonderful what a good
+dressmaker can do to set them off. Waiter! Cigarettes!"
+
+When ultimately the waiter brought the bill, Sadler produced a silver
+sovereign purse, saw with unconcealed horror that it contained only half
+a sovereign, then felt in his pockets for loose silver. "It's rather
+awkward," he said, pulling the longest of faces. "I'm afraid I haven't
+enough left on me after paying for my colours and materials this
+morning. I shall have to ask you to lend me a little."
+
+A flash of surprise, an imperceptible raising of the eyebrows; then
+swiftly Wyndham accepted the situation, and threw down one of Mary's
+banknotes. "Sorry I've nothing smaller," he said, smiling.
+
+"All right, old fellow," said Sadler. "You pay this time, I'll pay next
+time."
+
+By the time the waiter brought Wyndham his change, the conversation had
+passed on to the last exhibition of the New English Art Club.
+
+Wyndham arrived home, after completing all his business calls, late in
+the afternoon, and found that the charwoman had finished her work, and
+was replacing the furniture. A not unpleasant tinge of turpentine
+permeated the atmosphere. The oak presses, newly polished with beeswax,
+shone and glowed even in the shadow of the afternoon. For the first time
+for months the hearth was clear of ashes and cinders, and the stone
+scoured and whitened.
+
+When the woman had gone he devoted a few minutes to wandering about his
+domain, enjoying this new sensation of spotlessness, appreciating the
+professional hand, the skill of which had never before seemed so
+legitimate a theme for admiration. Then he sat down and wrote to Mary as
+follows:--
+
+ "MY DEAR LITTLE MARY,--Your sweet little letter came this morning,
+ and at a moment to be of the greatest service to me. Fortune has
+ already smiled on me again. For the immediate present I have a
+ portrait commission for a couple of hundred guineas! A great
+ fortune--is it not?--after all these seasons of leanness! You will
+ guess that I am now ambitious of getting to grips again with the big
+ picture. I have taken a deep and engrossing look at it again, and I
+ see how to resolve all its difficulties, I daresay, by the spring. I
+ know this letter will make you happy, so, for Heaven's sake, don't
+ give another thought to yesterday afternoon. I have been a great
+ trial to you for so long, and I want to recognise your goodness and
+ kindness in the only way I can, and that is by--succeeding. My heart
+ is in the work, and your belief in me shall find justification.
+
+ "I am keeping your money; it will remove my last anxiety and enable
+ me to work at ease. I want you to come here as soon as I have made
+ some headway with the new work, as I should like you to carry away
+ the impression on your next visit of something real that has been
+ accomplished.
+
+    "Your loving brother,
+
+      "WALTER."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The first sitting was eminently satisfactory. Miss Robinson and her
+mother were punctual to the very stroke of the clock, the new canvas
+stood waiting on the smaller easel, and everything was ready for an
+immediate start. Wyndham had been able to obtain on hire a most lovely
+Empire chair, with swans' heads for armrests, and exquisitely mounted
+with chiselled garlands. It did not take him long to find his
+arrangement, and he saw now how shrewd had been his idea of the Empire
+chair. It was remarkable how Miss Robinson and the chair composed
+together: it gave her distinction, heightened her personality, and the
+profile at once seemed to take precisely the quality which he considered
+essential to his scheme. Her right arm rested lightly along the swan's
+neck, and the subtle cat's-eye, with its border of tiny pearls, showed
+deliciously against the long hand and fingers that emerged from the lace
+lying loosely about the wrist. Her left hand lay on her lap, and here
+the ancient green scarab and the aquamarine made important decorative
+spots amid so great a mass of lace-work. The nankin vase had been sent
+to the studio during the morning, so that Wyndham was practically able
+to build up his picture before him. Indeed, so interesting was the
+result that it promised to lessen by half the labour of creation.
+
+And, now that he had taken the measure of the Robinsons, he was easily
+master of the situation. They were not merely in his hands as clients
+who were availing themselves of his skill; but surrendered as to one
+naturally high above them. In posing Miss Robinson, he had once or twice
+given utterance to his satisfaction in so spontaneous a way that the
+tremulous sitter had no easy task to maintain her immobility. And then
+the kind and condescending explanations with which he accompanied the
+many little changes and refinements in the arrangement from moment to
+moment were so clever and penetrating! It was really wonderful how
+points struck him, and what surprising improvements he accomplished with
+a wave of the hand and imperceptible subtle shiftings of Miss Robinson's
+position. At last, after many scrutinisings of his sitter from varying
+standpoints he suddenly expressed the conviction "Splendid!"
+Then--"Wait; the left hand slightly forward, I think; so as to soften
+the bend of the elbow.... Ah, that's better. Now it couldn't possibly be
+improved upon. Don't you think so, Mrs. Robinson?"
+
+And the mother was as fluttered as her daughter at this sudden appeal.
+"Alice looks lovely," she broke out. "You know so well how to make the
+best of people. I've never seen her so beautiful."
+
+"It's the beautiful accessories that produce the effect," stammered
+Alice.
+
+"They certainly produce some effect," conceded Wyndham. "That is why
+they are there. But it's you I'm painting, Miss Robinson. You are the
+picture, and the picture will be you--and not the surroundings."
+
+He had arranged his palette, and fell to with the brush in earnest,
+bidding her speak the moment she felt fatigued. And, indeed, he insisted
+on her resting frequently, though she struggled bravely to keep the
+spells of work as long as possible, and confessed to cherishing
+ambitions in that direction.
+
+Altogether the ladies were enchanted with their experience. Like Mr.
+Robinson, they had never before visited a studio, and it stirred them
+with a sense of play rather than of work, suggesting to them endless fun
+and merriment. Pleased with the promise of the picture itself, Wyndham
+chatted to them charmingly. Miss Robinson, reassured and encouraged by
+his gracious suavity, soon felt at her ease, and spoke more freely than
+was her wont at any time. A shade of animation came into her features,
+and she was ready to break into a laugh at a jest, or to listen to a
+more serious little disquisition with the intensest absorption. They
+were not infrequent these charming little disquisitions of Wyndham's,
+and his visitors thought it wonderful (and told him so with engaging
+frankness) that he should be able to go on speaking so beautifully, and
+yet never relax his attention from the painting.
+
+He did not prolong the whole sitting beyond two hours, when he expressed
+himself delighted with this beginning, and offered them tea.
+
+They accepted eagerly. "Will you be making it, Mr. Wyndham?" they asked,
+their eyes shining with amusement.
+
+"Oh, I'm an old hand at it," he assured them. He threw open a door which
+they had imagined to indicate a cupboard. "Kitchen, scullery, and every
+kind of domestic office rolled into one," he explained, and promptly
+disappeared inside it. They came peeping in gleefully, fascinated by the
+rough white-washed doll's interior with its miniature dresser, and they
+watched him fill his kettle and put together the tea-things. Then he
+emerged, set the kettle over the fire, spread the table with a fresh
+cloth, and emptied a large bag of cakes on to a fascinating plate of
+old-seeming majolica.
+
+"How nice!" said Miss Robinson, her face shining with make-believe
+gluttony.
+
+"There are some chocolate fingers among them--just the sort you like,"
+said her mother.
+
+"And tiny cream-cakes--just the sort you like, mamma," returned Alice.
+
+"How much tea do you put in the pot?" inquired Mrs. Robinson.
+
+"One spoonful for the pot, and one for each cup," quoted Wyndham
+promptly. "And I am always careful to warm the pot first with a little
+of the hot water, and, in scalding the leaves, I am equally careful to
+catch the water at the exact moment it boils."
+
+"If only our cook were as careful!" sighed Mrs. Robinson.
+
+Wyndham asked them if they would like their tea in the Russian style.
+They didn't quite know what it was, but it sounded interesting, so they
+said they'd certainly like to try it. Whereupon he fished out a large
+lemon, and, cutting it up, put slices into their cups. They were in a
+happy mood. They kept him sternly to the rôle of host, refusing to spoil
+the fun by moving a finger to help him. And when he had completed all
+the processes, and poured the tea for them, they praised its fragrance
+and delicacy to the skies, and in a trice he was called upon to renew
+the supply. They likewise declared the cakes delicious, and ate them
+with affected greed. Meanwhile he let them see some of his pictures;
+showing off his tall, handsome figure, and occasionally balancing his
+cup to a nicety, as he talked and manipulated the canvasses from his
+point of vantage. And when tea was over, he kept them some little time
+further, whilst he exhibited his overwhelming masterpiece, which he had
+kept to the end with its face turned away from them. As he wheeled the
+big easel round, and the picture came into view, a cry of admiration
+broke from their lips. They were indeed surprised to learn that it was
+"impossibly" unfinished; to them it seemed that, if justice were done,
+it should go straightway into the National Gallery. Their pleasure and
+gratification were extreme: they made not the least attempt to hide
+their sense of the privilege of sitting at his feet.
+
+And, when they rose to depart, they were absurdly grateful for the
+lovely afternoon he had given them. Still staggering under the
+magnificent impression of his brilliancy as an artist, Mrs. Robinson
+summoned her courage, and suggested that, if he hadn't any other
+engagement that evening, he might as well dine with them as dine alone.
+The argument struck him as forcible, and he accepted with an
+unhesitating simplicity that won her heart still further. He was
+thanking her for her kindness, but she raised her hands in horrified
+deprecation to check him.
+
+"Kindness," she cried. "Not at all, Mr. Wyndham. We know we are not
+worthy of the honour you do us."
+
+"Yes, it is very good indeed of you to come," chimed in Miss Robinson,
+as they shook hands. She smiled at him quite frankly now, and her soft
+fingers lingered a friendly moment in his.
+
+He shut the door and turned back into the studio; then, as the thought
+struck him for the first time, his lips murmured almost involuntarily,
+"I do believe Miss Robinson's half in love with me." But he checked
+himself abruptly. "Good heavens! what a caddish thing to say." For, with
+his innate chivalry, he had certainly never been addicted to the habit
+of imagining that this or that woman was immediately enamoured of him.
+
+He returned to the portrait, lingered over it a moment or two, putting
+in here a stroke, there a touch or a smear. And somehow the train of
+"caddish" thought persisted in his mind; mastered his will and desire to
+suppress it. Suppose Miss Robinson should fall in love with him! He
+recognised her worth as a human being, but instinctively he placed her
+beyond a certain pale. It was not with that kind of woman that one
+connected the idea of loving or falling in love; the true type had been
+fixed for him once for all. The person, too, perhaps! As he had all but
+felt in his discussion of the subject with Sadler, matrimony was really
+excluded from his mind. His business in life was work, achievement--his
+spirit was almost one of revenge for the past.
+
+Yet, suppose she _should_ fall in love with him! The speculation
+persisted, and again he tried to brush it aside. Well, he hoped to
+goodness that she would not, and brusquely wielded his paintbrush. In
+any case, it was all in the day's work. Take his own case, for instance!
+Had he not suffered atrociously during all the time he had known Lady
+Betty? In his bitter poverty he had hardly dared say even to himself
+that he had met the woman of his aspirations!
+
+Thus reflecting, he wheeled forward his masterpiece again, and worked on
+it tentatively, though he did not hope to make serious headway till he
+should be able to do some fresh sketches on the spot, and have a few at
+least of the models pose to him over again. But it was a pleasure to
+feel himself so eager-spirited and hopeful. The Academy dare not refuse
+it! The picture must establish his reputation!
+
+He went on till the light failed, then, after reading an hour or two, he
+dressed for his engagement with the Robinsons.
+
+He found the family had in no wise relaxed from the pitch of ceremony to
+which his first acquaintanceship had wrought them up. But he reflected
+that, however indifferent the point might be to him, it was just as well
+they should feel it the right thing to meet him on his own plane--as
+they understood it. Certainly it was not without its amusing side--the
+spectacle of a good honest family stimulated out of their customary
+simplicity merely because a starving artist was to regale himself at
+their table! And fare sumptuously again the artist did with a vengeance!
+
+He ate, too, with the satisfied contemplation of a good day's work
+behind him. He had somehow earned this provender, and the meal had on
+that account an extra subtle relish. Besides, he felt so much more at
+leisure and at ease than on the former occasion. Then, his visit had
+been an uncertain and not over-willing experiment; now, he was
+acclimatised, his impression of everything was cooler. The greater
+self-possession of the family, too, made the evening distinctly less of
+an effort for him. Miss Robinson had largely got the better of her
+distressing shyness, and her personality was more in evidence. In her
+gentle way she was rising to fill her important position as daughter of
+the house.
+
+Wyndham's impression of the Robinsons was thus definite and final; as
+much derived from their surroundings as from themselves. He noticed, for
+example, that the house itself and everything in it was of an extreme
+solidity. Indeed, the substantial walls and solid wood-work were so
+unusual in suburban construction, which was associated in Wyndham's mind
+with jerry-building, that he could not help remarking thereon when he
+and Mr. Robinson were left to their coffee and cigars. The old man was
+greatly pleased at this piece of discernment and observation. He
+explained that he had had the house built for him twenty years before,
+and this solidity represented his dearest philosophy. He hated nothing
+so much as a superficial appearance which affected to be superior to the
+underlying reality. "Soundness and sincerity" had been his motto
+throughout his life, and on that principle his prosperity had been
+founded. Wyndham grew infected with this unmetaphysical philosophy. The
+ground he had trodden these last years seemed hideously unstable to look
+back upon: there was really a wonderful comfort in feeling himself here,
+supported on so sure a flooring, surrounded by these strong walls, and
+seated on this thickly-cut mahogany arm-chair that was framed to last
+three generations. The entire furniture of the house was of the like
+soundness--even the crimson couches of the drawing-room were of a
+massive build, and the grand piano, like this great dining-room table,
+had the fattest of legs, and was resonant of strength and durability.
+
+And in tune with all this solidity was the solid prosperity of Mr.
+Robinson himself: his banking account seemed an embodiment of his
+life-principles, supporting all this substantiality on its imperturbable
+back, like the fabled Buddhistic tortoise nonchalantly supporting the
+world. Wyndham's own existence seemed feeble by contrast, ready to go
+down before the merest puff of wind. He stretched himself luxuriously,
+half incredulous, as if to assure himself it was all no vain imagining;
+permitted Mr. Robinson to recharge his glass with port; and lighted
+another of those fragrant unpurchasable cigars. It was so good to savour
+to the full this sensation of prodigious security! Here one might repose
+one's head: might hear the trump of doom ring out, and pity the rest of
+the universe.
+
+After all, was there not more than a grain of truth in Sadler's gospel?
+In boyhood you could be adventurous; life stretched before you so
+endlessly that you could afford to gamble with it. But, when the years
+were racing by, you longed for a little peace, a little happiness. This
+constant uncertainty of outlook, this perpetual wear of heart and brain,
+how it sapped life at the very foundation!
+
+To be "safe!" To be solidly established! The import and significance of
+the conception sank deep into him. Sadler was an older man, had gone
+through all these phases. "Safety!" No wonder his friend would not
+hesitate to barter romance for all that the magic word doubtless meant
+to him.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+It was this keynote of "safety" that sounded more in his mind, this
+appreciation of the stability and comfort of the house at the corner
+that grew upon him as his visits to the Robinsons continued; for it
+naturally came to be the settled thing that he should dine with the
+Robinsons on most of the evenings that he was not engaged elsewhere or
+otherwise. The argument at first had been the same simple one that he
+might as well join them as dine alone, and there seemed no reason for
+refusing their excellent fare and their admiring society. On the other
+hand, as his ever-insistent pride demanded that they should not suppose
+he was cut off from his own world; and as, too, he felt subtly required
+to live up to the social rôle which he fancied they as yet attributed to
+him, he was thus stimulated to pick up again some of the old threads of
+his existence. He called on remote aunts in Eaton Square; on retired
+military uncles in South Kensington. And as the winter advanced he began
+to find a pleasure in renewing old acquaintanceships, enjoying
+everybody's surprise at his turning up again, smiling and prosperous.
+It almost amounted to a self-vindication, and he chuckled in secret,
+imagining to himself their confusion.
+
+And since he _was_ emerging from his retirement, there seemed no longer
+any reason why he should not mix again in the art world, and Sadler, who
+had come up to his studio on one or two occasions, induced him to show
+himself at some of the clubs. At the same time he began to cultivate
+again some of the smaller coteries of which he had once been so popular
+a light. Other men, too, began to look him up, and, best of all, an
+editor one day sent him an unhoped-for commission--half-a-dozen drawings
+for a magazine story by a widely-read author.
+
+On the whole he was well satisfied to get back into the world. It
+raised, or rather confirmed, him in his own esteem, and saved him--as he
+put it--from attaching too cheap a price to himself. He was thus able to
+meet the Robinsons from a real plane of vantage, and to purge his mind
+of that slight consciousness of charlatanism which had haunted him at
+the outset.
+
+Were he not taking ultimate success for granted, without a renewal of
+the more bitter side of the struggle, he would scarcely have resumed all
+these old relationships. Yet the precariousness of the future, summon
+his coolness and confidence as he might, was a thing to be actively,
+even desperately, reckoned with. The editor's cheque was a god-send,
+relieving him of immediate anxieties, but he dared not relax his
+efforts. His mornings were entirely devoted to the big canvas now, and
+he rose early to avail himself of every minute of light during these
+short wintry days. He worked with a passion and a concentration that he
+had never yet known. Every fibre of his body bent to the strain; every
+drop of his blood seemed to drain its life into this frenzy to achieve.
+Withal, a delightful sense of emancipation from the old tired vision; a
+splendid consciousness of some rich new store that had gathered in him
+during the long period he had lain fallow!
+
+Yet he shuddered and grew sick at the possibility that the Academy might
+still reject him! In that case, what had he to build upon beyond the
+coming fee for Miss Robinson's portrait? As the weeks went by, something
+of a panic began to overtake him; the future seemed to be bearing down
+on him grim and remorseless.
+
+It was then that the well-garnished atmosphere of the house at the
+corner seemed more and more desirable and alluring. The flow and
+abundance, the great glowing fires in this raw winter, the naïve burning
+of incense at his altar--all these things wooed him, wrapped him in a
+certain balm. Ensconced with Mr. Robinson, and sipping his after-dinner
+coffee, he felt the load of his anxieties falling away from him, The
+heavy decanters of cut glass glowed richly at him--the softness of old
+whiskey, the ruby and golden glint of wines, the clear light of cunning
+distillations. The great pineapples, the clusters of grapes, the baskets
+of peaches, all the fragrant store of Nature's bounty set out on a table
+that yet, by no stretch of imagination, could be conceived as
+"groaning"--all seemed to shine fatter and finer than at the houses of
+his society friends. And here, too, his footing was of an unique,
+admirable character. He had his place at the board practically as a
+matter of right. They ranked him as a god; yet felt that the balance of
+debt was heavily against them. Whereas, elsewhere, he was one of a
+crowd, a merely casual figure among others not less important even where
+he had been most intimate. He knew that his own world, despite its
+breeding and traditions, would yet at bottom despise him and his art if
+he could not earn an excellent livelihood by its practice. But the
+Robinsons worshipped him for himself; and money was almost a vulgarity
+sullying the high artistic universe in which he moved and breathed and
+had his being.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Meanwhile the sittings were progressing in a manner to gratify the
+artist beyond his hopes. Miss Robinson seemed to find some mysterious
+inspiration in this decorative scheme, seemed to fuse into it, to lend
+herself to design and draughtmanship. Her face, too, took on subtler
+phases, was touched to a measure of nobility! Her dark eyes shone softly
+under their long lashes; her expression was full of goodness and
+charity. Wyndham prided himself that he had put on the canvas something
+remote from the lines of ordinary portraiture--a simple soul, a gentle
+Lady Bountiful, yet not less dignified in her way than the heroines of
+the grand portraiture.
+
+Mrs. Robinson did not insist on uninterrupted chaperonage of her
+daughter; the ladies evinced little fanaticism on this head. Often they
+brought knitting or needle-work with them, which occupied the mother in
+a peaceful, old-fashioned way that Wyndham even found himself admiring.
+Sometimes Mrs. Robinson would appear only towards the end of the
+sitting, and sometimes she considerately announced that Alice would
+have to come alone for the next occasion as she herself was otherwise
+busy. They both showed a tact and a good taste in the matter which he
+fully recognised, and for which in a way he was grateful.
+
+In the natural resulting intimacy between artist and sitter, Miss
+Robinson expanded, opened out her mind; at first timidly and
+tentatively, ultimately with freedom and confidence. She confessed that
+her experience of life had been nothing at all, since she had always
+lived in quiet shelter. Her unsophisticated simplicity was certainly
+engaging; he could see that she was a sheet entirely unwritten upon,
+that her soul was as naïve and trusting as her outward being. She was
+refreshingly a child of nature--no bewildering complexity here--no
+shadow of affectation. She spoke without reserve of the poverty of her
+childhood, and admitted that she had disagreeable qualms of conscience
+about their present riches. Was it right to enjoy so much when one
+thought of the state of the world generally? They debated the subject
+endlessly; considering it elaborately from every conceivable standpoint:
+and his personal authority went far to allay her disquietude. His
+theories, backed up by high philosophy and poetry, fascinated her with
+their harmony and originality; he had such a charming way of arranging
+the order of things into a beautiful artist's scheme, whilst yet his
+sympathies were deep, true, and universal!
+
+Sometimes he was conscious of his sophistry, and felt ashamed of it
+afterwards. Was he playing a comedy of sentiment? he asked himself.
+Well, why not? Men and women made a careful toilette for an evening
+party: why not a spiritual toilette for their sentimental relations?
+
+The last words of his own thought, startled him. Then it _was_ a
+sentimental relation. "By Jove, I must be careful!" he murmured to
+himself. "She's an awfully good soul, and it isn't fair to either of
+us." But the next moment he shrugged his shoulders. Why trouble his mind
+at all? Every relation between a man and a woman who came into such
+close personal touch was in a way sentimental--for the time being! That
+was only the game of life, and everybody had to play at it: the main
+thing was to bow to the rules. Such temporary relations might well be
+made as pleasant as possible; but, when they were at an end, it was
+incumbent on both parties to realise that.
+
+Yet he could not help being increasingly conscious of his power over
+her; it was so pathetically visible. Their conversations were often
+amusingly like those of kindly tutor and obedient, inquiring child; she
+hanging on his words in entire self-surrender, as he discoursed so
+graciously and brought his points so lightly and simply within the
+range of her comprehension. Sometimes, in following up an explanation,
+he would be carried away by the flow of his own ideas and his personal
+interest in the matter, and then he would almost seem to be addressing
+an equal in knowledge and experience. But whenever that happened;
+whenever, for example, he had let himself go too far into the subtle
+mysteries of technique, he would find himself regretting the unchecked
+surrender to impulse, and remain strangely vexed about it long
+afterwards. It was really soaring right outside her limitations! She was
+not a Lady Betty!
+
+Lady Betty was so often in his mind now: she seemed to have established
+herself more definitely there than ever before, as if to keep him up to
+the proper pitch in his judgments of women. He bowed his head low to
+Lady Betty, recognised her as his full intellectual equal--in some
+aspects his superior. She was brains and beauty. She was stateliness
+itself. She was sunshine and sweetness. What was Miss Robinson by the
+side of her? And as he asked himself the question, an impression of Miss
+Robinson, as he had recently come upon her suddenly in the streets,
+blotted out the more dignified version on his own canvas. How plain and
+homely she had seemed in her unobtrusive walking-costume; how
+insignificant her whole meek bearing! Yes, that was the true Miss
+Robinson; caught photographically in the act of being herself, and
+fixed by his vision for always--extinguishing the gorgeously-dressed
+person of these incessant festal evenings no less than his own artistic
+edition of her.
+
+In no respect could she claim to come up to his measure. He appreciated
+all her virtues, recognised her exceptional womanhood: by the side of
+Lady Betty she was insipid, _bourgeoise_, monotonously amiable.
+
+Yet he could never arrive at so harsh a verdict without relenting at a
+rebound. "It is curious," was his thought, "that in proportion as I get
+more friendly with her and really like her, I yet get harder and harder
+on her, poor child! She's a jolly good sort! What a decent world it
+would be if only there were ever so many more women like her!"
+
+And, by way of atonement, his manner at their next meeting would warm
+and soften sensibly; and it came upon him always with a degree of
+surprise that, however he might feel about Miss Robinson theoretically,
+her actual society was always pleasant and comrade-like.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+By mid-December the portrait needed only the finishing touches, and, at
+his invitation, several of his artist-friends came to see it.
+Commendation of the work was general, combined with a certain admiration
+of the unknown sitter. Wyndham could not help feeling that there was
+much speculation as to her identity, and he gave himself all the more
+credit as an artist for the qualities with which he had endowed her, and
+which alone bestowed upon her this interesting individuality.
+
+Wyndham, who made it a point never to have his work interrupted, had so
+arranged these visits that none of his friends had stumbled upon the
+Robinsons. To the not infrequent query of "Who is she?" he usually
+responded, with a half-humorous gleam in his eye, "She might be Brown or
+Jones: as a matter of fact she is Robinson--the daughter of a
+respectable citizen of that ilk." Yet what more, in sober truth, could
+he tell them about her? He might have put it differently, but it was
+the information he supposed they wanted. Yet one day he was to learn
+that this conciseness had been construed as reserve. Sadler lounged in
+one Sunday afternoon, when, as it happened, Wyndham was awaiting his
+sister, whose long-deferred visit had at last been arranged for that
+day. And, in the course of conversation, the visitor soon let slip out a
+word that struck Wyndham like a blow. Sadler had begun by referring to
+Miss Robinson as "your friend;" but, presently, as he still reviewed the
+painting, out came "your _fiancée_."
+
+"My _fiancée_! What the devil----?"
+
+Sadler apologised; a shrewd meaning smile clung about his massive jaws.
+"Of course everybody understands that it's a secret, but when you've
+heard of a thing, it's difficult to keep it from slipping out, don't y'
+know."
+
+"This is all too absurd!" Wyndham was suddenly impelled to laugh.
+
+"What's absurd about it? It seems likely enough to me; else I shouldn't
+have believed it."
+
+"An artist cannot accept a commission without being engaged to his
+sitter?" urged Wyndham indignantly.
+
+"Things have a way of getting about, you know," maintained Sadler.
+
+"They have indeed," said Wyndham.
+
+"Well, what are you so annoyed at?" shouted Sadler. "You make me tired.
+There's nothing discreditable in being engaged by rumour to a wealthy
+and beautiful woman."
+
+Wyndham laughed again. Beautiful! he thought. If only Sadler had met the
+everyday Miss Robinson shopping with her mother in the Finchley Road!
+
+"Seriously, do you consider her beautiful?" he asked in a more genial
+tone, suddenly curious to hear Sadler's real impression.
+
+"What is beauty?" demanded Sadler. "The moment you can define it, it
+ceases to be beauty. Its essence is elusiveness. A touch, a flash--and
+you've got it! The lines here are not classical, but your Miss Robinson
+has distinct individuality. The eyes are fine. She looks the sort that
+would stick to a man. Gee-rusalem! I shouldn't mind having a shot at her
+myself. Look here, old fellow, will you introduce me to her? If there's
+nothing in it for you, give me a chance."
+
+"Goodbye," said Wyndham sweetly. "You won't think me rude, but I've an
+engagement in a minute or two."
+
+"Right!" said Sadler. "I'll be off. Goodbye, Wyndham, old chap. You're a
+real damned old swell. Gee-rusalem! you're just great at getting rid of
+people."
+
+Left alone, Wyndham gave way to annoyance again. It was a fine thing!
+Artists themselves ought to know better than to indulge in
+tittle-tattle of that kind. He worked himself up into a towering rage.
+Then Mary rang the bell, and he had abruptly to recall his graciousness.
+
+It was her first visit to the studio since the new turn of affairs; her
+multifarious duties as worker among the sick and poor after her day's
+teaching leaving her so little freedom. They had of course seen each
+other in the interim; for Wyndham had himself looked in at the
+"Buildings" in Kensington whenever his engagements had taken him that
+way, and he had been fortunate enough just to catch her at home for a
+few moments on several occasions. The poor girl had been overflowing
+with happiness--had not a window on the skies been opened, too, for her?
+And though both had so far delicately avoided all reference to that old
+painful interview, she had yet often been impelled to throw herself at
+his feet in contrition. Only she felt that he, in his great magnanimity,
+would be hurt by such an abasement.
+
+When he brought the picture well into the light, her first exclamation
+was, "Oh, how beautiful!" Then she kissed him impulsively.
+
+The tribute gave him more pleasure than all the professional praise that
+had been showered on the portrait.
+
+"What a charming girl! I should like to know her," were her next words.
+"She has such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit as beautiful as
+you've painted her."
+
+Wyndham's vexation at his rumoured engagement seemed to take wing and be
+off into the airs. He even felt a shy pride in Miss Robinson. "I'm sure
+you'll like her," he said. "Shall I arrange a tea here one of these days
+before Christmas?"
+
+"That would be lovely." Mary's voice was full of enthusiasm. "School
+breaks up in a day or two, and I shall have so much more time to
+myself," she added, still gazing at the picture.
+
+"Any criticism?"
+
+"None," she returned. "You have caught the character with rare genius.
+She is so simple and unaffected; one could repose absolute trust in
+her.... You see," she continued, smiling, "I feel so strong an interest
+in her as being the beginning of your good fortune. I have a sort of
+conviction--don't laugh at me, please--that it has come to stay."
+
+When he poured out her tea, she suddenly laughed, remembering she had a
+message for him which she had forgotten to deliver in the absorption of
+contemplating Miss Robinson; in fact, there was a heap of things she had
+wanted to talk over. The most important, at any rate, was the question
+of his Christmas holiday. Aunt Eleanor wanted Mary to spend the two or
+three weeks with her, but she was anxious that Wyndham, too, should
+join their little party over the New Year--since she now understood that
+he had emerged to some extent from his austere seclusion. A refusal Aunt
+Eleanor would take to heart--she naturally regarded her own home as his,
+as the place to which his mind should spontaneously turn at such a
+season.
+
+Wyndham welcomed the invitation. It was more than two years since he had
+passed any time in Hertfordshire, and the visit itself, which last
+Christmas he had sullenly avoided, would afford him the greatest
+satisfaction. Much as he appreciated the Robinson housekeeping, it was a
+relief to feel definitely that he was not staying the year-end at his
+studio, with no resource save their cordial hospitality.
+
+Mary went off in great elation. "I don't know when I have felt so happy
+as to-day," she declared, as she kissed him. "I leave my best love for
+the work--and for the lady as well," she added, smiling.
+
+It was arranged on the door-step that they should travel down to
+Hertfordshire together, and Mary insisted he must leave her to look up
+the trains, and make all the arrangements.
+
+"It is just the sort of task I enjoy," she assured him. "Looking up
+trains to get into the country always sends me into a sort of happy
+excitement; it is part of the joy of anticipation."
+
+Wyndham was left, somehow, a greater admirer of Miss Robinson. He
+studied her again in his own picture, and accepted her as a far finer
+creature than he had realised--even allowing for this idealisation of
+her in paint. "My feeling against her must be purely morbid, and it's
+really too bad when she likes my society so much!--she has no idea how
+much she shows it." Her unsophistication, hitherto a deficiency, began
+to take on a certain charm. How refreshing this womanly simplicity in a
+world of showy coquettes and chattering, feather-headed females! Even
+Mary, who was so shrewd and fastidious, had been compelled to pay her
+homage. The Robinson family was charming! What fine old-world courtesy
+in the father--many a born aristocrat might well take a lesson from him!
+How unassuming, too, the mother, full of quiet virtues and womanly
+excellencies!
+
+And Mary's significant smile remained with him. Good gracious! was she,
+too, taking the sort of thing for granted? This power of suggestion from
+every side was annoying: still--it would not be right to let that
+prejudice him!
+
+Wyndham paced to and fro feverishly. Why should he not----?
+
+It was the first time he was impelled to put the question to himself in
+clear seeking. Obscure in his mind these last weeks, it crystallised
+itself brusquely--surprised him with its swift definiteness: but he
+broke it off, all unprepared to meet it yet. He had a shamefaced
+remembrance of his matrimonial conversation with Sadler, of the lofty
+convictions he had then expressed.
+
+Well, he had spoken honestly, he argued, and his convictions had changed
+not a jot. "Only now that I am face to face with the actual possibility,
+I see aspects of the case that then escaped me. Till now I have always
+viewed marriage as the great central fact to which the whole of life has
+to converge, from which everything else takes its significance. Hence it
+was a case of the ideal or nothing--there seemed no other choice. But
+now I recognise that matrimony that is not ideal may yet take its place
+as an accessory to life, may be accepted as a good without filling the
+whole horizon."
+
+He resumed his feverish pacing. Well, why should he not seize an
+opportunity which presented itself so favourably? By the loss of his
+money he had become reduced in his own world to the rank of a mere
+"detrimental." Had he not already felt that sufficiently? He laughed
+harshly at the memory. No, no, a Lady Betty he could not hope to marry.
+Such wondrous beings did not grow on every bush; nor did life permit of
+his setting out in search of one. This holding out for the perfect ideal
+only meant humiliation and sadness in the end. The world--the hard world
+of fact--was like that, and you had to take it as you found it. No
+folly could be greater than to forget that life was as it was, and not
+as you thought it ought to be!
+
+Yet he vacillated again. Did he really want to marry at all? Had he not
+decided--wholly, absolutely, irrevocably--that his business in life was
+work? Though he would never have spoken of it to another, he was proud
+in his heart of his sentimental loyalty to Lady Betty, and marriage
+seemed almost an unfaithfulness. Better perhaps to bend himself sternly
+to the task before him!
+
+Yes, but this task before him--unaided, he could never accomplish it.
+Let him confess it now, since he was master again of his full sanity. He
+had been beaten, smashed! But for this timely piece of good fortune all
+would have been at an end by now. The Robinson support once withdrawn,
+he would not be strong enough to stand. He had gauged his powers in the
+great contest, and, in this moment of supreme lucidity, he foresaw he
+must be conquered again. One portrait could not suffice for the
+rebuilding of his future; even on the money side his fee would be
+absorbed immediately. And the finishing of the great picture meant more
+outlay. To try to "fake" it without proper models would be a folly of
+follies--far better to abandon it altogether. His blind optimism at the
+turn of things had certainly been of benefit to him, had stimulated him
+to his best; but with this first piece of work practically
+accomplished, the moment for estimating and facing the situation with
+mathematical exactitude had certainly arrived.
+
+He could not fight the world alone. However he might desire nothing in
+life save self-consecration to work, he could not even achieve that much
+without reinforcing his own strength by means that were unexceptionable
+and honourable.
+
+He came to an abrupt stop as the words swept from his brain. "By Jove,
+that hits the nail pretty square!" he murmured, his lips ashen. Naked
+and ugly, his primary motive stood before him as in a mirror. For one
+clear moment he saw himself brutally, and shuddered. "I am not in love
+with her. If she were dowerless, I should never have worked myself up to
+this stage of appreciation; I should never have dressed up the Robinson
+menage to make it palatable. The portrait would never have come out like
+this. I should have dashed in a brutal modern study of a plain woman,
+full of bravura passages. If I am going in for a thing of this kind, let
+me at least be honest with myself."
+
+And then he laughed with the irony of it all. He, the lover of poesie;
+he, the fastidious gourmet in things of the spirit; who had followed the
+cult of all that was lyrical and exquisite; he planned to mate beneath
+him for the sake of crude money. Faugh! A vulture hovering over a heap
+of carrion!
+
+But the violence of the metaphor brought a reaction. "Rubbish!" he
+murmured, and paced again. The pacing grew into a striding. Up and down
+the length of the studio he stamped, face and eyes working intensely. "I
+am exaggerating. I am morbid about it all; I am rushing to the other
+extreme. When have I ever hidden from myself that the thing would be
+primarily a means to my great impersonal end--I may as well admit it has
+been in my mind all along! What could be a greater degradation than my
+old way of living? Poor Mary! Why, I owe it to her as a duty to put an
+end to all this misery. I'd face anything on earth now to make up to her
+for the past! Besides, the idea is not at all so inhuman as I am trying
+to make out. In a mildish sort of way, of course, I am really fond of
+Miss Robinson. Her virtues _are_ a reality! She is plain, I admit--very
+plain; but my eye has learnt to see her its own way--the way of the
+portrait!"
+
+Brusquely he flung his hesitations from him. Why should he not marry
+Miss Robinson? Even in the driest aspect of the case, the match was not
+inequitable. The "crude money"--yes, let him use the words
+deliberately--the "crude money" on her side; on his a full equivalent in
+his personal self, his no doubt brilliant career once sordid matters
+were disposed of, and a sphere of existence that was obviously
+interesting to her. If he brought no immediate fortune himself, his
+future earnings, once he were free to work without anxiety, might well
+be considerable. What was there in the idea to wound his pride? How
+absurd his metaphor of the vulture!
+
+And then he turned to dwell again with relief at the pleasanter aspects
+of the case. Even if he were not attaining to passionate poetic dreams,
+he would yet be carrying into effect a charming domestic ideal of peace
+and tranquillity. And the very poetry of marriage began to invest Miss
+Robinson with something of its own glamour. He saw her in a bridal veil
+holding a big bouquet. His enthusiasm mounted.
+
+And Mary's voice seemed to echo again in the studio: "What a charming
+girl! She has such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit as
+beautiful as you've painted her." He almost felt himself blushing in
+embarrassment; it was as if he himself were being commended. "She is so
+simple and unaffected," went on Mary's voice with its unmistakable ring
+of conviction. "One could repose absolute trust in her."
+
+How shrewd and true was his sister's reading of the character! Moreover,
+Mary had confessed to an almost superstitious thrill at gazing on the
+features of the woman who had been the beginning of his good fortune.
+Could he say that he was entirely free from the same sort of
+superstitious sentiment? Alice Robinson had begun his good fortune; why
+should she not complete it? If only that confounded set of fools hadn't
+started their silly tittle-tattle!
+
+Undoubtedly there was a substratum of truth and good sense in the views
+so stoutly and passionately maintained by Sadler; only Sadler imagined
+it was possible to compromise, to step down from the ideal and yet find
+great happiness. He himself would give up the dream of happiness in the
+ideal sense: his would be frankly a case of convenience, though were it
+not for the many virtues of Miss Robinson, his mind would never have
+become reconciled to it. No! not even were she as rich as Croesus. He
+must do that amount of justice to himself. At his age he could
+appreciate the importance of the rarer qualities of character in his
+life's mate--loyalty, modesty, devotion! He would be making a wise
+marriage! not a sordid one. He would be choosing the deep calm of life
+instead of the elusive and often mocking flash of superficial passion
+and beauty.
+
+And, on his part, he was prepared to be the best and most dutiful of
+husbands!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+When, that same evening, Wyndham was ushered into the Robinsons'
+drawing-room, he was mildly surprised to find a sedate gentleman there
+in familiar conversation with the family. The stranger vibrated with
+neuter lights; yet dry, clean lights. Tall spare figure, hair and
+close-trimmed beard, tailed morning coat and sharp-creased trousers,
+brow and visage, air and movement--all a chiaroscuro in grey;
+accentuated curiously, too, against the host's correct black and white,
+and the laces and chiffons and shimmering brilliance of the ladies.
+
+"My friend, Mr. Shanner," said Mr. Robinson, introducing them; and
+Wyndham remembered at once that the Robinsons had mentioned Mr. Shanner
+occasionally as an intimate of the house who was away in the New World
+for the interests of the concern in which he was junior partner.
+
+But Mr. Shanner, though he shook hands cordially, yet gave him a swift
+look up and down that had something of antagonism in it. And in Wyndham,
+too, arose some obscure enmity, likewise masked by the conventional
+friendliness of greeting.
+
+"As I was just telling Mr. Robinson," said Mr. Shanner, with an
+obviously forced smile that yet illumined the man, broke through and
+flashed away the greyness for an instant, "I hadn't the least idea that
+I was going to stumble on an evening party. I feel quite out of it." His
+voice was full of affable vibrations, and he smiled again, with a
+general nod that indicated all this ceremonial get-up around him.
+
+"I am sure we shall do our best to amuse you," returned Wyndham,
+naturally associating himself with the family, but feeling hopelessly
+out of sympathy with the new-comer.
+
+Miss Robinson had reddened as the two men approached each other, but on
+her father's again mentioning that Mr. Shanner was just back from his
+tour in the New World, she came into the conversation bravely, and rose
+above her shade of embarrassment.
+
+"Have _you_ ever crossed to America, Mr. Wyndham?" she asked, smiling at
+him.
+
+"No," he confessed; "though America has largely crossed to me."
+
+Mr. Shanner looked puzzled.
+
+"How do you mean--America has crossed to you, Mr. Wyndham?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I hope I did not seem to suggest that I have been a centre of
+pilgrimage," laughed Wyndham. "Only, in past years, when I was running
+a good deal about the Continent, I often used to live with New York,
+Chicago, and Boston, for considerable periods."
+
+"Mr. Wyndham has often given us charming sketches of the Americans,"
+chimed in Miss Robinson.
+
+"Oh, I don't pretend to be much of a hand at that sort of thing," said
+Mr. Shanner, with pleasant humility. "I can only just give my
+impressions as a plain observer. But then I'm a man of affairs, and
+nothing at all of an artist or a literary man." Wyndham observed how
+careful and honeyed his delivery was; it seemed to advertise a perpetual
+self-consciousness of being a gentleman.
+
+"Mr. Shanner is unduly modest," put in Mr. Robinson. "His descriptions
+are most entertaining."
+
+"Well, of course, I can speak of things within my experience, and make
+myself fairly clear--in my own way, of course. But, from all that you
+people have been telling me, I shouldn't attempt to emulate Mr.
+Wyndham."
+
+Mr. Shanner gave a strange little laugh, full of insincere echoes; which
+failed in its implication of good-fellowship, and only emphasised the
+ill-nature it was meant to cover. Wyndham was not a little bewildered;
+conscious of some suppressed excitement in the man, some ruffling of the
+ashen chiaroscuro. This impression was deepened when dinner was
+announced, and Mr. Shanner made what was perilously like a dart to the
+side of Miss Robinson and offered his arm. Wyndham stepped out of their
+way, bowing as they passed him.
+
+At table Mr. Shanner gave no undue signs of modesty or self-distrust,
+but talked about "things within his experience" with the utmost
+unconstraint. An unmistakable note of assurance animated the honeyed
+voice, which soared away occasionally, yet sedulously recollected
+itself; drew back within bounds, reverted to the lesser pitch and the
+deliberate pace. Mr. Shanner was at pains to let it be seen that he was
+a man of affairs on the grand scale, one to be ranked with diplomatists
+and ambassadors. In the course of business he had come into contact with
+exalted personages of almost every kingdom, and had corresponded
+voluminously with some of them. He carried an assortment of their
+letters in his pocketbook, which lay on the table as a perpetual source
+of illustration. He spoke of some of these great ones of the earth with
+extreme familiarity--he had been closeted with them on confidential
+business, and he flattered himself he had counted for something in
+certain important decisions of policy. And, as he warmed to the
+conversation, far from being "out of it," he was king of the table, his
+honeyed words emerged endlessly. There was a distinct flash of challenge
+in his occasional glances at Wyndham--he was not to be overborne by the
+presence of any aristocrat on earth. And not content with all this
+insistent implication of his personal importance, he even related by way
+of pleasant interlude how, with ear to one private telephone and mouth
+to another, he had smartly seized a sudden opportunity, and, buying an
+incoming cargo through the first telephone and selling it through the
+second, had netted twenty thousand pounds for his firm. Whereas Wyndham
+amused himself trying to measure the depths of Mr. Shanner's contempt
+should he suspect that the sole resources of his vis-à-vis were the
+guineas to be paid him from Mr. Robinson's treasury.
+
+It was evident, too, that Mr. Shanner was more familiarly at home in the
+house than Wyndham. He called its master "Robinson"; most significant of
+all, Miss Robinson was Alice to him. Indeed, his manner, as he sat next
+to her, was almost proprietorial; at any rate it had easy, affectionate
+suggestions about it. She, however, had fallen back into a shy
+constraint; though she emerged at moments, lifting her deep-glancing
+eyes to Wyndham and flashing him the friendliest of messages. Wyndham
+understood by now; knew also that it was clear to Mr. Shanner that they
+were rivals--that a mutual detestation lurked beneath their pleasant
+amenities. He had gathered also that Mr. Shanner meant to show that he
+did not concern himself one jot about the new star that had appeared in
+the firmament during his absence. But Wyndham came off easily the
+victor, displaying for Mr. Shanner a charming deference, and pursuing
+the unruffled tenour of his entertaining conversation without
+manifesting in the slightest degree any of the emotions that the evening
+had raised in his breast. Such perfect unconsciousness of matters
+intensely present, Mr. Shanner could not hope to emulate. It was clear
+he was uneasily alive to the contrast--that he had the growing
+consciousness of defeat. His note of self-emphasis rang louder, though
+smothered continuously.
+
+The war continued after dinner; Mr. Shanner eagerly turning the pages of
+Miss Robinson's music, and so entirely appropriating her that Wyndham
+could scarcely contrive to approach her during the rest of the evening.
+However, Wyndham smilingly kept his place in the background, disdaining
+to assert himself or to enter openly into emulation; though there were
+opportunities he, the socially experienced, might have seized adroitly.
+After all, why annoy this admirable, upright gentleman? Even as it was,
+poor Mr. Shanner was fated to receive one or two sharp slashes; as when,
+in the course of describing the sittings, Mrs. Robinson let it be
+clearly seen that she was not always present to chaperone her daughter
+in the studio. At that moment Mr. Shanner's face was an extraordinary
+face to look upon; although he affected to laugh and smile, and packed
+even more honey into his voice. All of which forced sweetness
+notwithstanding, it began to be evident that the topic of the picture,
+and of Wyndham's work in general, bored him considerably. At last, when
+Mrs. Robinson innocently suggested that Wyndham should ask him to come
+to see the portrait at the studio, he deprecated the idea with some
+degree of vehemence. He really was very busy in the daytime now.
+Besides, he added pleasantly, on principle he never cared to see an
+article whilst yet on order; time enough to examine it when it was
+tendered for delivery. He smiled meaningly at Wyndham as if to
+accentuate that these commercial metaphors were merely by way of
+pleasantry.
+
+"And then it's so extremely difficult for an outsider to get any idea of
+an unfinished picture, and of course I don't profess to be a judge of
+art in any case, though I know what I like."
+
+So, if Mr. Wyndham would excuse him, he added, he would rather wait till
+the portrait had come home, and had been hung in the house.
+
+It was not without difficulty that Wyndham found his opportunity of
+arranging the little tea-party at which the ladies were to meet his
+sister. Miss Robinson was to give him the final sitting on the Tuesday;
+so it was therefore agreed that the tea should take place on that day
+after work was over. The sitter herself crimsoned deeply at learning
+that Mary "had admired her immensely," and her eyes glistened in a way
+that showed her pleasure and rapturous appreciation.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+The definite figure of Mr. Shanner with his magnificent appropriation of
+Miss Robinson merely impelled Wyndham to smash up this rival at once and
+have done with the business. The evening had obscured all the repugnance
+that lay in the depths of him; had stimulated roseate conceivings of
+possible felicity.
+
+On the Tuesday he found his opportunity. Miss Robinson came alone,
+explaining that her mother would not appear till the time fixed for the
+tea-party. The weather was rigorously wintry now, and a biting wind blew
+in as the door was opened. A new layer of snow had fallen during the
+last hour, and Miss Robinson had come across wrapped in a big, heavy
+cloak. He ushered her through the ante-room with a charming air of
+solicitude, to which she vibrated like a struck harp, and gave him the
+softest and tenderest intonations of her voice. He helped her off with
+the cloak, and hung it away carefully, the whilst she stooped and warmed
+her long hands at the lavishly heaped-up fire. Her throat and arms now
+showed at their best, and her face had some strange, almost mystic
+undertone of happiness. As she bent down there before his eyes, she
+completely blotted out the impression of the insignificant plain woman
+whom he had suddenly come upon in the streets; of the everyday Miss
+Robinson that at one time had almost become an obsession. At that moment
+she was well-nigh the idealised figure he had painted. Yet there was
+something even subtler in her which he had missed, and knew that he had
+missed. But, studying his own work again, he saw that that was just as
+well; for the picture existed as a separate creation, a piece of
+painting first and foremost, in which he had exhibited the cleverness of
+his brush. It was paint--distinguished, intellectual paint--more than it
+was human portraiture; in spite of all the significance with which he
+had tried to invest it. As this new truth dawned upon him, he kept
+glancing from sitter to canvas, and from canvas to sitter, with a
+strange, surprised interest. But her hands suddenly arrested his
+attention, and he became aware that, for the first time since he had
+known her, they were absolutely bare of rings.
+
+"You have no rings to-day," he remarked, his voice showing his surprise.
+"I might have wanted to touch up the hands."
+
+Her colour deepened unaccountably. "I thought the hands were finished,"
+she breathed, all of a flutter. "Shall I go back for them?"
+
+"What a goose it is!" he said lightly, and she smiled again, as if
+pleased they were on so charmingly intimate a footing.
+
+"Shall we not need them?" she asked.
+
+"I think not," he answered, studying the hands a little. "You were
+perfectly right; they had best remain as they are."
+
+She took the pose, and for a minute or two he worked silently; she
+maintaining the perfect stillness that had at first been her cherished
+ambition. He was still pondering about her bare hands and her confusion
+at his having observed them, and light came to him. Was it to show him
+that no man--not even Mr. Shanner--had any claim on her? After the close
+attentions he had witnessed the other evening, was she afraid he might
+infer that some understanding existed between herself and Mr.
+Shanner?--that one of these rings, even if not a formal pledge, might be
+his and worn for his sake? Her neglect of such favourite trinkets to-day
+was then to indicate that no one of them had any special sentimental
+interest for her!
+
+"You are sitting perfectly to-day," he presently remarked. "It doesn't
+tire you?"
+
+"What an unkind suggestion! I thought I had got beyond the amateur stage
+long ago."
+
+"I'm sorry. You didn't hear, though, the beginning of my remark."
+
+"I agreed with that," she answered with a sly humour.
+
+"So that it hadn't to be reckoned. Do you know all women are like that?"
+
+She considered. His brush made strokes. "Like what?" she asked at last.
+
+"If you pay them the greatest of tributes, but are incautious enough to
+hint the tiniest of qualifications, the tribute dwindles to nothing, and
+they remain tremendously annoyed at the suggestion of imperfection."
+
+"Am I like that?"
+
+"You were just now."
+
+"I was such a bother and a hindrance to you when we started," she
+explained. "I used to get tired every few minutes. And now at last, just
+when I am flattering myself on my improvement----"
+
+"You take me too seriously," he broke in.
+
+"You _were_ serious," she insisted.
+
+"Serious--yes; in so far as I was afraid you were tired. I didn't even
+mean it as a qualification of my tribute; it was only genuine concern
+for you."
+
+"How stupid of me!" she exclaimed. "I ought to have felt that at once."
+
+There was another spell of silence; he intensely absorbed in his brush,
+she obviously considering.
+
+"I am not really like that," she said at last.
+
+He stood away from the canvas, glanced critically at certain points,
+levelled his mahl-stick at her, took up a rag, and wiped a bit out.
+"Like what?" he asked.
+
+"Like women."
+
+"But you are. You see, it is sticking in your mind." He smiled wickedly.
+
+"You fight too hard," she pleaded.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said remorsefully. "I shall not do it again."
+
+"Oh, I'm not a bit hurt," she protested. "I was only thinking the point
+over."
+
+"I want to hear what you were thinking." His smile and tone were
+meaningly affectionate, as if they would add "little child."
+
+"I meant that I should never really be hurt by qualifications. I have
+never been used to having nice things said to me. I certainly do not
+deserve tributes, but I know I deserve all possible qualifications."
+
+"Oh, if you please! I'll not allow even Miss Robinson to say such
+slanderous things about so valued a friend of mine."
+
+"So I have been slandering a friend of yours! I'm so sorry. Forgive me."
+
+"I suppose I must--though I find it hard--very hard."
+
+"I do believe you are paying me a tribute," she laughed. "Now for the
+qualifications. You shall see how stoical I am."
+
+"Qualifications--none!" He threw down his brushes and palette, as if to
+emphasise the declaration. "I'm tired first," he sang out gaily. "Let
+us rest."
+
+"There!" she exclaimed. "What a triumph for me!"
+
+"But you say it so gently that it is a pleasure to concede you the
+victory. You are an ideal foe."
+
+"Oh, if you please, I don't want to be a foe.... How cold it is!" She
+stooped and held her hands again to the fire.
+
+"No, child," he said gently, "of course we aren't foes. We are very good
+friends indeed, aren't we?" He held out his hand, as if to clench the
+understanding, so clearly and warmly acknowledged.
+
+She was all a-flutter again, though, as was her habit, she covered it up
+with a smile. "Very good friends!" she returned, with conviction, and
+she put her hand in his, and let it linger there. "I have always lived
+reserved and to myself," she added thoughtfully. "You may think it
+strange, but I have never had a friend before--not even a woman friend."
+
+"I can well understand your shrinking away from people. No doubt most
+people would jar on you."
+
+"It would hurt me if I thought that. I should not like to despise
+anybody. I should have loved to have friends: only I have never had the
+gift of making them. Sometimes I am thankful that I am not brilliant--I
+might so easily have become unendurable and full of self-conceit."
+
+"Ah, you are something better than brilliant," he exclaimed. "It needs
+an exceptional spirit to appreciate you. You are so much out of the
+ordinary in every way, in looks----"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted in protest. "I have no looks. I have no
+illusions about that."
+
+"Look at your own portrait," he insisted. "I say it is the kind of
+beauty it needs a gift to appreciate. In beauty--as in everything
+else--the crowd runs after the obvious and the commonplace."
+
+"You are the first that ever thought I possessed good looks. You have
+given them to me."
+
+"I have not even done you justice. I have omitted more than I have
+suggested. My sister thinks you are beautiful; all my artist friends who
+have seen the picture share her opinion."
+
+She was silent, almost distressed; she could not meet his gaze, but
+turned her eyes away.
+
+"It gave me pleasure to hear you appreciated," he continued. "You are
+above conventional compliments. I withdraw what I said before. You are
+_not_ like other women."
+
+Her breath came and went as she listened, but she smiled bravely.
+
+"At any rate I am not like _some_ women. I never could take any of the
+deeper aspects of life in a merely frivolous spirit. With me it is a
+loyal, deep friendship, or nothing."
+
+He took her hand again. "Believe me, dear child, the friendship on my
+part is equally loyal and deep. It is for life."
+
+"For life," she murmured, suddenly grown pale.
+
+He dashed in, determined to strike home.
+
+"I prize you at your full worth, since I am one of those who can measure
+it. I have the deepest affection for you. I believe I could make you
+happy. Don't you understand? I offer you my whole life--that is, if you
+think me worthy."
+
+"Worthy!" she echoed, in dazed distress. "How can you think me worthy of
+you! I have lived in narrow retirement. I am nothing."
+
+He seized both her hands now. "No more of this. I ask for your promise."
+
+"I love you with all my heart and soul. But I am not good enough for
+you."
+
+"I thought we agreed you were not like other women, and yet there is
+this stiff-necked obstinacy." He drew her nearer to him, and kissed her
+on the lips. "It is settled--you are to be my wife."
+
+His domination seemed to hypnotise her. "Yes, I will do my best to make
+you a perfect wife, dear," she murmured, as if bowing to his
+irresistible will.
+
+He held her hands tighter, and looked into her face as if proudly. She
+met his look with glistening eyes: she was deathly pale now, and her
+lips, too, were colourless. Then abruptly she drew her hands from him,
+and, as if impelled on some tide of womanhood that rose in high music
+above all hesitations, above the fluttering timidity of her whole life,
+she threw her arms round his neck, and kissed his lips with a long
+abandonment.
+
+"I am now almost afraid of your sister," she whispered presently. "I
+shall feel on my trial."
+
+"But she has fallen in love with you already," he reassured her again.
+"And Mary is the sweetest and gentlest soul in the world."
+
+"I know I shall love her," she said. Her head hung down a moment in
+meditation. "But let us continue the work now, dear. I know you wish to
+have it finished to-day."
+
+But he had little now to add to it, and he had made his last stroke
+before the dusk of the afternoon overtook him.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Wyndham's career as an engaged man began amid a radiance of enthusiasm.
+When his prospective mother-in-law arrived for the tea-party, she was
+enchanted at the news, declaring, after the first joyous surprise, that
+it was the wish that lay nearest to the hearts of herself and her
+husband. And, presently, when Mary appeared, and was introduced not only
+to "the original of the portrait she had so admired," but also to "a
+very sweet Alice" who was to be her sister, "I guessed it," she broke
+out, kissing Miss Robinson impulsively. "I am so delighted."
+
+Heigh, presto! In a trice the three women were chatting away like a
+group of old neighbours! Wyndham became discreetly busy with tea-things.
+
+Of course the Robinsons insisted on Mary's dining with them, and so
+there was a happy little reunion in the evening. Mr. Robinson thrilled
+visibly with the honour of having Mary at his board, and he
+congratulated Wyndham with pathetic cordiality, his voice husky with
+emotion, his eyes streaming with tears.
+
+Such was the auspicious beginning. But the universe seemed to vibrate to
+white heat as a wider population entered into the jubilation. Mary was
+the first to spread the news, her letters reaching the Hertfordshire
+circle express. In the twinkling of an eye, as it appeared to Wyndham, a
+flood of letters poured through the slit in his door. He had done that
+which makes every man a hero for the moment, and dim figures with whom
+he had been out of touch for endless years started up again on the
+horizon, palpitatingly actual, athrob with goodwill. In the Bohemian
+world, too, confirmation of the former rumour was not slow to be noised
+abroad, and Sadler hastened to Hampstead and burst in upon him, the
+massive head enthusiastically aglow; declaring that he had never for a
+moment taken Wyndham's denial seriously, and roaring out his
+congratulations and envy with an exuberance of virile expletive.
+
+At Aunt Eleanor's the Christmas festivities were struck in a gayer key
+in his honour. Odes of welcome and triumph were in the air. And he was
+glad enough to be among his own world again; living in the way that
+meant civilisation to him, and breathing homage and consideration--
+lionised by his equals! It was as though the fatted calf had been killed
+for him, after his prodigal riot of penury. He expanded in this
+atmosphere of adulation, amid all these manifestations in honour of the
+brilliant artist and the Prince Charming who loved and was loved
+idyllically. His engagement seemed to him now most admirable--the
+world's sanction had invested it with warm and pleasant lights.
+Certainly nobody deprecated or criticised the projected alliance; though
+it was known to be with middle-class people who were not in Society, but
+merely quiet folk of wealth and respectability. Mary's enthusiasm had
+gone a long way in anticipating any possible caste objections, and the
+word of approval went round from one to another in the usual parrot-like
+way in which public opinion has formed itself since creation. There
+seemed in fact to be a very conspiracy of approbation. Wyndham had done
+wisely; and voices dropped impressively to dwell on the Robinson
+millions--with the obvious implication that that is what wealthy
+middle-class people are for--to have the most promising of their kind
+promoted into the upper classes.
+
+But the Robinson fortune, though not inconsiderable, was not the
+romantic one of rumour. Mr. Robinson had already performed his duty of
+writing to Wyndham on the financial aspect of the alliance, and in so
+charming a way that Wyndham had at once paid him the tribute of "jolly
+decent." Since they had not had the opportunity of disposing of the
+subject _viva voce_, had said the old man, he conceived it perhaps to be
+an obligation on his part to do so without delaying further; after
+which these matters would of course pass entirely into the realm of
+Wyndham's private affairs, where he was well content to leave them.
+Alice's fortune, such as it was, had been placed under her own control
+absolutely when she had attained the age of twenty-five, and probably
+now, with certain accumulations, amounted to some thirty thousand
+pounds. She was a wise and prudent child, well capable of controlling
+those money matters that were naturally distasteful to so gifted an
+artist, and in that way he would no doubt find her a most useful
+companion. However, he now left it to him and Alice to plan out their
+future together, and wished them all good luck. At the same time, if
+Wyndham had no objection, he would like to give them as a
+wedding-present any house they might fancy, and his wife desired to
+furnish it or give them a cheque for that purpose.
+
+Wyndham was in reality deeply moved by so much considerate kindness and
+rare delicacy. He wrote Mr. Robinson a charming note of acknowledgment;
+though he touched just briefly on the main theme, diverging into a
+chatty account of his visit, and letting his pen run on and on till he
+had covered several sheets.
+
+Each morning during his visit a letter from Alice awaited him on the
+breakfast-table. For a week or two the chant was timorous, uncertain; of
+a pitch to soothe his self-complacency, to stir no ruffle in his
+holiday mood. But towards the end of his time she found herself--she
+tuned up, and adventured. And then followed Wyndham's awakening; taking
+him with the force of cataclysm, and dashing him out of his drowsy mood
+of contentment. Evidently the poor child was not living in this world.
+If her feet touched earth, her head at any rate was in a heaven of its
+own. She poured herself out with a lyric fervour that was like the song
+of a lark for rapture. All the years of her life she had saved herself
+for this, not frittered her emotions away in flirtations or frivolous
+love-affairs--as the soberer Wyndham now reflected. Her ideals were as
+unsullied as in her childhood. Her spirit soared up with a tremulous
+eager joy--without doubts, without cynicism, with a simple sure faith in
+love's paradise. Reserved, shrinking away from men, her heart yet held
+rich store of treasure, and she poured all out at his feet. Timorousness
+had vanished; the soul that had woven its own music in solitude had been
+translated to a higher universe. There were no barriers now, nothing but
+this joyous, confident life into which her womanhood had passed at that
+moment when, swept onward by the flood, she had thrown her arms around
+him.
+
+"Dearest," she wrote, "my whole past life seems like a half-slumber from
+which I have awakened into a world almost too dazzling with light and
+joy. Yet who am I that this joy should have come to me? When I think of
+the years when I lived alone with my own thoughts, it seems wonderful
+that your love should have been granted to me. The world is full of pale
+ghosts that come and go, not knowing what life is, and it amuses me to
+wonder if any of them will ever turn into real people.
+
+"Oh, my dear love, you are so far, far off. I want you here, here again
+with me, happy that you love me, happy that I love you, wanting no other
+life than this with your arms round me and your heart beating close to
+me. And yet I like to think that you are happy amid your own family, in
+the place where your childhood was spent. I love, dear, to dwell on the
+thought of your childhood, and fancy I see you now, a beautiful child in
+velvet, with a feather in your hat and a toy sword. And I see myself a
+child again, playing with this fairy little prince in the meadows. How
+beautiful if we were children like that! Impossible does it seem? Yet is
+anything impossible in this enchanted world?
+
+"Think of me, dearest, with the deepest and truest love of your heart,
+as I am thinking of you every moment of this wonderful life."
+
+And another time: "It is strange to feel how everything is transformed
+since you came into my life and made me understand what this great
+happiness is. I laugh gaily at nothing; yet tears come into my eyes
+quickly at unhappiness or suffering. It seems as if I were born to love
+you with a yearning and a passion that sometimes frighten me, yet which
+I would rather die than live without. When I first loved you, I did not
+know that this would come, that I should not be able to imagine it to be
+otherwise. The thought is frightful; indeed, if anything were to happen
+to change the present, I think my heart would give one great, great
+throb, and all would be over. I draw my breath hard at the thought;
+there is a deep pain at my breast; my teeth are set. But how morbid I am
+to-day! how ungrateful for this splendid gift of your love that has been
+bestowed upon me! But somehow I feel frightened; I don't believe that
+anybody will be allowed to keep such happiness on this earth. So come to
+me quickly, dearest; you seem so far, far away from me. I kiss your dear
+letters, I wear them near my heart, at night they are under my pillow. I
+love you, I love you."
+
+And this heart-cry broke down all the strong fibre of the man. Poor
+Alice! He must take care of such a child; he must cherish her life and
+make it perfect! Not in the least detail must he fail in his duty. Never
+for a moment must she think that this was--he flinched now before the
+words--an engagement of convenience!
+
+An engagement of convenience! He slipped away to his room--away from the
+rest of the world!--and sat staring into the dusk. He knew now that he
+was face to face with the actuality that lay before him in all its
+horror. An engagement of convenience! He would have given the world to
+recall it. His eyes saw clear again--the enthusiasm that swirled and
+whirled around him had thus far sustained him: vibrations of romance had
+arisen within him, had resounded with a certain music. But these letters
+of Alice, this crescendo series, each soaring beyond the other, had
+illumined the horrible poverty of his own emotion. The freshness of her
+note was a revelation and yet an agony to him. If only he could have
+piped with half the thrill!
+
+He could see at last that in his specious reasonings he had somehow
+assumed a largely passive attitude on her part. Indeed, egotistically
+preoccupied with his own side of the case, he had scarcely bestowed a
+thought on hers. This reality--immense--overpowering--of the romance in
+her heart terrified him. He had given her empty words, and she had given
+him--love! And what else, indeed, but empty words had he to offer her
+now?--had he to offer her in the whole long vista of their future? At
+the best a studied kindness, an acceptance of duty. He had entered on a
+rôle of mockery, and he knew now he was utterly unfitted to play it. His
+whole nature rose and cried aloud in revolt.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+At the beginning of the New Year Wyndham hastened back to town, and was
+soon at his post striving to adapt himself to the outlook of his life.
+He had tried to steel himself to confess the miserable truth to Alice,
+to lay it before her with a fidelity as unswerving as Nature, merciless
+both to him and to her. But her letters continued to shake him, and he
+had not the strength to face the inevitable wreckage. To break was to
+punish her: to continue was only to punish himself. His course was
+obvious: he must play the game _à outrance_. Yet he sought temporarily
+to escape the actuality by immersing himself desperately in routine.
+
+So, for the present, his days were mapped out simply enough. He was up
+early, for the winter hours of light were precious. Braced for a great
+effort, he found himself drawing on unexpected stores of vitality; he
+flung himself on his masterpiece like a Viking into the mêlée of battle,
+and had the reward of splendid conquest. This sense of power, this
+subjugation of his material, made his old foiled strivings and strivings
+incomprehensible, incredible!
+
+Meanwhile the domesticity of the house at the corner invaded his studio,
+and surrounded him with comforts and attentions that but threw up the
+more vividly the issues he sought to preclude. But he kept stifling down
+his rebellion; struggling to accept the position unreservedly, though
+sick with the sense of hypocrisy. He laughingly surrendered to Alice a
+duplicate key of the studio in token of their good-fellowship, and she
+and her mother devoted themselves to the loving task of smoothing his
+path, letting no point that might ruffle his inspiration elude their
+vigilance. Their whole life and activities seemed to converge to the
+studio. Mrs. Robinson kept discreetly in the background, though her
+brain planned and her tongue discussed, and she often went joyfully
+a-purchasing. Shortly before one o'clock Alice would march across,
+attended by a servant carrying his lunch, of temptations compact,
+imprisoned in shining caskets; and by the time Wyndham was ready to sit
+down, his table would be nicely set out, and the temptations spread to
+his view.
+
+Many precious minutes were thus saved for him, and his train of ideas
+was luxuriously unbroken. This tact and thoughtfulness was
+characteristic of all the devotion that was cherished on him. Wyndham
+deeply appreciated its quality, and despite the pressure--with
+sending-in day looming barely three months ahead--gratitude no less than
+conscience drove him to acknowledgement, to contrive that the artist
+should not entirely swallow up Miss Robinson's future husband; though
+her expectations were considerately of the slightest. Thus his negative
+policy was answering effectively. With the passage of the days, he found
+himself sliding into a lethargy of acquiescence in the position. The
+mere physical fatigues of his labours dulled the unrest within him, and
+his brain fermented incessantly with the problems of masses and values
+which his great canvas still pressed upon him. He was glad he found it
+possible at last to be accepting all outer things so calmly. He told
+himself repeatedly: "Your revolt is over. You have decided there can be
+no break. So be as decent and affectionate as you can."
+
+Thus his attentions seemed to her gallant and charming, to hold their
+touch of poetry. Flowers and bonbons, a book of verses or a novel were
+frequent tributes: after his work was done they went into town
+occasionally to a concert or a theatre, and if his conversation was of
+the theme with which his mind was most saturated, she did not regard
+that as otherwise than a compliment.
+
+And so these winter days sped, and January was running its course. And
+out of this not unsuccessful routine there came to him the sense that
+his life was very full and singularly complete. Of perturbation or
+unforeseen excitement there was never a thrill. The only moment that
+held a flutter for him was when Mr. Shanner descended on the Robinsons,
+grey, decorous, and austere; congratulated the pair with an ashen smile,
+in the honeyed accents that had charmed so many diplomatists; and
+bestowed solemn formal attentions on the engaged lady throughout the
+evening.
+
+The whole plot of his drama had in verity been revealed, was Wyndham's
+frequent reflection; and with that final comedy-scene the curtain had
+seemed to fall, and he knew all that there was to know.
+
+But his own wretched money affairs were soon to give him food for
+pondering. Alice's portrait had gone home in a splendid frame to find a
+temporary resting-place before being tossed to the Academy; and Mr.
+Robinson, though seeing him face to face almost daily, delicately sent
+his cheque by post. Wyndham grasped it with relief: but it proved merely
+the illumination that accentuated the darkness. For overdue rent and
+many other calls made it melt away with terrifying swiftness; and
+Wyndham had indebted himself to the family jeweller for presents to Miss
+Robinson. Impecuniosity approached him again with no vague menace;
+kicked him brutally out of his ostrich-like attitude. Nevertheless he
+shrank in terror from the definite thought of pressing forward the
+marriage; though, in the clear light of these latter self-communings,
+money was the sole reason why he had sought it. Not only did he fear
+that life of simulation with a sickness immeasurable: but he foresaw
+endless money humiliations at the very outset.
+
+He would fulfil his promise honourably, whatever the spiritual cost of
+it! But he could not face money humiliations in the eyes of his
+inferiors! A thousand times "no"! He must trust, despite all, to his own
+strength and performance!--he would do brilliantly with his pictures in
+the spring!--he would follow up the success and conquer London! He waved
+aside all his past disasters: he saw his good star in the ascendant,
+shining--he fixed his eyes on it fanatically. It was an irony of ironies
+that, after his great surrender, his pride should still flame up
+unconquered. Before the moral tragedy of love yoked to mockery, he might
+bow his head in resignation; but Miss Robinson's fortune loomed up as a
+ridiculous and contemptible complication in a situation already nigh
+impossible.
+
+The metaphor of the vulture was often back in his mind now! The heap of
+carrion!--he had stooped for the sake of it, and it was now even more
+loathsome than his former morbid perception of it. His poverty seemed
+suddenly unbearable. In the past he had endured it. Now, for the first
+time, he was ashamed of it.
+
+So he spoke to the Robinsons of a six months' engagement or
+thereabouts--which, to their ideas, was reputable and in order; and then
+felt he had time before him to fling down the gauntlet to fortune again.
+
+But in estimating his resources he had counted without his new allies.
+Alice whispered into her father's ears her conviction that he might
+easily influence commissions for her _fiancé_; and, after thinking about
+it, Mr. Robinson felt he would like to have a try.
+
+A rich, powerful Insurance Corporation had voted a portrait of its
+retiring president for the adornment of its board-room. Mr. Robinson set
+to work astutely, and the commission came to Wyndham. Item, three
+hundred guineas. But, before this new portrait had progressed very far,
+Wyndham had fascinated his subject--a tall, white-bearded merchant
+prince who sat to him with mysterious insignia, and resplendent chains
+and emblems. "A marvellous young fellow," he confided to Mr. Robinson.
+"I must really congratulate you on him--it's a treat to be in his
+society. And gifted! That great picture of Hyde Park Corner is worthy of
+Raphael." And for the pleasure of his company, and out of admiration for
+his talent, this bluff, good-natured president had at once arranged for
+paintings of himself and his wife for his own dining-room.
+
+He generously and spontaneously made the fee seven hundred guineas.
+"There are two of us this time, and why should I get off cheaper than
+the Insurance Company?" he asked genially; in a spirit rare enough in
+the twentieth century, but nothing out of the way in the days of the
+grand patrons. "Besides, you're worth it," he roared out bluffly. "And
+the privilege of going down to posterity in your society can hardly be
+appraised at all."
+
+Wyndham relished the compliment, though wincing inwardly at the thought
+that the wind that blew him good came always from the same quarter: yet
+in view of other important sitters he began to think of a more
+accessible studio.
+
+"Why not a house with the studio?" suggested the Robinsons. "You could
+move in now, and furnish the rooms at your leisure, so as to have them
+ready for the marriage."
+
+Wyndham fell in with the idea. He thought the locality had better be
+Chelsea, somewhere near the Embankment; a long distance from Hampstead,
+it was true, but an ideal situation for an artist. Somehow the sense of
+the distance, as he lingered on it, was not unacceptable. Alice
+flinched. "We could still look after you," she murmured bravely.
+
+"Besides, I could easily cut to and fro in a hansom," put in Wyndham.
+
+So off the old pair started at once on the quest, drawing some renewal
+of zestful youth from its absorbing interest. One day they reported a
+stroke of fortune; they had come upon the ideal thing. The rent was not
+impossible, and the tenant could have the option of purchasing the
+freehold. The next evening they took Wyndham to see it--a charming
+artist's house in Tite Street, with a broad frontage and a luxurious and
+unconventional interior. On the entrance floor--an unusual hall and
+three fine rooms. Above--a great studio and another excellent room.
+Below were the domestic regions with many household refinements, and
+bedrooms for the servants. Wyndham and Alice were enchanted.
+
+Mr. Robinson was anxious to purchase this property outright as his
+promised wedding-gift; but Wyndham, again shrinking inwardly,
+diplomatically deferred the project. So the lease was signed, and the
+removal at once effected. Wyndham's belongings were swiftly installed on
+the upper floor of the house, at the loss of only a single day to him;
+and, leaving him to his labours, the others, in the enjoyment of their
+unlimited leisure, saw that the hall and stairway were made presentable
+for callers.
+
+But at this point Wyndham came to a dead stop with his labour-canvas, to
+which he had of late devoted his mornings entirely, keeping the
+afternoons for his sitters. He saw that it was imperative he should now
+make some fresh sketches on the spot. But to regain his exact vision he
+must have access to the old window in Grosvenor Place. Yet the very
+thought of the house and the memory of those former visits had a
+strange shattering effect on him. And some warning voice rose sternly,
+bade him not renew these old associations.
+
+He reasoned the matter out, and hesitation seemed absurd. For the sake
+of his picture, it was essential he should occupy a certain point of
+view. Though he had let the acquaintanceship lapse entirely ever since
+Lady Betty's marriage, access to that point of view was no doubt a
+simple matter. A mere letter of request, and the old earl would readily
+give his permission. This time he would probably come and go without
+seeing anybody at all.
+
+Wyndham sat down to write the letter, the interest of the composition
+ousting for the time his irrational misgivings. He recalled himself to
+the earl's recollection, explained that the picture for which he had
+made the former sketches had unavoidably been put aside; but now that he
+was at last able to take it up again he desired to make some fresh
+sketches, and begged the use of his old post of vantage for a few
+mornings. He concluded with the hope that the earl was in the best of
+health, and sent his respects and remembrances to his daughter, should
+the earl be seeing her just then.
+
+It was the merest courtesy on his part to show he had not forgotten Lady
+Betty! After all, their lives were so entirely alien now!
+
+He addressed and stamped the letter; then his strong instinct against
+the whole proceeding reasserted itself. He rose and paced about. The
+warning voice said, "Keep away from Grosvenor Place. No good will come
+of it." "But it's absurd," he said aloud. "The thing's an absolute
+necessity--I can't throw over the picture at this stage. My whole
+artistic future depends upon it. What harm can possibly arise from my
+going there? Lady Betty? Why, she's a matron by now! And probably not
+even in England. And if she were, what is she to me now? And at any rate
+I am certainly nothing to her. If I stumbled up against her the very
+first morning I went there, we should still be far as the poles asunder.
+She was certainly a wonderful girl, and I of course fell headlong in
+love with her. Put any impressionable fellow with poetic ideals in the
+way of a lovely, clever girl and I suppose he's bound to feel cut up
+when somebody else marries her. But it's all as dead as King John now.
+I'll go there and do my work and wind up with a letter of thanks."
+
+He put on his hat and coat, and took up the letter. "Don't go there,"
+repeated the voice. "No good will come of it."
+
+"Rubbish!" he said. "I can't chuck up the picture. It's all right."
+
+He went downstairs and out into Tite Street, a little confused by all
+this current of doubt and reasoning, and by no means absolutely sure of
+himself. But, annoyed at realising this, he began to go forward
+sturdily, and flung the letter into the first pillar-box he
+encountered.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+As Wyndham read the reply to his letter, it seemed as if the kind, bluff
+voice of the old earl were itself speaking. "A few mornings! Come along
+and make your nice little sketches for the next half-century. We have
+often thought of you, and wondered what you were up to. I think we may
+say with truth that we've missed you. This is a dull house now, and I
+suppose I'm getting old and dull myself. At any rate I've many a twinge
+in the joints, and am inclined to shut myself up in my library, though
+I'm never much of a reader." Then there was a PS. "Somebody or other
+tells me that you are contemplating matrimony. Well, you're a brave
+young fellow, and I like you for it. I congratulate you, and wish you
+luck."
+
+As the next morning turned out fairly clear, Wyndham took his materials
+with him into a hansom, and rang the bell at Grosvenor Place at about
+ten o'clock. Not only had he decided that his misgivings were entirely
+morbid, but as a matter of course he had been quite open with the
+Robinsons about the arrangement. He had indeed explained to Alice some
+considerable time ago that he should in all likelihood find it necessary
+to make these fresh sketches on the very scene of the picture. It did
+not seem anything out of the way to her; she regarded it as a pure
+matter of work. It was sufficient that she understood his disappearance
+from the studio in the midst of these busy times. And as he had made it
+a point that she should possess a key of the new house just as she had
+had one of the old studio, she and her mother could come and go as they
+pleased in his absence, and proceed with their engrossing business of
+embellishing his hall and stairway.
+
+But as he set foot in the house at Grosvenor Place after this long
+interval of years, Wyndham could not maintain his reasoned conviction of
+the simplicity and insignificance of the occasion.
+
+He had the very real thrill of embarking on some extraordinary
+adventure; even of stepping outside his own existence--that theatre
+where he had been the spectator of his own fate, whose curtain--fire-proof
+--had already fallen on a played-out drama. But here was a strange
+theatre, with a curtain to rise, fascinating with promise of other drama
+to be revealed; yet the stillness and the dim light cast some spell of
+awe upon him.
+
+A hand seemed to clutch at him and pull him back out of the house at the
+last moment. He was penetrating here against the warning of his deeper
+self; his heart beat fast not merely with the consciousness of
+imprudence, but of downright disloyalty to the settled destiny before
+which he had bowed his head so profoundly. The warning voice, too, was
+stern; but the sense of daring, of courting and facing some unknown
+delicious danger, lured him forward.
+
+His lordship had already gone across to his club, the butler informed
+him; but he had half-expected Wyndham and had left orders in case he
+should present himself. As he followed the man up to the room he had
+used of old, he felt, despite the lofty well of the staircase, that the
+air hung heavy in the great house, muffled and silent with gigantic
+hangings, and thick carpets underfoot. Wyndham stood at the well-known
+window a leisurely moment, then arranged a chair or two, and unpacked
+his materials. The butler helped him to open the casement at the side of
+the bay and to rearrange the curtain, then asked if there was anything
+more he could do for him.
+
+"Oh, would you get my hat again?" returned Wyndham, as a current of
+wintry air flowed in. He laughed; having forgotten he could not work
+uncovered.
+
+When finally the man had complied with his request, and left him again,
+Wyndham looked out on the scene before him, his eye lingering for a
+moment on the royal gardens, then trying to catch the exact view he had
+painted. But as yet his mind was in too great a turmoil to concentrate
+itself sternly on the business in hand. "I shall be acclimatised in a
+minute or two," he reassured himself. "The atmosphere of this house is
+so oppressive--it upset me the first moment." He stood gratefully
+inhaling the fresher draught that streamed against his face; and when he
+had calmed down he took a turn or two about the room, observing it with
+interest. He had scarcely received any impression of it yet, but now he
+perceived that it was greatly changed in some respects. A new fireplace,
+and a mantel of a dainty cabinet-like design, replaced the former
+streaked framework of marble that had enshrined a great rococo grate.
+The double leaf door that led to some adjoining room had had its hanging
+stripped away, and the beauty of panelling showed naked and unashamed.
+The former carpet had gone; there were now soft Eastern rugs on the
+floor lying closely side by side, and covering it entirely. But though
+the Chippendale bookcases and the rest of the furniture had been left
+untouched, there was somehow a more intimate personal note about the
+room; accentuated perhaps by the trifles and photographs clustered
+about the mantelshelf. And then Wyndham came to an abrupt stop as if
+some sheet of flame had flashed by and seared him. There in the centre
+of the mantel, next to a tiny clock shaped like a Gothic arch, stood the
+silver easel bearing the framed photograph of his old Academy
+picture--his wedding present to Lady Betty!
+
+Why was it here in this house? he asked himself, trembling. Had she left
+it behind because she esteemed it so lightly? Or was there perhaps some
+special significance in the fact; something his thought groped for
+wildly and blindly as if in panic?
+
+He staggered back to the window, astonished to find how overcome he had
+been. The air revived him, and then a new and sterner spirit came upon
+him. Was he going to waste his whole morning by yielding himself to
+these idle and futile emotions? Resolutely he prepared his palette, and
+bent his mind by force to his task. He was pleased presently to find how
+exactly his eye recovered his scene; he felt he could almost lay the one
+he had painted over this one, and that it would fit like a transfer.
+Slowly and carefully he let the view sink into him, estimating the
+tones, the masses, the spaces; peopling it in his mind with all the
+figures and accessories that went to build up his great symbolic
+representation. Then he set one of the smaller canvasses on his knee,
+and started his note-making. Soon he was absorbed in the work, glad
+that he had forced himself to begin, and that the little wheels of his
+mind were turning so smoothly.
+
+At eleven the butler appeared with wine and sandwiches, moved a little
+table over near Wyndham, and set down the tray within reach of his hand.
+Wyndham was glad of this refreshment; he had been in too uncertain a
+mood to do more than gulp down his coffee at breakfast, and the raw air
+had roused a craving for some sort of sustenance--a desire for
+stimulation rather than a keen hunger. He swallowed a glass of the wine,
+then began to nibble a sandwich slowly; but his mind was still in his
+work. He half-knew that the great folding door at the bottom of the room
+had opened, that somebody had entered. But it was as in a dream, and he
+did not look up. He considered his results, then poured more wine, and
+was in the act of raising it to his lips. God! what was this gracious,
+willowy figure, with the wonderful sheen on the fresh hair, and the
+girlish rounded cheeks! She was smiling at him, her eyes strangely
+alight under their long, soft lashes, her lips half parted; she was
+advancing towards him with outstretched hand. He put back the glass on
+the table and rose hastily, holding his sketch suspended from one hand;
+but his wits left him and he stared as at a ghost.
+
+"Lady Betty!" he stammered.
+
+"I am not an apparition," she reassured him; "but only a simple
+flesh-and-blood creature. Won't you put down your picture?" She smiled
+again at his embarrassment.
+
+He laughed, and stood the sketch on a chair.
+
+"Your presence certainly startled me," he confessed. "I had an idea you
+were thousands of miles away." They took hands--a good, comrade-like
+clasp. "Fortunately the idea was erroneous."
+
+"Fortunately," she echoed, laughingly capping his gallantry.
+
+"Oh, but how stupid I am! Forgive me!" He almost swept the hat from his
+head. "You see how I was scared; how ill prepared to cope with
+apparitions."
+
+She laughed again. "You are to keep your hat on," she commanded. "My
+presence is easily accounted for; out of sheer restlessness of spirit I
+thought I should like to try London again--I had shunned it like the
+plague for ever so long. As all the nice little hotels were full, I
+descended on my father here, and practically appropriated this room."
+
+"I fear I'm an intruder," he stammered.
+
+"You had my permission; it was obtained in due form. Only I insisted my
+name was to be held back. I wanted to play the apparition, and my father
+entered into the whim of the thing. It seems like old times again."
+
+Wyndham tried to transport himself back along the years. "I wonder
+whether there's anything better in life than to repeat the best moments
+of the past," he said pensively; "that is, if we can catch them with all
+the original magic in them." He saw her head drop a little; her
+expression was full of musing, half-sad and tender. Then he remembered
+that things had indeed changed since those old days, that Lady Betty had
+a husband! It was strange, but the apparition, besides the rest of the
+mischief, had momentarily driven the fact from the store of his
+knowledge. He had had absolutely the delusion that this was the
+brilliant Lady Betty, still unwed, to whom no suitor might aspire save
+with yachts and palaces.
+
+"I have been calling you Lady Betty!" he exclaimed. "The delusion of old
+times was very strong."
+
+"Please to keep on with the Lady Betty--I come back to it so easily. It
+quite pleased me when it slipped from your lips. You have stepped out of
+the long ago; I step back to meet you. You must still think of me as
+Lady Betty."
+
+"And Lord Lakeden?" he murmured, though he felt the inquiry was rather a
+belated courtesy.
+
+She stared at him, her cheeks white, her eyes growing unnaturally large.
+
+"Your husband--I hope he is well," he explained, bewildered by this new
+expression that seemed to hold mingled amazement and horror.
+
+"My husband!" She laughed--a weird peal that filled him with a fear as
+of blinding flashes to come. "Did you not know? I thought the whole
+world knew. I have no husband!"
+
+He looked at her. "I don't understand," he stammered.
+
+"I really believe you don't," she said, her face still blanched. "My
+married life was a short one. Lord Lakeden met with an accident on the
+Alps--the summer before last. He went out without a guide. The details
+were in all the papers. It was one of the sensations of the silly
+season." Again a nervous laugh, but more than ever it was full of
+unnatural echoes.
+
+Instinctively Wyndham took off his hat again, and stood with his head
+bowed. "I am sorry. My condolences are late, but they are sincere."
+
+"I somehow expected you would write to me at the time. Hosts and hosts
+wrote to me--till my head went dizzy; but never a word from you." She
+was speaking with greater command of herself now, but he felt in her
+words a world of reproach.
+
+"I was living as a hermit at the time. I saw nobody for--shall I say it
+seemed to me a lifetime--save the poor old woman who came to turn out my
+studio once in every three months perhaps."
+
+"Ah, you were unhappy!" Her face softened, telling of a swift,
+spontaneous sympathy.
+
+"I was nigh starving. I never saw a newspaper unless by chance; my
+pennies were too precious."
+
+"My poor friend!" Her eyes gleamed as if tears were about to come.
+
+"I played the game up to a certain point with all my strength, but
+everything went against me from every quarter. I know there are men that
+would have risen triumphant above all these evils and difficulties. But
+I was not one of those men. I was beaten--smashed--utterly and
+hopelessly. I had not the smallest reserve of power to carry on the
+fight. I lived cut off from the world like a man in a tomb. I am ashamed
+to think that I kept myself alive----"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted, shivering. "I can't bear it."
+
+"I am ashamed that I did not die," he persisted. "It is the truth. It is
+the first time I say it either to myself or to another. In order to live
+I stepped below myself."
+
+She covered her face with her hands. "I know you are misjudging. You are
+harsh with yourself. I hold to my faith in you."
+
+"I lived on the earnings of my sister, who stinted herself in food and
+went shabbily clad that she might foster my work. Yet, for terrible
+months and months, I deceived her. I did no work. My will was dead. As a
+man I seemed to collapse physically and morally."
+
+"You were not responsible. There is a limit to human endurance. You
+needed a delicious rest in some blue sunny place, in one of those
+earthly paradises where the orange-trees are golden in the sun. Your
+sister's love consecrated her sacrifice. She saved you for a great
+future. Her reward is yet to come."
+
+"You see everything in so sweet a light; I can only hope that the issue
+will be as you say. It is on my future work that I have staked the
+redemption of my manhood in my own eyes. My work! That is where my real
+heart lies. Outside of that my life will be a mere appearance."
+
+"But you have somebody else in your life now," she broke in, pale as
+death. "We heard a rumour that you were about to marry. Is it not true?"
+
+He gasped at the bitter reminder. He hung his head. "It is true," he
+breathed.
+
+"Then you have given your affections: you are happy?"
+
+He wavered for a deep instant, the whilst her eyes rested on him
+gravely. "I have given my affections--I am happy." To himself he added:
+"I must be loyal to Alice, if indeed I have not gone too far already.
+But Lady Betty has made me see the truth. I understand now what I felt
+only obscurely--I bartered my life to the Robinsons, kind as they are,
+that I might repair the hurt and wrong to Mary."
+
+"I congratulate you from my heart." She held out her hand again with a
+wan smile. He took it limply; feeling he held it on false pretences,
+that the sudden check he had put on his impulsive outpouring had raised
+a barrier between them.
+
+"But forgive me for my stupid egotism. Here am I, a great strapping
+fellow, pitying myself because of a very ordinary sort of dismal
+failure; more than commonplace by the side of the great sorrow that came
+to you."
+
+"Great sorrow!" Again that wild peal of laughter. "It was a great joy,
+the greatest joy I have ever known. When they brought me the news, I
+went out into the garden of our chalet, and, sure that no eyes were upon
+me, I danced on the green in the sunlight--with the blood pulsing so
+deliciously through my veins. I was free--I was free! The world seemed
+so beautiful! the sky and the mountains so exquisite! Life was such a
+gift! I was free--free!"
+
+She stood up straight, all her muscles tense, her limbs quivering. The
+pallor had gone; her face glowed with an exultation that was almost of
+triumph. He stood spellbound at her revelation, unable to find a word.
+
+"Ah, you don't understand what it is to be free again! Degradation! I
+tasted it to its depths. Yours was no degradation! You know nothing of
+it. I was tied to a brute--no, the brutes are decent and lovable. He was
+lower--he was lower."
+
+Her voice broke in a sob, though no tears came. Wyndham was still
+silent; he would not seek to penetrate her last reserve. "Don't think me
+too horrible," she pleaded. "You are the only living being to whom I
+have bared my soul. You were the one to whom my mind flew as my
+friend--I have waited for this moment. You must not set me down as a
+monster."
+
+"A monster!" he exclaimed. He was thrown off his irksome guard, and the
+instant was fatal! "Oh, no, no! I shall always hold you for what you
+are, for what you have always been to me--a rare princess!"
+
+"I have always been to you--" she echoed, then broke off, her bosom
+heaving, her eyes flashing out with the full comprehension of his almost
+unwitting avowal. Then she went pale to the lips again. "You never
+spoke," she breathed, "and I did not guess."
+
+He realised, half in a daze, that his secret had escaped him; yet--with
+swift change of mood--he was recklessly glad that she understood at
+last: even as, standing before her, he, too, understood at last--reading
+her distress, treasuring her implied reproach for its clear
+significance, though it put him on his defence.
+
+"I was not even on the footing of a guest in this house. The very bread
+that kept me alive was not my own. It is the law of the world."
+
+"You were wrong. There is no law."
+
+"There is the law of pride," he argued. "We men do not stoop to
+happiness, we stoop only to degradation.... And then I feared to break
+the spell," he went on, seeking a lighter strain. "The wonderful
+princess would disappear, and I should be left rubbing my eyes."
+
+"But it was you who disappeared. The princess thought you shunned her,
+and she was left--to weep--"
+
+He hung his head like a broken reed. He had no longer anything to hide;
+he had already sufficiently disclosed to her that his marriage was to be
+a loveless one. She would understand and respect his first desire to
+keep his true relation to Alice sacred from her gaze. But Lady Betty's
+revelation of tragic experience had swept him off his feet. He had
+responded to her great emotion; had confessed his allegiance to her
+through all and despite all. His life seemed linked to hers with a
+mystic, enduring passion. And yet were they not hopelessly sundered?
+
+"'Men must work and women must weep,'" she quoted. "Ah, well! we never
+can win our ideals; life is always a compromise. Perhaps it's a blessing
+to see our clear obligations."
+
+"Yes--if one has the strength to turn one's eyes aside from the dreams;
+but saddening otherwise."
+
+"Saddening otherwise," she echoed pensively. "But I thank you that I am
+still the wonderful princess, even after my terrible confession."
+
+He took a step forward, and seized her hand impulsively.
+
+"Never believe otherwise, no matter what you may hear of me. Whether
+this be the last time I see you or not, whether I fail and be broken
+again, my last breath shall proclaim my allegiance to--the wonderful
+princess! Listen, the woman I am marrying is more than goodness itself.
+I cannot pretend to match her; my manhood falls below her womanhood. But
+into the inner chamber of my life she can never enter. Out of loyalty to
+her I gave you to understand that I had given my affections. That is
+true, but not in the sense I led you to believe. There is no reason why
+I should not be open now; it would be a poor compliment to you after all
+this mutual confidence if I could not bare to you the absolute truth.
+And the absolute truth is--I have sold myself for safety, for the sake
+of my art, and for the sake of my sister. It would be unendurable were
+there not the mitigation of the esteem I have for the woman I am
+marrying, and for the many qualities of kindness and goodness in that
+whole household. But she is not my true mate. Unlimited as is her virtue
+in a hundred ways, she herself is yet limited. My work must find
+inspiration entirely apart from her. May I think of you, princess, as my
+inspiration?"
+
+"She is a good woman. You must be loyal to her."
+
+"It would be no disloyalty; I should be cherishing the ideal."
+
+She was smiling and radiant again. "I can scarcely stop you--I see it
+would certainly be rash to try. Well, goodbye now; I have a thousand
+little neglected things crying to me. And your moments, too, are
+precious. You will be here again one of these mornings?"
+
+"To-morrow," he said. "For the present, we may be friends?"
+
+"Till the tide sweeps us apart."
+
+"The cruel tide!" he murmured. "But you will always be the wonderful
+princess," he insisted again.
+
+"I shall try to be worthy of the title."
+
+She gave him a charming curtsey, flitted away down the room, threw him
+yet a smile, and disappeared behind the panelled door through which she
+had come.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+For some time Wyndham stood with his head still bowed as Lady Betty's
+voice lingered in his ear. Her figure was still there before him, her
+lovely girl's face radiant with the smile with which she had vanished,
+her slender form in all its upright grace; a nymph of whom Botticelli
+had caught a glimpse on a spring morn when the world was rediscovering
+beauty.
+
+He tried to recall the scene that had just been enacted, and dizzily
+held it all in a flash. He and Lady Betty were in love with each other!
+The fact that he had always cherished the thought of her held a deeper
+significance than he had known! Throughout all his sufferings--throughout
+all her sufferings--an ideal friendship for each other had subsisted in
+their minds. He had supposed her as indifferent as she was unattainable;
+that his love was one of those secret, mocking dramas that sometimes
+play themselves out in the souls of men and women. Yet it was to him
+that her deepest thought had turned! She had enshrined him in her
+heart! And he lying the whilst in darkness and misery!
+
+It was precious now--this new sweetness that had come to him. Sweetness!
+His thought broke off at the word. Rather was it a bitter irony! Lady
+Betty and he had been cheated by life. Could he be even sure his eyes
+would behold her again? Was she not the soul of honour and rectitude!
+For a deep instant they had been swept towards each other; but at once
+her attitude towards his marriage had been clear and pronounced, and she
+might even now be bitterly regretting their meeting.
+
+He sat down at last, and took up his work again; but his mind was
+utterly unfitted for concentration on any task. Better to get back again
+to his own studio, he told himself. So he stowed away his materials in a
+corner, and presently slipped downstairs; telling the butler, whom he
+met in the hall, that he would be there again at ten the following day.
+
+At Tite Street men were tacking down a thick green length of Turkey
+carpet on his staircase, and Alice was superintending the operation.
+Here was his comfortable future in active preparation! And already he
+felt the atmosphere swallowing him up, claiming him body and soul.
+
+He stayed a moment on the landing, affecting an interest in the
+proceedings. When he turned into the studio Alice came after him.
+
+"You hardly seem well, dear," she said, observing him anxiously.
+
+"You surprise me," he returned. "I am not conscious of any aches or
+pains," he added, with an implication of gaiety.
+
+She did not seem convinced. "This malarial air must have affected you,"
+she insisted.
+
+"I don't say I find it pleasant." He seized the poker, as if glad to
+make a diversion, and stirred the fire energetically. "I'm a little bit
+disgusted, too; the day wasn't as clear as I hoped--there was a good
+deal of mist about."
+
+"Better luck to-morrow!" she said.
+
+He struck hard at a knob of coal, making a dreadful clatter. "I hope so,
+indeed," he answered, thinking it curious that Alice should now be
+expecting him to go to Grosvenor Place as a matter of course. "At any
+rate," he added, as it struck him Alice might reasonably be hoping for
+some account of his morning's visit, "they were kind to me--just as of
+old. Lady Lakeden sent me refreshments, and afterwards came herself to
+see how things were progressing."
+
+"I suppose Lady Lakeden is a sister of the earl," she conjectured.
+
+"No, his daughter--a mere girl," he explained, with the flicker of a
+laugh. "It was a great surprise. It is only a few years back that I was
+asked to her wedding. After that, I got out of touch with them, and I
+did not know she had lost her husband very soon after the marriage. He
+met with an accident on the Alps."
+
+Alice was blanched. "How terrible!" she whispered.
+
+There was a silence. Wyndham held his hands to the flame he had been at
+such pains to create. He hoped he had satisfied her interest
+sufficiently; for, of course, the whole scene between himself and Lady
+Betty must be kept from her inviolate. Was it not for Alice's own sake
+and happiness?
+
+"It makes me afraid!" said Alice, breaking the silence. "Perhaps nobody
+is allowed to keep too great a happiness."
+
+He winced. "She was always kind to me," he said, evading the train of
+her reflection. "I spent many hours at my post in those ancient times,
+and there were always unobtrusive attentions that made my work the
+easier."
+
+"I should like to know and love her," said Alice pensively.
+
+Wyndham was silent. Her words startled and embarrassed him, since he had
+been taking it for granted that she and Lady Betty would never come into
+contact. Besides, in a way, Alice had given utterance to more of a
+thought than a wish, so that a response hardly seemed necessary. They
+lunched together, and Alice went off soon after, leaving him to receive
+his sitters--the president and his wife, who were both to arrive that
+afternoon.
+
+"Of course, you won't expect me at Hampstead," he reminded her. "You
+remember I put my name down for a club dinner to-night."
+
+"Of course I remember," she said. "But I shall write you a letter
+instead. Please look for it when you come home to-night."
+
+But Wyndham did not dine at the club after all; at the last moment he
+decided to spend the evening alone at his studio. It seemed a long time
+since he had had a few quiet hours all to himself. Moreover, it was
+strangely a boon to hear no other voices for once, and he lay back
+pleasantly in his chair, though conscious of an uncommon degree of
+weariness. And, in the calm and solitude of the studio, intensified by
+the echoing of his occasional movements through the empty rooms beneath
+him, the Robinsons seemed indeed a long way off up at Hampstead there,
+and for the first time it seemed a positive bondage to him, this
+constant duty of journeying across town to dine with them.
+
+The nine o'clock post brought the promised letter from Alice, but from
+amid the little heap in the box he picked out another eagerly. The
+writing was Lady Betty's. He had never seen very much of it in the old
+days, yet he recognised it at once.
+
+He remembered just then a shrewd dictum of Schopenhauer--that, if we
+wished to learn our real attitude towards any person, we should watch
+and estimate our exact emotion at catching sight of the well-known
+handwriting on a letter we are just receiving. He certainly could not
+help observing the contrasting emotions with which he welcomed these two
+letters. Alice's, at his first glimpse of it, had given him a deepened
+sense of the irrevocable. Yet there went with this a kind, affectionate
+thought in which was a world of appreciation. But he knew pretty nearly
+what the letter would contain; it could well be read at leisure.
+
+He tore open Lady Betty's at once, and read it feverishly as he stood
+there in the hall. "MY DEAR FRIEND," it ran--"My father was so
+disappointed when he got home at hearing that you had been, and had
+already flown. He suggests that you should stay to-morrow and join us at
+luncheon, and he asks me to bend your mind well in advance to the
+contemplation of such an ordeal--as he seriously considers it. The
+present cook doesn't meet with his approval, but be reassured! It was
+only a new sauce sent up one day with pride; but that unfortunate sauce
+has since flavoured everything. My father has naturally imagination; at
+his age he has prejudices. Could even a Vatel face the combination?
+
+"And now that I have performed my filial duty, I will add a few lines
+for my own pleasure. I humbly proffer a request. An idea has come to me
+that seems most charming--before we part again! Since you are working
+here, won't you make a small sketch of me?--a tiny, typical thing, hit
+off all in a dash--and give it to me as a souvenir of your work? Nothing
+that would steal much of your time. I understand that every moment is
+precious just now, with the exhibitions so near, and I wish you not to
+do it if you are very pressed. In return I shall have a souvenir to give
+you--a strange, strange thought of mine. Please feel very curious about
+what it is to be, for you are certainly not going to be told till the
+time comes. _Au revoir._ Your friend, BETTY."
+
+Wyndham mounted the stairs again slowly, and in the studio he re-read
+these precious lines, lingering on each individual word, and setting a
+marvellous price on it. He was happy yet terrified at this flash from
+fairyland into his strenuous existence.
+
+But her words, "before we part again," rang in his mind, lurid,
+persistent. Yes, Lady Betty would vanish out of his life soon enough;
+even though her letter confirmed the respite which she had indeed seemed
+to grant that morning, but which nevertheless--anticipating regret--he
+had scarcely ventured to dream of! There could clearly be no question as
+to her attitude towards his marriage; he told himself that even the
+crime (flashing splendidly through his brain) of cutting himself free
+from the Robinsons with one heroic stroke in order to throw his whole
+life into this wonderful romance would be futile. Would Lady Betty ever
+consent to happiness purchased at such a price?--woo her as he might!
+
+But this sweet, dainty dream of her brief companionship--was he called
+upon to turn away from it? Surely, no; else she had been the last to
+dazzle him with it. Her lead could be trusted to be beyond reproach.
+And, however she regarded it in her heart, would there not be for him a
+little of strangely deep happiness; something to remember always, to
+leave a smile on his face at the moment of death?
+
+The charm of the thought won him almost irresistibly. Lady Betty was his
+inspiration for ever; nay, that ideal elusive face would have been his
+inspiration even if he had never encountered her again. The harm--if
+harm there was in their meeting again--had been done irreparably in the
+past!
+
+All would be over soon enough! What could emphasise it more than this
+very letter of hers he held in his hand? Was it not Lady Betty's
+underlying thought in this desire for an exchange of souvenirs?
+
+All would be over soon enough! Life would bear them apart, but the touch
+of sweetness would remain as an illumination. He could never be cheated
+out of that.
+
+What was this souvenir she intended for him--this "strange, strange
+thought" of hers? She had in truth piqued his curiosity, and he foresaw
+her delight at his admitting it. What, indeed, could it be? And,
+occupied now with this fascinating speculation, he languidly took up his
+other letters, his fingers turning them over with an extreme
+indifference. Presently, with a sudden decision, he broke Alice's
+envelope, and began to read her note. Three of the sides out of four
+were exactly as he had anticipated, but towards the end he lighted on a
+passage that unnerved him abruptly. "I have been thinking of your
+friends in Grosvenor Place. My heart goes out to Lady Lakeden. How hers
+must lie broken and bleeding! To lose a husband after only a few months
+of wedded life! I shut my eyes and try to think that such a thing cannot
+happen! And she and her father have always been so kind to you. My love
+for you is so great that I love everybody that spares one little thought
+specially for you."
+
+Wyndham threw the letter down. That was enough; he must sacrifice all to
+the duties he had undertaken. He and Lady Betty must not see each other
+again. Could he not hear her dear voice saying, "Life is always a
+compromise. Perhaps it's a blessing to see our clear obligations." Well,
+he at any rate saw his clear obligations. He would reply to Lady Betty;
+he would enter into the situation in all sincerity. He would paint her
+some little thing for the souvenir, and send it to her, and perhaps she
+might care to send him hers in return. His meeting her to-day and this
+loving exchange of gifts would remain in his thought as the most poetic
+episode of his life; but an episode that must speedily be closed.
+
+She would understand and approve. Was she not the very spirit of
+chivalry, of honour and goodness? Since fate had given its decree, let
+them both bow to it!
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+But the next morning he dressed with care, choosing with fastidiousness
+among his flowing silk ties, and went off to Grosvenor Place, stopping
+only on the way to get a new canvas for Lady Betty's portrait. It was as
+if some great arm had encircled him irresistibly, and hurried him out of
+his studio, and jerked him into a hansom.
+
+The first thing that caught his eye as he entered the usual room was a
+travelling easel opened out at its full length, brass-jointed, proudly
+agleam; and he marked his appreciation of the significance of its
+presence in equally significant fashion--by standing the newly-acquired
+canvas upon it. Then he installed himself at his window, and after a
+little preliminary fumbling he found himself well under weigh. At last
+he had struck the clear, even light he wanted, and he worked rapidly
+with his note-taking till the time the butler appeared with
+refreshments.
+
+He sipped his wine, with one eye on the folding-door and the other
+maintaining some interest in the sketches before him. But the more
+vigilant eye of the two soon found its reward. Lady Betty appeared on
+the very stroke of noon, and came to him all fresh and smiling, in sunny
+contrast to his sense of the dull wintry universe.
+
+"You seem a trifle thoughtful," she observed.
+
+"I was speculating about the mysterious gift you promise."
+
+She laughed merrily. "I observe, then, it is a bargain." She nodded
+towards the easel.
+
+"I have had a charming idea as well," he said. "Could you give me two
+hours a day till the end of the month?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+"I should like to send you to the Salon."
+
+"That is indeed a charming idea. But you must not risk your big work,"
+she reminded him. "That, too, has to be ready in a few weeks."
+
+"I shall have the whole of March for it exclusively. I am finishing my
+portraits this month."
+
+"Your sketches are satisfactory?"
+
+"One or two mornings more, and I shall have as much as I need. My
+difficulty with the picture all these years has been that I have had to
+build it up largely out of my own mind. My actual scene has of course
+never really existed in nature--though once or twice I managed to catch
+something of the kind here on the spot. But that was quite tumultuous
+and indiscriminate, whereas I wanted to catch the essence of the thing."
+
+"You frighten the poor little amateur out of her wits."
+
+They both laughed. "I had to snatch bits as best I could. Whilst
+striving to suggest the tumult and movement, I yet picked my material so
+as to give contrast and symbolism. Then I had to get my workmen and all
+the other kinds of folk to pose separately in the studio. Fortunately my
+old studio opened at the back into a little glass-house, and so I was
+able to pose the model as in the open. Naturally with the work on so
+huge a scale, I was wrestling with almost every drawback that could be
+conceived. It was no doubt a great mistake to have planned it at all,
+but I have learnt lessons I shall never forget."
+
+"But you have conquered at last."
+
+"Honestly, no. But it will succeed. My first idea was that the whole
+scene should be bathed in sunlight. But this, by throwing a vibration
+and glow over everything, would have submerged the social contrast of
+Fashion and Labour--would have made the whole thing primarily a piece of
+pure technique, and weakened its human significance. I did not want the
+sunshine to be the motive of the picture; I wanted the human side to
+stand out first, and speak with its full force. I therefore chose a
+dull light, so that the smartness of Fashion glows in relief against the
+drab tones of Labour. I am afraid though I am exaggerating the contrast
+more than I really like. That, however, will help it with the great
+public."
+
+"I don't think I approve of such sentiments. I want you to strive for
+the highest."
+
+"That is the future. But here it was a question of extricating myself
+from wreckage. As art it is far from perfect. But its success will help
+me to higher things."
+
+"On that ground only we must pass it this time. But I have been
+wondering how you will use these last sketches you have been making."
+She examined them attentively awhile. "To me they are not very
+intelligible, though I have a vague idea of their purpose."
+
+"They are mere notes," he explained. "If you will come here by the
+window and get the point of view, I think I can make them perfectly
+intelligible."
+
+She came and stood by his side, and one by one he took up the little
+canvasses, explaining his tones and masses and relative values. As he
+spoke his words seemed to evoke a strange life from the blurs and brush
+marks. A splash of colour changed before her eyes into an omnibus; a
+darker blob into a brougham; vistas and spaces, buildings and foliage
+stood revealed out of chaos. She listened with a pretty interest, her
+lips daintily parted, her breath coming lightly, yet her features
+composed into a characteristic stateliness--of which catching a sudden
+glimpse as she brushed close to him, he mentally registered the judgment
+"surpassingly fine!" He was glad he had caught that aspect; it summed
+her up in a way so perfectly. There was his Salon picture!
+
+"And while you have been listening I have been studying you," he
+confessed, as he placed the sketches aside.
+
+"I should have thought you knew me by heart."
+
+"You are not so definite and limited. Beauty is always flashing
+surprises on the eye that can see."
+
+"I think I like that," she said gaily. "I must bear it in mind.... It's
+only a toy easel," she flew off as he drew it forward. "In spite of its
+excellent preservation, it is a relic of my childhood: in the family I
+was supposed to have talent, so an aunt gave it to me for a birthday
+present, pegs and all, to take into the country and sketch all sorts of
+pretty bits. There was a little stool that went with it."
+
+"It will serve admirably--without the stool," he added, with a smile. "I
+should like you to stand with the folding-door as a background. I think
+we're lucky to have such an interesting stretch of panelling in the
+room. We must get all the light on it we can."
+
+She tripped down the room gaily, and stood as he indicated. Then he
+manipulated the blinds and the curtain till a clear, soft light, melting
+gradually into the surrounding greyer tones, fell on the wood-work, and
+Lady Betty stood illuminated with a suggestion of airy phantasm.
+
+"The face a shade more to the left," he commanded. "There! Now I have
+caught you again."
+
+He worked with an appearance of rapidity. "A very dream of elusiveness!"
+he exclaimed presently. "I must seize it whilst I'm in form."
+
+"Ah, I was just thinking it over," she said gravely. "I am not sure that
+I am really so pleased at being 'elusive.' If my features are not to be
+seized, how are they to be remembered? Definite women have the best of
+it--they are less easily forgotten, I should say."
+
+"That would be true if one had any desire to remember them," he
+returned. "But no," he corrected himself; "it is not true in any case.
+Where there is only one definite set of features to forget, it is
+forgotten wholly and absolutely, once that point is reached. But the
+woman with the elusive features has so many sides that it would take a
+long time to forget them all. And then a man is always so entrancingly
+occupied calling up her picture. You let all the fleeting phases float
+around you. What more engrossing than to choose among these rival
+gleams of loveliness, yet find them all enchanting and precious?"
+
+"You convince me of the absolute unforgetableness of the elusive woman,"
+she laughed. Then, abruptly, she grew grave again.
+
+When he stopped work for that morning, they both inspected the canvas
+critically. "I think I have made the right beginning--you see the spirit
+of the idea is all there."
+
+"With the help of the lesson you gave me before," she ventured.
+
+"If I continue equally well, we shall find oceans of time before the end
+of the month. Wouldn't it be splendid if the Salon received it!"
+
+She was full of joyous delight at the prospect, but, glancing at the
+clock, gave an exclamation of horror. "We are forgetting lunch!"
+
+A minute or two later Wyndham was shaking hands with the old earl, who
+was gazing into his face with apparently affectionate interest.
+
+"This is very pleasant," said the earl. "Why, bless my soul, I haven't
+caught a glimpse of you for--let me see--three or four years is it? What
+has been amiss? Genius starving in a garret?--eh?"
+
+"Pretty good guess," said Wyndham.
+
+"You look fat enough, and sleek enough," laughed the earl. "On the face
+of things, I should have taken it that you've done very much better than
+I have. Now, if you had had to put up with my scoundrel of a cook----"
+
+"There was only one sauce on one occasion, father."
+
+"So you insist, so you insist. Well, you seem pretty straight on your
+feet again, my boy; so all's well that ends well."
+
+They sat down to table.
+
+"Making lots of nice little pictures?--eh?" recommenced the earl
+genially.
+
+"Oh, the one I am making sketches for here is rather tremendous--the
+size of a wall!"
+
+"The size of a wall!" echoed the earl. "My gracious!"
+
+"And now Mr. Wyndham has started a tiny one of me," put in Lady Betty.
+"I'm going to stand to him an hour or two every morning, and we'll send
+it to the Salon next month."
+
+"Bless my soul! That'll be a very pretty little thing."
+
+"It's only one side of me. Mr. Wyndham thinks I've so many sides, and he
+selected just one of them."
+
+"Mr. Wyndham's a genius, but, with all deference to him, I don't see
+that you've any more sides to you than I have or Mr. Wyndham has. We
+have each two sides and no more." He raised his tumbler of egg-and-milk
+and whiskey, and drank deeply. The others laughed.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Wyndham thinks I'm so many persons rolled into one," explained
+Lady Betty, "and that you can take your choice."
+
+"Many persons rolled into one! You are!" said the earl emphatically,
+setting down his glass. "Only I never _can_ take my choice. If Mr.
+Wyndham has succeeded in doing so, I offer him my congratulations. Oh,
+by the way, talking of congratulations, it is true, I suppose, that you
+are going to be married!"
+
+Lady Betty looked down and manipulated her fish.
+
+"One of these days," said Wyndham lightly. "There is no date fixed yet."
+
+"Ah," said the earl. "How is your _fiancée_?"
+
+"Perfectly well," said Wyndham. "First-rate."
+
+"A Miss--er--Llewellyn--wasn't it?"
+
+"Miss Robinson," corrected Wyndham.
+
+"Oh, ah--Miss Robinson! Yes, yes, that was the name--perfectly!" said
+the earl. "Mind you give her my compliments and respects.... By the way,
+Betty, did I tell you I'm sick of the climate? We shall have thrown out
+the Embankment Bill by the end of the week, and then I can turn my back
+on the House. It'll be Egypt or a voyage to Japan--why, I might meet Mr.
+Wyndham on his honeymoon!--eh?--what? I'll go across to Cockspur Street
+this afternoon, and see what's sailing."
+
+"Shall I come with you, father, and help you to make up your mind?"
+
+"If you'll be so kind," said the earl. "It was my intention to suggest
+that you should accompany me a great deal further than that, but I
+changed my mind just now."
+
+"That is very considerate of you, father."
+
+"Not at all, not at all." The earl made a movement of deprecation. "You
+couldn't come till the end of the month, so I simply make a virtue of
+necessity."
+
+"You horrify me, father. You are making Mr. Wyndham think you are sorry
+I am standing to him."
+
+"It's only my fun, little girl. You don't really suppose I want my own
+daughter trotting behind my tail, and keeping her watchful, charming eye
+on all my doings. No, no, no! I had it in mind to suggest your joining
+me as a matter of form. You might have liked it, and I wanted to do the
+proper thing. But I'm only too glad of the opportunity of having you off
+my hands. Mr. Wyndham was really providential. Meanwhile I shall be
+proud to think of the nice little picture of you--I beg your pardon, of
+one side of you--hanging in the Salon."
+
+"If you take one of the long voyages, I presume you'll be away some
+months," ventured Wyndham.
+
+"Probably till the autumn. I assure you my daughter long since washed
+her hands of me. She carries off her maid and disappears for years at
+the time. When I think she's in Paris, somebody says, 'I saw your
+daughter last week at Baden-Baden. How well she's looking!' When I
+imagine she's in Baden-Baden, somebody says, 'I met your daughter at
+Florence last week. How well she's looking!' Nowadays I never speculate
+as to her whereabouts. I give her absolutely _carte blanche_. I'm
+prepared to hear and believe anything of her, and what's more! to
+approve of it and give her my blessing. On one point, you will observe,
+the testimony is unanimous: 'How well she's looking!' That's the one
+settled thing about her--and the sides of her. For I suppose no two
+people ever do see the same side of her." He scrutinised her beamingly.
+
+"Very well, father. It shall be goodbye till the autumn. We shall part
+friends."
+
+"So far as I see at present. We've to get through the week yet. You'll
+lunch with us these days, Mr. Wyndham?"
+
+Wyndham murmured his acceptance, enchanted at being so cordially
+recognised as a friend of the house.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Wyndham told Alice of the happy chance that had presented itself of a
+dash at Lady Lakeden's portrait, and held out the possibility of the
+Salon's finding a corner for it.
+
+"How delightful!" she exclaimed. "Wouldn't it be brilliant to be in the
+Salon as well as in the Academy?"
+
+"It's just a dainty little study, and of course I'm doing it for the
+pure pleasure of the thing. But the committee may not consider it
+important enough for serious consideration, though that depends on what
+I make of it. In any case I'll present it to her afterwards in
+acknowledgment of all their past kindness."
+
+"It's the nicest acknowledgment you could possibly make them. I am so
+glad you thought of it." Her approval of the idea was generous and
+eager. And she was excitedly interested in the Grosvenor Place
+household. She plied him with questions. Was it an old peerage? Was
+there a great country house? Had Lady Lakeden a brother? Then who was
+the heir to the title?--would it pass to a collateral line? He
+enlightened her on all these matters, sketching out for her the grooves
+which the lives of such people generally occupied. And he threw out the
+reflection that it was lucky indeed the renewal of his relations with
+Grosvenor Place had not been delayed any further. He had gone back there
+in the very nick of time, for the house was going to be shut up; the
+earl leaving in a week or so to take a long sea voyage, whilst Lady
+Lakeden meditated departure as soon as the portrait was done. Alice
+remarked that they seemed to be fond of roaming about a great deal, and
+Wyndham pointed out that Lady Lakeden and her father were exceptionally
+placed, were to a great extent emancipated from the "swim." The earl had
+practically retired from society, and his daughter, as a young widow,
+naturally sought distraction in her own way, though of course she could
+float brilliantly back into the world whenever the mood took her.
+
+Since the portrait was going to the Salon, he was naturally compelled to
+tell Alice about it. But the intense way in which she seemed to be
+fixing her eyes on the Grosvenor Place household disconcerted him beyond
+measure. This fresh interest of his had become her interest too; she had
+fastened on it out of all proportion to its visible importance. At
+uneasy moments he asked himself if she suspected that something lay
+behind this apparently simple and innocent acquaintanceship; for her
+insistent and almost morbid return to the subject on the following days
+indicated its amazing hold of her.
+
+Yet, obviously, it was impossible that she should be cherishing any
+ideas of that kind. He flattered himself that his demeanour towards her,
+in this trying and difficult period, was perfect; that he was as tender
+in all their relations as if his heart were truly hers. Nay, he was
+devoting even more of his leisure to her than ever before. And for the
+very reason that the evening journeys to Hampstead had become
+distasteful, he was the more careful that there should be no falling off
+in his attendance there. In no wise could he have betrayed himself to
+his affianced wife. No, she could not possibly have any suspicion of the
+truth: he was satisfied that her preoccupation with the Grosvenor Place
+household all arose out of womanly sympathy on her part; that Lady
+Lakeden's tragic widowhood had touched the depths of her imagination.
+
+Poor Alice! How simple and trusting her surface reading of the facts!
+How ignorant of the brutal complications, as grotesque as incredible, in
+which Nature often wrapped up human unhappiness!
+
+What a terrible tangle it was for them all! Were he free now, how gladly
+would his princess have placed her hand in his! In the old days the
+possible marriage of the brilliant girl had been hedged around with
+extraordinary limitations--to which he too had bowed as to something in
+the order of nature. But, as a widow, she would naturally be expected to
+please herself when matrimonially inclined. By common social
+understanding, even the noblest and richest of widows may permit herself
+a considerable latitude of choice, and no word of criticism can lie
+against her unless she has travelled rather far out of the conventional
+grooves. A marriage between him and Lady Betty now might raise a flicker
+of interest beyond what was usual--considering his notorious
+poverty--but it could call down nobody's censure.
+
+But all this, alas! was but an idle speculation now. The time sped; the
+earl bade him goodbye; and he realised that the end was fast
+approaching. The few days that remained to him of Lady Betty's
+companionship became trebly precious, to be counted with despair! Though
+only an hour or two out of the twenty-four was spent in her society, his
+whole heart and mind, his whole life, were concentrated there. Each day
+he brought her a bunch of lilies of the valley, which she fixed in her
+bosom and insisted he must include in the picture. And during the
+enchanted time they were together, they talked freely and in perfect
+trust. It was more than a friendship--more than an exchange of
+confidences; it was more than the intimacy of a soul with itself--for
+that is not always honest even at its most courageous moments. In this
+free, splendid realm of communion with her, he stood up in all his
+manhood: rising to that simple truth which is yet of the heavens and the
+spaces; measuring himself against great standards; seeing and regretting
+his egotisms, vanities, self-deceptions; valuing himself humbly. The
+depths of Lady Betty's sympathy were indeed profound. She could enter
+into his life, appreciate motives barely realised by himself, and, with
+charming broad humanity, understand and forgive his actions even when he
+felt ashamed of them as unworthy and discreditable. No comedy of
+sentiment here--no playing of the saint on either side; but a noble
+simplicity, a serene good faith, a spontaneous self-revelation!
+
+He recounted to her, as naturally as everything else, the whole history
+of his acquaintanceship with the Robinsons. He spared himself not a
+detail: how he had first dallied with temptation, his moment of panic,
+his specious reasoning, his ignoble surrender! He laid himself bare as
+with a scalpel. Yet of Alice he spoke always with reverence and loyalty,
+dwelling on her devotion, on the little she needed from him to give her
+happiness. And Lady Betty caught his appreciation of her. "I seem to
+know and understand her well," she said. "She is a delicate, untarnished
+soul. She seems more real to me than people who have lived near me all
+my life. And so her heart has gone out to me! I feel I could never bear
+to meet her--the moment would be too terrible! Ah, why did you not speak
+in the old days?"
+
+"I repeat I had not the right. And then I did not dream I was worth one
+single thought of yours."
+
+"I gave you all my thoughts. You were so serious. You sat with knitted
+brow, sternly in your work, and I hardly dared to come near you. You
+seemed remote from women; grimly devoted to your purpose--to triumph or
+to die! At poor me you scarcely deigned to look. And then you
+disappeared, and I knew you would not return."
+
+"I disappeared. I left happiness behind me, and retired into my living
+tomb."
+
+"My heart bleeds for you." There was a pause. Her eyes were full of
+pain. But presently she broke the silence, as if discovering some crumb
+of comfort. "This time at least you will not be going to privation."
+
+"In my heart of hearts privation is preferable."
+
+"Ah, no. Remember it is the call of duty. It is the sacrifice we must
+make for Alice's sake. She is a good woman. Her life must not be
+broken."
+
+"I promise I shall try to make her happy--whatever the cost. But think
+how happy we should have been together, you and I, darling."
+
+"We should have been happy together," she said in a low voice. "It
+would have been a perfect union. But I say again that life is a
+compromise. Our demands are great; we have to accept the little that is
+granted."
+
+"Yet the door still stands open," he mused. "We may yet take our fate
+into our own hands."
+
+"The door stands open, but we turn our backs upon it."
+
+"We are too strong," he groaned. "I am tempted to pray for weakness."
+
+She drew herself up, her face alight with a noble radiance. "Let us both
+be proud of our strength. We have set right above everything."
+
+"But suppose we are mistaken--" he urged tensely.
+
+"We cannot strike her down! No, no, we must not take away her great
+happiness--you have given it to her! I depute you, if you love me, to
+guard her welfare--on my behalf and on your own. Remember, too, she is
+happy with so little!"
+
+"I shall be a loyal husband. But, in the realms that lie outside her
+penetration, you have promised that I may cherish the thought of you as
+an inspiration."
+
+"To speak to you with my own voice--to help you to the strength that
+cannot falter!"
+
+But the end was close upon them. He could not linger over the picture,
+even had he wished. As the last days slipped by his face saddened
+visibly. Lady Betty begged him to bear up. He was so changed in aspect
+that Alice could not fail to notice it.
+
+"There is no danger," he returned. "She has already spoken of it, and I
+have put it down to fatigue. She has seen how desperately I have been
+working for months on end, and she is satisfied I need rest."
+
+One day, he ventured to question Lady Betty about her plans, but she
+replied that they were vague. She only knew that she would travel for
+the present; she would not make up her mind as to details till the last
+moment.
+
+"But even then I should not tell you," she added, with a wan smile. "Our
+parting must be decisive. I shall read of your career, and my mind shall
+be always with you in your work; but I shall not cross your path again.
+There is one last thing I suggest. When you have finished the picture,
+let us spend the whole of our last day together."
+
+"I shall set it apart. We shall consecrate it with our farewell."
+
+"I shall give you the souvenir I promised. I shall keep it till the end;
+and then it will be goodbye."
+
+"Goodbye?" he breathed. "Oh, it is cruel!"
+
+He was shaken again. Some wild rebellion was rising in him, and vainly
+Lady Betty tried to calm him with pleading--even with tears. But she
+revealed only the more her own anguish.
+
+At last she had command of herself again, and put a stern inflection
+into her voice.
+
+"For Alice's sake you must conquer yourself. No, let it be for my sake.
+I put it as the test of your love for me. Otherwise I shall believe that
+your love is selfish."
+
+"I promise I shall conquer myself, but I must have time."
+
+"You make me terribly afraid--you may wound her by a chance word."
+
+"That is impossible. Her mind is serene--no word of mine shall disturb
+it."
+
+But Lady Betty's fears were by no means allayed. She wrote him long
+letters, imploring him to keep command of himself, else she would regret
+bitterly that they had ever met again. They had both fought this
+terrible battle: they were neither of them emerging unscathed, but their
+wounds and hurt were the price of honourable victory. She was sure of
+herself; but was he--the man!--to shrink back when the supreme moment
+came? The thought of loyal duty accomplished would bring equanimity
+hereafter.
+
+"Ah, if all were only a dream!" he exclaimed sadly, as he lay thinking
+of nights. And then he would try to believe that he had not met Lady
+Betty again, had never even heard of her since her wedding-day. He had
+never made the acquaintance of the Robinsons, had never set foot in
+their great ugly house at the corner. Were not all these things the
+fancies of a disordered imagination, and was he not still here in
+Hampstead, in his narrow iron bed up on the gallery? To-morrow he would
+jump up and make his miserable breakfast as usual, would think of
+working without being able to raise a hand, and would potter away the
+hours. And at six in the evening he would see his prosperous neighbour
+from the City go past with noiseless, gentle step, bearing a plaited
+rush-bag with a skewer thrust through it. Yet what a relief to throw off
+the illusions of these latter days, and find himself again as of old,
+free of all the tangle; even though the problem of bread still faced
+him, and the vista of hopeless days stretched away endlessly!
+
+Alas! the morning light, filling his panelled bedroom and revealing to
+his eyes the many luxuries of these prosperous days, testified only too
+convincingly to the reality of recent developments.
+
+And yet, as he turned up the well-known Hampstead street of an evening
+on his way to the Robinsons, he would still struggle again to recover
+the illusion that the old days were yet. Approaching the house as it
+loomed in the near distance through the wintry mist, he would imagine
+himself supremely unconcerned with it. And then he would stop outside
+his own former door, and fumble in his pocket a moment as if to find the
+key. Like lessons learnt after the mind is set, all these later
+accretions to his existence were ready to drop away, to have a shadowy
+relation to him. It made him realise with astonishment how easily he
+might cut the Robinsons out of his life, and proceed as if he had never
+known them. His bond of obligation was more real to him than the people
+to whom he was bound!
+
+He was shrewd enough to see that in his heart of hearts he was sullenly
+and perpetually angry that so much had come to him from so extraneous a
+source. Where his own strength and gifts had failed, these people from a
+world that was not his world, either in thought or mode, had come in and
+brought him prosperity. This galling sense of absolute dependence on the
+Robinsons seemed the deepest humiliation he had known. They had given
+him food when he was nigh starvation; they had given work when the
+prospect of work had vanished--had showered on him benefits and
+kindnesses innumerable. They had restored him to society and to the
+world of art and letters. He owed them the confidence of his bearing
+before the world, the manly swing of his step, the pride of his glance.
+
+That this should be his destiny was horrible! He rebelled and cried out
+with all his might. Oh! to wield the sceptre of destiny himself!--to
+shape the evolution of a brilliant career and merit the crown of a
+great love by his own power and performance!
+
+And yet at the back of his troubled mind there lay in terrible calm the
+stern determination to stand by his obligations. His promise to Lady
+Betty was in no danger. All this feverish agitation was but as the surf
+beating on a granite shore. He knew that he would bow his head in
+resignation; that, after the parting with Lady Betty, he would settle
+down as the most attentive of husbands; acquiescent of an atmosphere of
+physical well-being, yet paradoxically living from hand to mouth, so far
+as his deeper life was concerned; thankful for any morsel of good each
+day might bring him, and looking not beyond its horizon.
+
+Alice should have her happiness, never guessing what turmoil and torture
+two souls had voluntarily undergone for her.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+In the silence and privacy of her room Alice was sobbing her life away.
+Like an opium eater, she had sought magnificent dreams, had surrendered
+herself to beautiful illusions, had duped herself supremely. But the
+awakening was fraught with fever and suffering.
+
+On that memorable afternoon when her father had brought home the
+wonderful announcement that Wyndham was to follow him, Alice had looked
+at herself in the glass, and though her favourite dress lay ready for
+her, she knew he would not of his own impulse bestow a second glance
+upon her.
+
+The evening had come and passed. As by some enchantment Wyndham had
+appeared, was seated at the same table with herself, engaged in intimate
+conversation with the family, left alone to wine and cigars with her
+father; rejoining them in the drawing-room, listening to her playing,
+singing to her accompaniment! Then, lo, he was gone; and she was left to
+ponder on the swift, surprising turn of events. After all these years of
+emotion, the acquaintanceship was an accomplished fact. She was to
+penetrate within his door at last, to become, for the time being, part
+of the very business of his life!
+
+She retired that night still with the sense of miracle; yet infinitely
+grateful to her father for his charming concession to her whim. And her
+first subtle move had been crowned with success! At least there was work
+where work was needed so sorely; work, too, that brought her so near to
+him, annihilating a distance she had reconciled herself to think of as
+impassable, and opening up potentialities of service which her fertile
+wits would not be slow to seize upon. Would it not be a joy to help him
+to a firm footing again, to raise this gifted life of which she had
+watched the long slow sinking! It was miraculous that this privilege
+should fall to her! But everything must appear to flow naturally to him
+of itself; he should never suspect that the unseen hand at work was
+hers, any more than he should ever know that this was what she, who
+loved him, had for years worked out in fancy.
+
+And she!--she should have no thought but the unselfish desire of serving
+him! What matter if she carried in her heart the cold conviction that he
+could never love her--since all she had dared aspire to had fallen to
+her lot! For who was she to cherish vain hopes? She had not the
+commonest touch of beauty; she was hopelessly out of his sphere. She
+felt herself appallingly ignorant and inexperienced. In her easy shelter
+the years had slipped by in monotonous quiet. In the world outside there
+beat a life that was strenuous, entrancing, dramatic--the struggle of
+the realm of affairs, the pomp and colour of courts and society, the
+important events of politics, the field of view that opened in the
+novels, or lay spread behind the footlights of the theatres. Wyndham
+belonged to all this brilliant universe, had walked with firm tread amid
+it all, breathing its airs with an assurance born of right and nature.
+No poverty could destroy his inalienable privileges, could render him
+less by a hair's breadth; indeed, save for the manifest inconveniences
+of the former, poverty or riches seemed irrelevant on that plane of high
+humanity; where differences of fortune were obscured by the highness of
+the humanity, however fertile in distinctions these differences might be
+in a lower world.
+
+But as the acquaintance ripened, as she tasted of the gracious intimacy
+of the long sittings, his perfect kindness, his chivalry, his constant
+solicitude began to undermine the attitude with which she had embarked
+on the adventure. They had become such good friends, and she could not
+blind herself to the fact that he was pressing his personality on her
+beyond what mere courtesy and friendliness demanded. But she still
+fought to stand firm, and her humility was her strength. It was even
+more than her strength--it read for her his doubts and hesitations.
+
+Not that she crudely supposed that, in his conduct to her, he was swayed
+by ulterior considerations. She saw that he had genuinely an affection
+for her, more kind and brotherly than a lover's affection; she knew that
+he was trying to like her better, to raise her in his estimation far
+higher than the truth. And she conceded that his hesitation was natural,
+that she was no mate for him, that his world would openly despise her.
+No, he must not marry her for the safety her fortune would bring him.
+She would marry only for love, and, as that she could never win, she
+would consequently never marry.
+
+She dreaded now lest the situation should take a more definite turn,
+lest he should begin to woo her in earnest. She wished to be left in
+contentment with her deep secret happiness which could never be effaced
+from her life. She had had her way. It was she who had brought him the
+succour he needed; she--of whose existence he had never dreamed, whom he
+had often met face to face yet never glanced at. It was she who had
+rescued for the world's benefit this splendid genius that the world had
+rejected. This was joy enough. To anything else the end must be
+disillusion.
+
+For awhile she lived in terror lest he might speak. But as the work
+progressed, and he became more and more enthusiastic over her portrait,
+she could not but fall a victim to the subtle implication, and begin to
+believe that he must really think more of her than she had ever dared to
+imagine. It was then that her stern control of herself began to slip
+away. Wilfully she shut her eyes to all that she understood only too
+well, and surrendered herself to the spell and wonder of the vista that
+opened before her. It was the best thing that life had brought her, she
+told herself, and in an impulse of pagan desire she was impelled to
+wring from it the last drop of passionate happiness it could afford her.
+Her love for him reached out into new depths; the dull, despairing,
+impossible love of before became a fever, a frenzy, a great yearning
+passion that must pour itself out or kill her.
+
+Then came the supreme moment in which she let the belief that he loved
+her seize entire possession of her. Must he not have for his mate a
+woman who would love him and make him a perfect wife? He was a being
+apart from his own world, devoted to serener and higher ambitions. Had
+she not seen the glow with which he expounded his ideas and purposes,
+forgetting she was a humble, uninstructed listener, and surrounding her
+soul with the sweet unction of the implied perfect equality? Perhaps it
+had dawned upon him at last that devotion greater than hers the world
+could not hold. In his consecration to his high calling he did not need
+a wife to figure brilliantly amid social pleasures and functions, but a
+helpmeet whom perhaps he could not so easily find in those exalted
+spheres; one who needed no pleasures for herself, no triumphs; who had
+no purposes of her own, no desires, save the supreme end of
+self-sacrifice on the altar of his happiness and achievement. Only a
+woman absolutely capable of such self-effacement could understand the
+perfect bliss of it. If every man could find such faithfulness at his
+own hearth, how the world would thrive and grow blessed! And she thanked
+Heaven for the little fortune she could bring him, for this precious
+money to establish his life on a safe and sure footing.
+
+And when he had spoken at last, she, casting away the last doubt, had
+thrown herself headlong into the dream. With her arms round him, and her
+lips to his, she felt that she had always been destined for this high
+bliss, that rendered by contrast the quiet stream of her life a mockery
+of life.
+
+The joyous period of intoxication was all too short. With the sobering
+of the world to its work again in the new year, she, too, sobered a
+little, and the old questioning revived in her. Was it really the truth
+that he loved her? Where was the note of passion she herself had poured
+out so recklessly? His personal magnetism, his urbane, affectionate
+friendliness, the caressing vibrations of his voice, his delicate and
+considerate dealing with the gaps of ignorance she daily revealed--all
+this held her in an invincible spell. But the deep, irresistible
+conviction for which her heart yearned was unmistakably absent in his
+whole relation to her.
+
+Perhaps some terrible struggle was going on within him. Was he recoiling
+in terror sometimes from the thought of the mate he had chosen? Surely
+at times he was arguing himself into acceptance and contentment. What
+meant the strange, furtive glances he sometimes directed at her?--not
+the soft glances of love, but glances bewildering, baffling! She watched
+him with a supernaturally sensitive insight, appraising his every
+expression, following the imagined see-saw of his doubts and
+reassurances.
+
+Yet when he had told her of his meeting with Lady Lakeden again, and of
+the new portrait he had engaged upon, no shade of jealousy had arisen in
+her. Her sense of the calamity that had befallen Lady Lakeden was so
+infinitely distressing that she could have fallen upon her knees and
+prayed. To lose a dear husband after only a few months of wedded
+happiness!--what more crushing grief could a woman's destiny hold? She
+shut her eyes and shuddered, as she tried to realise the depths of its
+meaning. It seemed to her that no wife with the least spark of womanhood
+could recover from such a blow; that sorrow and weeping must be her
+portion for the rest of her days.
+
+She redoubled her devotion to Wyndham, suddenly full of fear lest she
+should have been betrayed into injustice to him out of mere morbidity.
+And her mind lingered gently on the figure of this other woman whom she
+had never seen, but to whom her heart went out in an impulsive flood of
+love and pity. If only she could know her, and let her understand how
+deeply she realised her grief! But Wyndham had made no response to her
+first involuntary expression of this desire, and she was too diffident
+to recur to the point again. Perhaps if she waited patiently he might
+suggest such a meeting of his own accord. But the days went, and Wyndham
+was silent.
+
+And not only silent, but changed. "Yes, yes. He is changed in a hundred
+ways," she cried, "though he does not know he has shown it."
+
+If, for a moment, she had been willing to take refuge in the belief that
+over-sensitiveness and diffidence had been leading her into distrust of
+the situation, her eyes were suddenly too wide open to allow of any
+further indulgence in comfort of that kind. There was no mistaking this
+unprecedented self-abstraction, the curious, far-away expression that
+was almost stereotyped on his features, the continued inattentiveness to
+her words that often required her to repeat her remarks and not
+unfrequently ignored them, so that she was continually shrinking into
+herself, too wounded to insist again. By the side of this, his former
+attitude, little as it had satisfied her, seemed impulsive and
+passionate!
+
+His face was grave and sad for the most part, but sometimes it shone
+with a rapture which she knew had not been inspired by her! He was not
+himself in any way; his smile and laugh had not the old spontaneous
+charm. Every note of his affection rang false. And yet, in form, his
+solicitude and loving care for her remained the same as always. But this
+could not blind her; she knew he was trying his best, but his heart and
+mind were not with her. Ah, well, if he cared for anybody, it was
+certainly not for her!
+
+"Who has drawn him away from me? Who has robbed me?--who has robbed me?"
+
+For days she had pondered and pondered, her mind faltering, her lips
+dreading to whisper the name. Wyndham was painting Lady Lakeden. She was
+young; she must be interesting and beautiful.
+
+"He is in love with Lady Lakeden!" It escaped from her lips at last, and
+then she remained ashen--trembling.
+
+Nay, surely he had loved Lady Lakeden in the old days--loved her
+secretly and despairingly, seeing her often, but too poor to woo her!
+Moreover, Lady Lakeden had then loved another. "Yes, yes, that is the
+truth--the truth!" she cried; "And now he has been seeing her again
+daily, and the old love has been reborn!"
+
+A pall descended over Alice's spirit. What a cruel situation! Here was
+Wyndham pledged to a woman he could not care for, yet in love with
+another whose whole heart was with the dear husband that had been taken
+from her. "He is struggling bravely to be true to me--I see it all
+now--he is breaking his heart. It is my duty to release him from his
+word--ah! no, no!" She shuddered and covered her face, shaken and
+shaken. "Even if I gave him his freedom," she argued presently, clinging
+on to the wreck with might and main, "it would only be freedom to find
+despair. Lady Lakeden loved her husband. I know she is great and true.
+She knows he is mine. I trust her--I must trust her--I will pray for
+strength to trust her. Heaven help me!--Heaven help me!"
+
+A terrible pang of jealousy smote her. Detesting herself for it, she
+tried hard to repress the flood of bitter hatred she felt rising in her
+against Lady Lakeden. Poor Lady Lakeden! She had suffered enough and was
+blameless. She could not help it if Wyndham loved her.
+
+An overwhelming curiosity to know what manner of woman Lady Lakeden was,
+took possession of her. Of course, she was young and beautiful. But what
+colour were her eyes? Were they large and deep and brilliant? What
+expression had she habitually? What colour was her hair? And was it
+abundant? And how arranged? Was she slim and tall? How did she dress?
+And in what costume was Wyndham painting her? Were not these the
+questions that had been a thousand times on her lips, and yet remained
+unuttered?
+
+And why had she not asked of him these questions as clearly and boldly
+as she had thought them? Had there been some obscure suspicion in her
+mind all along, and she had feared to embarrass her affianced husband?
+
+Poor Wyndham! She told herself she had the most perfect understanding of
+his mind. She held him in honour as a noble gentleman, and knew surely
+that he would fret his heart away rather than wound her by word or deed.
+She would have put her hand in the fire for the certainty that he would
+never withdraw from the compact; that he would go through with the
+marriage, and die rather than relax the effort to simulate perfect
+happiness in their after life.
+
+Could she accept such a sacrifice? Could she spoil his life for him,
+when she had only meant to set it straight, and had asked for no greater
+privilege? Would that she had been able, by some miracle, to help him
+from across the old impassable distance without coming into his life at
+all! It was for her to choose--to keep him and all that the future with
+him might hold, or to tell him frankly that she thought it best to set
+him free and return to the simple paths of her old existence.
+
+But, ah, no, she could not give him up--she could not give him up! She
+had possessed his lips, she had possessed his thought and solicitude.
+The echoes of his voice caressed her. Break with him! She shut her eyes
+and shuddered again; her whole soul grew sick, and she writhed in
+agony.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Calling one day and finding her alone in the drawing-room, Mr. Shanner,
+after some moments of unruffled demeanour and honeyed conversation,
+abruptly launched into a piteous outbreak.
+
+"I tell you, Alice, you've made a fine mistake with that swell of
+yours," he exclaimed, his eyes flashing with resentment.
+
+Alice stared at him in deep distress. Ever since the engagement Mr.
+Shanner had been all decorousness and deference. As he broke now through
+his ashen shell of propriety, his sedate person seemed to relapse, to
+stand limp, a trifle greyer, a trifle less well trimmed.
+
+"Oh," she gasped at last, "you are under some misapprehension."
+
+"Come, come, Alice," he said; "don't you suppose I've two eyes--and
+wide-open ones, too?"
+
+"I don't really understand what you're alluding to, Mr. Shanner," she
+returned as coldly as she could find it in her.
+
+"I am alluding to your engagement, of course," he insisted. His tone
+showed he was determined to force the subject on her. "What do you
+suppose the fellow is going to marry you for? Men of his class do not
+come out of their way to look for a wife amongst people of our class.
+You mustn't mind my not mincing words, but it's clear to me he doesn't
+care a fig about you, and that your money is the attraction. There,
+that's plain!"
+
+Alice felt herself turn scarlet. Mr. Shanner suddenly stood revealed to
+her--of roughness and coarseness unendurable.
+
+"I don't understand you," she exclaimed, feeling she was floundering,
+and with an acute sense of her lack of social skill to meet the
+contingency and cut short the interview.
+
+"Oh, yes you do, Alice. Only you are too proud to say so."
+
+"You are mistaken. My intended husband and I are on the best of terms. I
+am very much surprised to hear this from you."
+
+"You mean that for a snubbing, no doubt. Well, I suppose I brought it on
+myself." He smiled uneasily and bit his lip. "Only I did think that,
+being so old a friend of the family, I had the right to give you a word
+of advice when the happiness of your life is at stake."
+
+"Oh! please, Mr. Shanner--I'm very sorry," she breathed, all gasps and
+palpitations. "But really, truly, you're mistaken."
+
+"I have used my eyes and head. I am not mistaken. Everything's all
+wrong, and you know it, Alice. I have been reading it in your face of
+late--I tell you you show it. Give up the swell before things go to the
+devil."
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Shanner," she said, with all the kindness in her tone
+that she could muster, "but if you will get these extraordinary ideas
+into your head, I certainly am not going to fight them."
+
+He smiled wanly, droopingly. "Another snubbing, I suppose. But you
+needn't take it in such ill part. I don't profess to belong to the
+aristocracy: I do profess to be a friend, one of the sort that's to be
+trusted. And I think you'll come to recognise that in the long run.
+Whatever happens, John Shanner's your friend, and when the time comes,
+you'll find him ready to hand. But I earnestly advise you not to delay.
+Throw up all this business before there's mischief."
+
+Alice smiled bravely. "I repeat that Mr. Wyndham and myself are on the
+happiest of terms, though I am sure you mean your advice for the
+kindest."
+
+She took up her stand behind this simple assertion, so that he could not
+beat down her refusal to be drawn into a deeper discussion. By degrees
+he pulled together his decorum, recovered his frigidity, and ultimately
+retired with the dignified utterance, "Well, I hope you are not going to
+be disillusionised, my child, but I have my doubts. At any rate, as I
+say, I stand by you in any case. Only promise me one thing, that if ever
+you find my warning was not mistaken, you will do me the justice to
+admit it."
+
+She thanked him gravely, and assured him that she fully appreciated his
+kindness, and willingly made the promise. She was glad indeed of the
+chance of winding up the interview thus amicably. Yet, when he had gone,
+she felt panic-stricken at this revelation of how openly she had been
+wearing her heart--as if veritably on her sleeve. How fortunate her
+parents had observed nothing yet! But they, of course, were taking the
+perfection of everything so entirely for granted, and were so happy
+themselves over the beautiful romance which had transformed their
+household and their lives, that it was difficult for any suspicion to
+enter their heads. Certainly they had never read any expression in her
+face save that of rapture and contentment.
+
+She must try to control herself. If only, like other women, she were
+more practised in assuming a surface self that won acceptance, that none
+could penetrate!
+
+But Mr. Shanner was so absolutely in the right. Was it really worth
+while going on as at present? Could anything be more unhappy than all
+this uncertainty and perplexity? Something must be done. Things must
+come soon to a crisis.
+
+And then, one morning, some two or three days before the end of the
+month she received a letter from Wyndham, who had dined with them the
+evening before, announcing that he would be absent from the studio the
+whole day practically, as he had made club engagements for the entire
+afternoon and evening. As, too, he would be lunching out, it would not
+be worth her while to come to the studio at all on that day. He was
+sorry he had forgotten to mention all this when saying goodbye, but he
+was scribbling the note immediately on entry, and in a hurry to catch
+the post.
+
+This letter gave Alice food for reflection. She did not attach any
+significance to the alleged club engagements; she had never grudged him
+the occasional evenings he spent in that way, since it kept him in touch
+with the art-world. But in this present instance there was certainly a
+suggestion of anxiety on his part that she should keep away from the
+studio over the day. "Ah--I understand!" she flashed, clenching her
+fingers; "Lady Lakeden's portrait is to be brought there to-day, and he
+does not wish me to see it! She is beautiful--beautiful!--he fears her
+beauty will sting me to jealousy."
+
+He had never wished her to see the portrait! Had he not always turned
+the conversation whenever she had mentioned it? And only last night, as
+if in anticipation of so natural a desire on her part, he had had to
+confess that it was finished, but had added that it was going straight
+to Paris, as he preferred to feel it was safe there in the hands of his
+agent. He had thus led her to conclude that the picture would not be
+passing through the studio at all; but, with his letter now before her,
+she felt certain that his aim was to get the portrait framed, to touch
+it up, and then send it off without showing it to her.
+
+But she had the right to see it, if she so desired, she told herself
+bitterly. If the Salon accepted it, nothing could prevent her going to
+Paris with her mother; though so enterprising an adventure was quite
+outside the habits of their life--a consideration on which he was
+counting, perhaps. But the Salon might not accept it, and in any case
+two or three months might elapse before such a possible visit, and in
+that time who could say how things might turn?
+
+Entrance to the studio was a privilege that had been freely bestowed
+upon her. He had not forbidden her to come; he had merely tried to stop
+her by suggestion and diplomacy. But she would not be denied.
+
+She would meet strategy with strategy: she would take care to arrive
+late in the evening, so as to be alone there. In the afternoon, or
+earlier in the evening, there was the danger of just catching him
+between his engagements, since he would no doubt come home to change.
+
+She would see the portrait at her leisure; she would at last study the
+features of the woman--the beautiful, brilliant woman--who had
+unwittingly robbed her.
+
+"And I have no beauty," she sobbed; "I am plain and insignificant. I
+have no cleverness, no experience; not one little weapon to fight with,
+to win him back to me!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Wyndham had finished Lady Betty's portrait on the previous morning, and
+had taken it back with him to his studio. To-day the frame, a copy of a
+fine old Venetian model, came early in the morning, and Wyndham had soon
+fixed the canvas within it. He was enchanted with the effect. If the
+Salon had only a corner to spare for it, he was certain they would not
+turn it away. And--entrancing idea!--why should not Lady Betty deign to
+come here on this last day, and snatch a glimpse of herself in this
+charming setting which he had selected with such loving interest. There
+was a long day before them, and he might well seize the mood and the
+auspicious moment.
+
+He lingered before his picture, then brusquely tore himself away from
+it, and sat down and wrote instructions to the frame-maker, who was to
+come and fetch it away on the morrow, and despatch it to Paris
+immediately.
+
+For this was his great day; that was to leave with him for ever the
+memory of gracious companionship and irrevocable farewell! The day on
+which he would live for Lady Betty and forget all else! Then she would
+pass out of his life. He strove to face the stern decree. But only a
+blank met his vision. He turned his eyes away; his thoughts should be of
+the day only.
+
+He had hardly considered what their programme should be. But now, on his
+way, he began to ponder it lazily, dwelling fancifully on possibilities
+rather than arriving at anything rigid or definite. They would roam
+about at random, like two sweethearts of the people; their evening they
+would spend at a theatre, no doubt something out of the way, and they
+would find their meals as the bizarre occasion might offer itself. They
+would invest this everyday London with the romantic light of their own
+spirit; they would wander as through a strange capital, and observe
+humanity with a new eye. And then, of course, he must keep before him
+the possibility of the visit to his own studio, in which Lady Betty had
+never as yet set foot.
+
+At midday he rang the bell at Grosvenor Place, and was shown up into the
+great drawing-room. In a minute or two Lady Betty came tripping in. A
+glance showed she was ready to go out at once; her simple coat and skirt
+formed a costume unobtrusive enough for any expedition, and her hat and
+veil matched the occasion to a nicety.
+
+She was radiant with an unaffected gaiety; he could hardly conceive the
+weight of sadness that must lie at the bottom of her heart.
+
+"We shall have a happy day," she said, smiling at the thought of it;
+"something to remember always."
+
+He was quick to grasp her spirit. They were to have this happiness as if
+the day were one of many days, some past, more to come. They were to
+give themselves up to the joy of each other's companionship in simple
+acceptance of the passing hour; not dilating on the occasion as a
+parting; not letting it be overshadowed by the sense of what they had so
+tragically missed in life. Parting there would be; and then sadness
+would descend swiftly enough. Till that bitter moment--sparkle and
+enjoyment! He had come prepared to talk much of themselves; but he saw
+she was wiser than he, and at once fell in with her mood. There would be
+all the rest of his life to lament in.
+
+"Have you thought of any plan?" he asked.
+
+"None," she replied. "To tell the truth, I rather shrank from anything
+definite. 'The wind bloweth as it listeth.' Let us go on without end or
+purpose. That seems to me the ideal way."
+
+"But we are bound to make a beginning. After that the game may play
+itself."
+
+"Let us get away from the London we know; let us go to a romantic,
+wonderful London that we have never seen." She was almost echoing his
+thought. "We shall glide discreetly among the crowds as if we belonged
+to them."
+
+"Then away!" he laughed. "To horse--or rather, to omnibus! Or is it to
+be hansom?"
+
+"Everything in turn, and nothing long."
+
+It was a cold day, yet though the sky was lightly clouded, the air was
+free from mist. As they stepped into the street a few patches of blue
+were visible, and a wintry sunshine filtered down with a pleasant sense
+of promise. The neighbouring houses were for the most part shuttered and
+silent, but the outlook on the great triangular space before them was
+cheerfully busy.
+
+"How unlike the scene of your painting!" she exclaimed. "There is no
+suggestion of drama here, but just the average feeling of the London
+thoroughfare--busy people going their way, and a procession of omnibuses
+mixed up with carts and hansoms."
+
+"Yet my own scene swims before my eyes--I have lived with it so long."
+
+"You have still to live with it," she reminded him.
+
+"If I do not die of it," he answered pleasantly. "Seriously, I came near
+to doing so."
+
+"This omnibus is marked 'Aldgate,'" she flew off. "Now that makes me
+think of Aldgate Pump. I wonder if it goes near the Pump?"
+
+Wyndham jumped on the foot-board, and put the question to the conductor.
+
+"We pass within a yard of it," was the reply.
+
+"Good," said Wyndham. The omnibus drew up, and Lady Betty mounted the
+stairway, and they seated themselves on the roof.
+
+"Look!" he exclaimed. "The clouds are suddenly breaking; it will be all
+blue and sunshine soon."
+
+"A grey ghostly blue, a cold, charming sunshine."
+
+"Yet the promise is splendid after all this winter."
+
+"The promise is splendid," she echoed; "and we are so happy to-day."
+
+"We are so happy," he repeated.
+
+He let himself lapse into a dreamy mood; he was enchanted to have her so
+near him, to feel the afternoon and evening stretching endlessly before
+them--a veritable lifetime of golden moments. Lady Betty's manner
+offered a marked contrast. Hers was a frank exhilaration, an excited
+gaiety, of which he had the full impression; though she kept it in a low
+key, like love's whisper intended for his ear alone. Soon, as he had
+predicted, the sky grew bluer, the sunshine warmer; the traffic and the
+bustle of the streets were cheerfully pleasant to the eye and the ear in
+the fresh day.
+
+"Even the London we know seems delightful," he remarked.
+
+"London, though sometimes impelling to revolt, is always wonderful--it
+has always the fascination of the unknown."
+
+"And is as supremely problematic as the unknowable of the philosophers."
+
+"But it is solid and real, comes to us through all the five senses. Look
+at that strange old man with the tiger-lilies. I wonder how he comes by
+them at this time of year."
+
+"That is one of the wonders of London," said Wyndham. "One sees the
+flowers of all seasons at every season."
+
+"And sometimes the weather of all seasons at every season. Has Aldgate
+Pump a history?"
+
+He confessed to ignorance, though he had an idea that he had read much
+about it in his boyhood, an epoch when he had been fascinated by all the
+odd monuments of the town. He recalled, however, after a time, that
+there was a legend connected with it, not unlike that of the wandering
+Jew.
+
+"Is it actually a pump?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, it's a real pump," he assured her.
+
+"Because I had a suspicion just now; it struck me it might be a sort of
+old coaching-inn or something of the kind. I've often been deceived like
+that, have gone off to see strange things, and have found a
+coaching-inn."
+
+"At least there is the consolation of refreshment at the inn."
+
+"Not a bad idea," she conceded. "It would be a thing to boast about for
+the rest of one's life--to have refreshed one's self at the Aldgate
+Pump."
+
+Both laughed. The omnibus pursued its way with a steady rumble. They had
+turned out of Piccadilly and passed through Waterloo Place, and soon
+after through Trafalgar Square into the Strand, where the scene proved
+much busier. The pavements were thronged; people were pressing forward
+with an appearance of being very much in earnest. A sprinkling of
+tourists, clearly self-proclaimed by their holiday air and the style of
+their attire and grooming, paraded at leisure or gazed into the
+shop-windows. Here and there a young girl, in a picture frock and a big
+hat, tripped along daintily, holding her skirt with a touch that
+suggested Paris, and swinging her little bag from her free hand.
+
+"Actresses going to rehearsal?" hazarded Wyndham, in response to his
+companion's interrogation.
+
+"How charming they are!" she exclaimed. "And they are most of them
+frightfully poor. They struggle for years, and then drop out gradually.
+Fortunately we women have the gift of living intensely for the day. A
+few weeks' engagement, the guinea or two assured for the time being, and
+see how we bloom."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Wyndham reflectively; "life for them, as for many
+others, is pretty much of a game of roulette. They stake their all on
+the table, fortune fluctuates during a few turns of the wheel, and
+then--everything is swept away."
+
+"Away, please, with these sad reflections! Why look too searchingly at
+things? The world is pleasant; why spoil it by examining it? Why turn
+one's eyes willingly away from the good to see the evil?"
+
+"And at any rate the good is as real as the evil," he agreed.
+
+"We must make things contribute to our happiness while we may. All these
+crowds of people have no idea that they are there for our entertainment;
+they do not know, poor things, that we have willed they should be
+masquerading to please us. They have the delusion they are going about
+their own affairs, and they see only an ordinary omnibus, full on the
+roof--that is, if they cared to look at us. To them what more
+commonplace than a journey on an omnibus from Hyde Park Corner to
+Aldgate Pump? Yet, to us, what a whimsical universe it is!"
+
+The omnibus rattled along with a not unpleasing vibration. They passed
+through the heart of the City, swept alongside St. Paul's, and then the
+humour of country cousins took possession of them. They pretended to be
+roused to excitement by all these guide-book regions and monuments,
+affected to be seeing them for the first time and to be recognising them
+from the engravings. Down Leadenhall Street they clattered at last, and
+presently to their surprise the conductor's head appeared above the
+stairway with the announcement of "Aldgate Pump, sir."
+
+They descended. The omnibus passed on, and they stood hesitating, a
+little lost, but greatly amused.
+
+"Here it is!" she exclaimed. "And a street arab in the very act of
+pumping! Why, it's real water."
+
+They contemplated it for a moment or two. "Well, what do you think of
+it?" he asked.
+
+"Thrilling," she admitted. "All pumps are interesting--in these days of
+universal taps. But look at those warehouses opposite, beyond the
+hoarding. Aren't they fascinating?"
+
+"I believe the river lies beyond." Probably no existence had been less
+intertwined with the City of London than his, but he remembered the
+immediate neighbourhood pretty well from ancient wanderings, and he told
+her as an interesting fact that Mark Lane and Mincing Lane lay
+thereabouts.
+
+"I think I have heard of them." Her face lighted with the pleasure of
+recognition. "Indeed, I'm sure I've seen them mentioned in the
+newspapers."
+
+He tried to plumb her knowledge, but found no deeps. She knitted her
+brows prettily, or at least he imagined she did, under her veil. "A sort
+of Latin Quarter--an artist's colony?" she hazarded. "No, wait a bit,
+there was a wealthy, humdrum sort of man I once met, and everybody
+whispered he came out of Mincing Lane. He was not artistic. I give it
+up."
+
+"He imported tea?"
+
+"That's not unlikely," she agreed.
+
+"That's what Mincing Lane is for. And Mark Lane is for corn and
+produce."
+
+"How useful! What a good world it is! I think I like this part."
+
+"Beyond is Eastcheap, famous for groceries, and beyond that again the
+water-side where all these things are landed."
+
+"Let us come to Eastcheap." She was eager to see all the places he had
+enumerated, so he took her through the famous side-streets.
+
+"I certainly do like this part of the world," she repeated emphatically.
+"And do you know, your talk of tea, and corn, and produce, and
+warehouses has made me very hungry. If we stumble up against a charming
+place, we shall lunch."
+
+And, a minute or two later, as they strolled down Eastcheap, at the
+corner of a narrow winding lane, they came upon a sort of café, which
+nice-looking merchants were entering, besides a goodly sprinkling of
+brisk young women. Lady Betty peered in through the door. The place
+seemed pretty full, but a stairway led to regions below. In a box, at
+the head of the stairway, and busily taking the cash, was a charming old
+man of mildest aspect.
+
+Lady Betty declared it all fascinating, especially the part below
+stairs, which had the attraction of the as yet unseen.
+
+Wyndham hesitated. "There is smoking below. You may not like it."
+
+"There are other women going down," she insisted. "I can't resist the
+temptation."
+
+It was an average type of City lunching place, but Lady Betty had never
+before tried the sort of thing, so Wyndham fell in with her whim. Down
+the stairs they went into a spacious cellar, lighted with jets of gas,
+though the sun was still shining outside. Wreaths and clouds of smoke
+floated in the atmosphere, and a clatter of dominoes and crockery
+dominated the buzz of voices that rose from the chaos of people at the
+marble tables. The central tables seemed given up to chess-play, each
+game surrounded by onlookers, all with patient cups of coffee beside
+them. And here and there an exceptional table, laid with a napkin, and
+in possession of vigorous eaters, gave the note of the restaurant.
+Wyndham and Lady Betty found a snug place on one side from which they
+could survey the room; and a neat little waitress, scarcely more than a
+child, came briskly forward to serve them, handing them with a sweet
+professional smile a long slip headed "Bill of Fare." They were glad to
+note that their entrance had attracted no attention. Lady Betty studied
+the bill excitedly. They made their decision, and Wyndham imparted it to
+the waitress.
+
+"Thank you, sir," she said; "And what'll you have to drink, please?"
+
+Again an eager colloquy, with the prosaic result of "two ginger-beers."
+"A true old English beverage," declared Lady Betty, and her approval
+seemed to flash the æsthetic quality into it, to invest it with rank and
+nobility. "Small or large?" persisted the waitress, her tone and
+demeanour of the gravest.
+
+"Oh, large," said Lady Betty, and the girl's face brightened at the
+definiteness of the information.
+
+"Two large ginger-beers--thank you, ma'am," she said, and went off
+sharply, leaving them to their amusement.
+
+Whilst waiting, they surveyed the place at their leisure. "I like it
+here," exclaimed Lady Betty again. "Look at the old chess player there,
+with the bald pate and the eagle's nose. Watch him considering his move,
+with his hand hovering in the air, hesitating, yet ready to swoop down
+to capture a piece."
+
+But the hand did not capture the piece. Instead, the shoulders shrugged,
+an expression of disgust overclouded the face, and the hand descended,
+dashing all the pieces from the board with one sweep. A roar of delight
+broke from the onlookers, and mingling with it from another part of the
+room came a sudden fresh clatter of dominoes, rapidly shuffled.
+
+"What fresh, frank enjoyment! So this is the strenuous commercial life
+of London--gingerbeer and dominoes!"
+
+"A strange set of people!" commented Wyndham. "Study these faces--from
+each shines a different life. I almost want to put my enormous
+accumulation of art theories on the fire, and to paint only human faces
+for the rest of my life."
+
+"Wonderful! There seem at least fifty different races here--to judge
+from the shapes of the skulls and the varying types of features."
+
+"The thought often strikes me as I watch people in the streets or in
+omnibuses," said Wyndham. "No matter how dull or repulsive a human face
+at first sight, I believe it can always be painted so as to be
+interesting, and that without departing from truth."
+
+The waitress reappeared with their lunch which had been simply chosen so
+as to admit of no possible failure, and in their present mood they were
+charmed with it. Lady Betty was enraptured by the experience, and
+chatted in an undertone, every now and then breaking into a spontaneous
+"I am so happy to-day," and flashing him a glance of light and radiance.
+
+They wound up with black coffee, and then the little waitress made out
+the account, which, after leaving her demurely astonished with her big
+silver tip, Wyndham paid to the nice old man in the box at the top of
+the stairs.
+
+"The sun is still shining--look!" she exclaimed.
+
+Wyndham stepped after her into the air gratefully. "It is fresh and
+almost summery. Heaven smiles at us. Shall we stroll down this winding
+lane? I fancy it must lead to the water-side."
+
+"Hurrah for the winding lane!" she said, and stepped out merrily. At the
+bottom they entered a street full of black brick warehouses with cranes
+at work, and huge carts with ponderous horses. "An antediluvian breed!"
+whispered Lady Betty. They strolled along, peering into dim doorways at
+vast interiors where a strange universe of life flourished in the glooms
+amid prodigious collections of barrels and boxes.
+
+"We are almost on Tower Hill," he said suddenly.
+
+"An unexpected fantasy!" she exclaimed, as the Tower of London itself
+came into view at the end of the narrow street, the grey far-stretching
+ramparts looming up ghost-like and romantic. "A mediæval mirage amid all
+this grimy commerce. I wonder if it will vanish presently! But let us
+try the opposite direction now--are we not vowed to-day to the
+unfamiliar and unknown?"
+
+They retraced their steps, and, ere long, lighted on an iron gate that
+led visibly to the water-side.
+
+"The gate is inviting," she said. "I hope it isn't forbidden."
+
+"Ah, here is a notice. I see we shall not be trespassers."
+
+They entered, and, passing through the preliminary alley, found
+themselves on a broad, open gravelled space beyond which flowed the
+water. Save for a couple of pigeons wandering about, they had the place
+all to themselves.
+
+"This is a discovery," declared Lady Betty. "It is as interesting here
+in its way as the Rialto at Venice."
+
+And indeed they had reason to admire. To the right lay the Bridge of
+Bridges, whose endlessly rolling traffic was at this distance softened
+to an artistic suggestion that by no means disturbed their sense of
+solitude. At the adjoining wharf on the left a Dutch boat was being
+unladen, actively, yet with a strange sense of stillness and calm. And
+over all the river and shipping hung a faint grey-blue mist, muffling
+and enveloping all things out of proportion to its density, and
+absorbing the sunlight into a haze that already seemed to foretell the
+chills of the coming twilight of the winter's day. They saw the sun, a
+large red ball, hanging extraordinarily low in the sky over a long squat
+warehouse with symmetrical rows of windows. And across the river, under
+the shadow of the opposite structures, lay strange families of craft and
+barges, moored in the water, or high on the mud; rusty and silent, some
+half-broken up, some swinging lazily, touched with the mellow decay of
+the centuries.
+
+Lady Betty thought it would be ideal to stay here awhile, so they
+settled down on one of the garden-seats, and sat in quiet happiness,
+unheeding of the sharp touch of the afternoon air. More pigeons flew
+down from neighbouring roofs and walked tamely around them. And from all
+the mighty activity of surrounding London, that beat strenuous,
+feverish, far-reaching, there flowed to them only a serenity, an almost
+phantasmal calm: they were alone, supremely alone--far from their world
+of everyday existence.
+
+The time slipped by deliciously. Their enjoyment was as spontaneous as
+of two children at play. And children they were in the perfect
+simplicity of their happiness. They watched the afternoon deepen, the
+haze of sunshine weaken and yield to greyer moods; they rose, too, and
+moved along the edge of the waters, and examined the shipping and
+barges. They spoke to the pigeons, gave them names, endowed them with
+romances; they spoke to each other endearingly, yet still as the two
+children who had played together always, who had wandered into this
+strange world, and were as enchanted with it as with each other.
+
+At last they realised the light was already fading; the mist on all
+things was ghostlier, and damp in the throat and nostrils. Now and again
+a spasmodic wind caught up dry leaves and swirled them around playfully.
+Lady Betty gave a little shiver.
+
+"Night will soon be on us," she said. "A million points of light will be
+springing up as by magic. It would be enchanting to stay and watch the
+darkness deepen and the river-fog steal down; to sit here through the
+mysterious hours, and study the shadows and silhouettes, and listen to
+all the strange sounds of the night, and watch all those lights glimmer
+on and on, till at last they show yellow in the pale dawn, and life
+again is swarming over the bridges. Must we go back, dear?--we have left
+our world ever so far away--and years ago, was it not, dear?"
+
+A sadness had descended on them both. With the approach of evening, they
+could not but feel the precious time was fleeting; they could no longer
+immerse themselves with such wholeheartedness in the simple appreciation
+of the moment. The terror of the parting to come rose in the hearts of
+both. Yet they made a brave resistance.
+
+"Come, darling," she said at last; "the hours still belong to us. We
+have indulged our day-mood. Let us search for something fresh now; our
+good star shall watch over us and send us happy adventures."
+
+So they passed again into the street, and, absorbed in their talk, were
+scarcely aware whither they were turning. They knew they were in a
+network of by-ways, flanked by warehouses and offices, and sometimes
+they stumbled on terraces of decrepit old dwelling-houses. They were
+vaguely conscious that they were leaving the river far behind, and that
+they must have crossed Eastcheap again at some narrower part without
+recognising it. After some leisurely wandering they came into a more
+important thoroughfare with pretentious edifices, yet with archaic
+touches here and there, the relics of another epoch, worn and decaying,
+yet more suggestive of coming stone buildings to supplant them than of
+the glory of their own century.
+
+At a street-corner, under the light of a lamp that was still pale in the
+gathering dusk, a shivering flower-seller with a red shawl over her
+shoulders stood with a basket of deliciously fresh violets, and Wyndham
+stopped to get a big bunch of them put together for his companion. Lady
+Betty was immensely gratified; she breathed in the odour of the violets
+with rapture, then fastened them in her bosom. She was herself again
+now, overflowing with good fellowship, and amused at every trifle. He
+caught her exhilaration. "We shall fill our evening with a whirl of
+gaiety!" he cried. "Rockets and fireworks; I wonder if the good star you
+spoke of will be kind enough to set down in our path some unheard-of
+theatre."
+
+She suggested they should study the hoardings as they went along, and
+both undertook to keep a look-out. But they were absorbed again in each
+other, having only a vague pleasurable sense of the crowded roads into
+which their steps now took them. Eventually they were in a main
+thoroughfare, with bustling shops brilliantly alight, and endless lines
+of stalls a-blazing; the roadway full of traffic and tram-cars and
+amazingly gigantic hay-carts, the pavements thick with a working
+population pressing forward and forward in multitudes. It was night now,
+absolutely; but it had stolen on them so gradually, they were astonished
+it was so definitely manifest. The hours of light were fresh and vivid
+in their minds, they could almost hear and feel the unending clatter of
+the omnibus that had carried them across the town, and the riverside
+picture was still before them. The change that had come over the world,
+this transition to absolute darkness illumined by street-lamps and
+flaring naphtha, seemed mystic and amazing. And a subtle warmth from
+all this illumination and from all this press and bustle, from all these
+close-packed moving vans and cars and hay-carts, pervaded the wintry
+air; a sense of exhilaration, too; a sense of life in all its unrefined,
+joyous reality, intense and vigorous, accepting itself unquestioningly,
+too sure of the worth of the gift ever to doubt it--even as the hungry
+ploughboy does not speculate metaphysically about the fat pork on his
+plate, but simply falls thereon and devours it.
+
+"Book-stalls!" cried Lady Betty, "and piled up ever and ever so high.
+And look, rusty Wellington boots on the one hand, and rusty tools and
+bits of iron on the other."
+
+They stayed a few minutes, and turned over some of the books, as
+interesting and varied as those in any more pretentious bookman's
+paradise. They both grew selfishly absorbed, each striking out an
+individual path, though remembering the other's existence at moments of
+extraordinary interest. In the end each became the possessor of a
+volume. Wyndham's was a facsimile of the first edition of the "Pilgrim's
+Progress," a fattish octavo with the loveliest of wide margins, and the
+exact reproduction of the original engravings. Lady Betty's treasure was
+an old copy of the Dramatic Poems of Browning. Each paid the same
+one-and-sixpence, and as they bore away their prizes they discovered
+that each had been inspired by the same motive--of giving the other a
+memento of this wonderful day. Laughingly they exchanged their volumes,
+and the presentations thus formally carried out, Wyndham took possession
+of the Bunyan again in the mere capacity of carrier.
+
+At last a hoarding with a great glare of light on it.
+
+Wyndham let his eye roam over the posters. "The very thing," he cried.
+"A fine old-fashioned melodrama!"
+
+"Splendid!" echoed Lady Betty, gazing at the many-coloured scenes that
+promised a generous measure of thrills and emotions.
+
+"We shall have a box to ourselves," said Wyndham. "As you see, it is not
+so very extravagant. Only there is the problem of dining."
+
+"What healthy little children we are!" she laughed.
+
+"Oh, we must dine," he protested.
+
+"I have faith," she declared. "Our good star has served us till now, it
+is not going to desert us. We shall light upon some quaint place
+presently."
+
+The confident prediction justified itself, for, later on, they stopped
+before a Jewish restaurant that proudly announced itself as "kosher."
+And it proved immediately irresistible to the wanderers, who entered
+straightway, and found themselves in a simple sort of room with freshly
+papered walls, full of neatly laid tables, the very antithesis of the
+familiar formal restaurant of ornate intention. The place was empty of
+diners as yet--no doubt it was early for the usual clients; but the
+proprietor, a grave bearded personage in spotless broad-cloth and with
+the air of an ambassador, come forward bowing profoundly, and escorted
+them to a choice corner. Through a half-open door at the back they had a
+glimpse of a neat, comely Jewish woman busy amid pots and pans, whilst a
+boy and a girl, who both looked good and intelligent, were industriously
+doing their lessons at a side-table. The host waited on the adventurers
+in person, taking the dishes from a younger and shyer assistant who
+brought them from behind the scenes.
+
+Despite the magnificent gravity of his presence, their host turned out
+to be an unaffected human being, whom they encouraged to talk of his own
+affairs, and who was pleased at their manifest interest in his homely
+establishment and in his little family. His wife and he worked together,
+and it was her cooking on which they were now being regaled. Their
+favourable verdict gave him an almost naïve gratification; a radiance
+and an illumination broke brilliantly across his features. He told them
+the Jewish names of the various dishes, but though they repeated them
+sedulously, the strange, charming words would not remain in their heads
+a moment. Meanwhile the kitchen was being stimulated to a display of
+delicate skill and finesse; the fish was as good, declared Lady Betty,
+as anything she had tasted at the Maison d'Or. A few other clients began
+to appear--a long-bearded Russian, carefully dressed, accompanied by a
+simple, buxom daughter of rosy complexion and deep, serious, aspiring
+eyes; then a middle-aged man, with a leonine mane that was dashed with
+grey and suggested the poor composer of genius; and finally a spectacled
+German in a threadbare cut-away coat, carefully brushed, who suggested
+unrequited scholarship. But all these, after the first distinguished bow
+and salutation on the part of the host, were left to the attentions of
+the assistant; the host himself being magnetised by the unaccustomed
+guests with whom he was deep in conversation. But, though he waited on
+them perfectly, there was yet conveyed in his bearing such a touch of
+distinction and courteous affability that they were sensible as of an
+honour that was being bestowed upon them. And that he was no mere
+small-souled tradesman was abundantly evident when he brought them a
+bottle of claret with the romantic recommendation that it had been grown
+on Palestine soil, and that, in its passage from the wine-press to their
+table here, it had never left the hands of his compatriots. He handled
+the bottle with pride and certainly emotion, and begged them to accept
+of it, and to allow him to fill their glasses. They were touched by the
+invitation, though they were naturally unwilling to accept such a gift
+from a poor man, but he understood their doubts and laughingly explained
+that, as he did not possess a wine licence, he could not possibly accept
+payment; a piece of reasoning which drew them into the laugh and
+disposed of their hesitations.
+
+They made him join them, however, and they drank to the prosperity of
+the Palestine colonies, irrelevantly but charmingly coupling the toast
+with that of their host and hostess, the children and the restaurant.
+The other visitors smiled quietly, and, with conspicuous good breeding,
+scarcely turned their eyes towards this convivial table, the Russian
+conversing in an undertone with his daughter, and the musician with the
+scholar.
+
+And at the end the host did not give himself any false airs, but made
+out their modest reckoning and handed Wyndham the change, all with the
+same courtesy and with a distinction of manner which seemed to lift
+trade to a higher plane than it occupies in Occidental prejudice. And as
+the wife appeared hovering with a shy smile in the kitchen doorway, she
+was invited to join the group, and warmly complimented on her culinary
+skill. Then Lady Betty asked for the children, and presently their
+bright faces were illumining the room with a warmer and sweeter light.
+Wyndham and Lady Betty spoke to them a little, then Lady Betty slipped a
+fragile ring with a single small fine pearl off her finger, and put it
+on the girl's. The little thing blushed and hung down her head. But the
+jewel became the tiny hand immensely. Meanwhile the boy's eyes were
+glued on the books.
+
+"I can see you like books, little man," said Wyndham.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the child, "better than anything else."
+
+"His ambition is to become a scholar," put in his father proudly.
+
+"He is to have the Browning as a memento," said Lady Betty. She handed
+it to the child. "Keep this volume carefully. When you are older, I am
+sure you will love and treasure it." Then she unfastened her big bunch
+of violets and pressed the flowers on his mother, who took them shyly
+but coloured with pleasure.
+
+When they were in the street again they walked on silently for a while.
+Wyndham saw that Lady Betty had been deeply touched; that something
+wonderful had been revealed to her of which, perhaps, she had never
+caught a glimpse in her whole existence. Presently she turned to Wyndham
+with a quiet smile that was the natural reflection of her thought.
+
+"You do forgive me, dear," she asked, "for my arbitrary disposal of
+your Browning, my own present to you!"
+
+"You sacrificed my gift of violets, so we are quits."
+
+"After this we shall scarcely need any memento of the day--who could
+ever forget?" Then with a little thrill of joy: "But I've my Pilgrim all
+the same." She touched the book lovingly as he held it, and he was aware
+of her movement as of a caress. It was his gift to her, and what a world
+of affection in this implication of the value she set on it!
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+They found the theatre easily, and, from their snug box, enjoyed a most
+lurid melodrama, which amply redeemed the promise of the hoarding, and
+was played by a vigorous company who seemed in no wise dismayed by
+yawning spaces and a thin scattering of audience. Nay, the thrills were
+even more than the adventurers had reckoned on, for pistol shots
+suddenly rang out in the third act, and Lady Betty clutched hard at the
+curtain of the box. She presently realised, however, that the iniquitous
+foreign nobleman with the fur overcoat and large moustachios, whose
+veiled hand had directed the remorseless persecution of the good and
+righteous, had at last paid for his misdeeds, and with this passing of
+the villain Lady Betty found that her sense of poetic justice was
+abundantly satisfied; though the luckless heroine, appearing on the
+scene just then, and incautiously picking up the fallen pistol, was at
+once arrested as the manifest murderess. Then the curtain went down, and
+Lady Betty rose.
+
+"We must not stay to the end. Our day is over, and I want to give you
+the promised souvenir of our brief friendship."
+
+There was a catch in her voice, and he understood that the sob had been
+suppressed with difficulty. He felt it was for him now to be strong; to
+set the note of stoic resignation, even as she had led off their
+adventures with a mood that had made this day the most wonderful of all
+his life.
+
+"Ah, your strange, strange souvenir!" he laughed. "You must admit I have
+waited patiently."
+
+"It was very wicked of me," she admitted. "But I shall keep you tortured
+with curiosity till the moment I give it to you. I have it at home. We
+had better drive back all the way, if we can find a vehicle."
+
+They slipped out of the box and along the corridor and into the open
+road. It was a keen night, but very clear. The perspective of street
+lamps stretched endlessly on either hand. There was a plentiful
+sprinkling of people about, and the tram-cars were still passing. At the
+kerb were a few cabs, waiting for possible clients, so they selected the
+smartest of the vehicles; and the driver, who had been standing flinging
+his arms about for warmth, climbed into his seat, stolidly indifferent
+that "fares" from the theatre should wish to go so far afield into the
+regions of the elect.
+
+No doubt the horse was glad to be off, for they started at an
+astonishingly brisk pace. Outside lay the endless road and all the
+shuttered world of streets and houses, over which still hung the romance
+of their splendid day. Quietly they had their last glimpses, as if
+fearing to speak, and yet thrillingly conscious of their proximity to
+each other. Lady Betty was sunk in sadness; as if she recognised now
+that any affectation of cheerfulness was utterly vain. And Wyndham was
+thinking of the definite moment of parting. He had resigned himself to
+saying "goodbye" at the door of her home; not daring to suggest now that
+she should visit his studio, even for the first time and last--since the
+chance had not naturally arisen in the course of the day's wanderings,
+and she had not even expressed the desire for it. Indeed, in all these
+weeks she had thrown out no hint of such a wish, and he had felt that
+she considered the ground as within Alice's absolute sphere, and would
+not intrude on it. No doubt many mingled shades of feeling went to
+create this attitude of hers. Still, Wyndham, having dreamed of her
+coming there on this last day, was to that extent unsatisfied. Time and
+again the suggestion mounted to his lips even at this eleventh hour, but
+he had not the confidence to let the words fall.
+
+Perhaps they had both fallen into reverie, for Wyndham found himself
+saying suddenly, "Why, here is the Bank of England!" And Lady Betty
+started, too, astonished at the stillness and the solitude here in the
+heart of the City.
+
+"The night seems darker now, and how ghostly and silent the lights are!"
+she said. "The sky has clouded. Goodbye, dreamland," she added in
+meditation. "I shall never dare revisit the ground we have covered. I
+don't want to see it again; I couldn't bear it. But I shall always think
+and dream of it."
+
+He dared not answer. The least false note, and she would be unnerved.
+Since the parting had to be, let them grip hands silently for the last
+time, almost without realising it; let them go off as if they were to
+meet again on the morrow--as in so many partings that life itself brings
+about.
+
+And as they were borne westwards, signs of life began to appear again;
+as they approached the Strand they came full upon the torrents of
+population pouring out from their amusements. At Trafalgar Square the
+town was alive with masses of hansoms in motion that broke into jets and
+streams flashing and darting into all the avenues. They seemed to have
+returned into this familiar, dazzling London of the night as from a long
+journey. They were giddy with the impression of it all, and winced as if
+they had long grown disaccustomed to it. But, definitely, they were at
+home again; soon the houses of Grosvenor Place would loom up before
+them, though somehow their everyday universe had taken on some subtle
+quality of unreality since the morning.
+
+And yet how small the distance they had gone afield, how soon
+annihilated! Up St. James's Street went the cab, alongside the Green
+Park, and in a few minutes it had pulled up in Grosvenor Place. Wyndham
+sprang out with a forced alertness, and helped his companion to descend.
+The house was quite dark. Lady Betty led the way to the door-step and
+produced a latch key from her purse. Wyndham stood by, strained and
+nervous.
+
+"You must come in to receive your souvenir," she said. "You have well
+deserved it," she added with a brave smile.
+
+He followed her in as she pushed the door open; then she switched on the
+light. "You had best wait in the dining-room, I shall join you again
+presently."
+
+Wyndham stood alone in the spacious room, with a sense of chill and
+desolation. The thought of his marriage and life to come flashed on him
+with a stroke of terror. Suddenly he shivered. Ah, it was bleak here in
+this deadly, all-pervading stillness. The very lights seemed to flood
+the room mournfully. How tired he was! Everything seemed to swim before
+him.
+
+And then he was aware she was in the room again, smiling at him and
+exhibiting a package. Her presence seemed to revive him.
+
+"At last I am to be enlightened," he murmured.
+
+"I am afraid you are doomed to be disappointed," she said, as she came
+and stood by his side at the table. "I have made such a mystery of it,
+whereas, no doubt, you will find it trivial."
+
+"You said it was a weird idea. I am sure it is a charming one. Whatever
+it is, you know what it will be to me."
+
+"I know, darling," she said, suddenly grave again.
+
+She bade him cut the string and open the package. At last, as he was
+removing the many wrappings, "It is an old door-knocker," she said; "the
+figure of a lovely grotesque old wizard, wrought in bronze. I came
+across it on the door of a fifteenth-century house in Delft a year or
+two ago, and it so fascinated me that I bargained for it with the owner.
+It has ever since remained one of my pet possessions, and I at once
+thought of it for you. Tell me truly what you think of it!"
+
+Wyndham held up the strange bronze man, slim and long, with fantastic
+bearded head, and grasping in one hand a rod that merged into a huge
+serpent that lay coiled round the body. The two legs were welded at the
+bottom into one big foot, the heel of which formed the hammer. It was a
+piece of grotesqueness worthy of the East, finely and subtly modelled,
+and quaint rather than grim in its suggestiveness.
+
+"A masterpiece!" he said at last. "I have never seen anything of the
+kind to match it."
+
+"I should say it is by an artist of at any rate the early renaissance,"
+she ventured, her face agleam, for she had awaited his verdict with
+anxiety. "The modelling is so careful and scientific."
+
+"Those were the days when artists still thought only of their work, and
+so much forgot their own existence that they took no pains to proclaim
+themselves to the world. The work of the so-called dark ages remains,
+the artists lie unknown and unheard of, if indeed they were known to the
+world at any time."
+
+"You will set up my wizard on the door of your house. Every time you
+hear it you will think of me as floating there like a spirit. Isn't that
+weird? I have the idea that if an enemy should touch it, you would
+somehow know at once, and be on your guard. Oh, yes, I was convinced it
+was a magic knocker the moment I saw it."
+
+He was still staring at it gravely, as if he, too, felt some eerie
+quality in it. She looked at him, then broke into laughter. "Aren't we a
+charming pair of children, taking our own make-believe so seriously?"
+
+He laughed, too, though uneasily. "It is good to be children again."
+
+"Like all good things, it is cut short so soon," she responded
+meditatively.
+
+He replaced the old wizard in its wrappings. "It is true," he murmured,
+pale and haggard. "Time is flying."
+
+"Ah, well," she said with a catch in her breath.
+
+They were looking at each other brokenly. The air echoed and echoed with
+the "goodbye" that was not spoken.
+
+He took her hand in his. "Princess," he whispered huskily, "I had
+dreamed of your seeing my studio ere we said goodbye. It would be for
+the first time and last, remember. Won't you come with me now,
+dear?--the merest glimpse--if only to see where your magic knocker is to
+hang--You understand, dear?"
+
+Her eyes glistened. "Yes, I understand, dear. I will come with you."
+
+"This is one of the kindest things that even your life will hold!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+So again they were in the street, and the door swung to behind them.
+Wyndham was carrying his package, unexpectedly heavy, all concentrated
+weight, like a dumb-bell. The point caught her attention, and in a flash
+she changed again, was once more the amused laughing comrade, even
+though the sky was clouded now and tiny specks of rain flew in their
+faces.
+
+"A midnight expedition!" she cried. "Let it be a hansom this time."
+
+At the corner of Knightsbridge they found one, and they were off again
+at a trot; a fact so astonishing that they could hardly grasp it. And
+then, instead of feeling broken with fatigue at the end of a long day,
+they found themselves fresh and spirited, as at the beginning of a new
+adventure.
+
+Soon they were cutting down Sloane Street, and then Wyndham suggested
+they should go the more interesting way round, so as to take in the
+Embankment, and drive into the Tite Street at the river end. It would
+leave a pleasanter impression with her, he argued, and Lady Betty
+readily assented. He gave the man the word, but straightway again the
+pair were deep in conversation, and lost all sense of the outer world.
+
+Some minutes passed. Suddenly their driver gave a shout, the hansom
+jerked violently, and Lady Betty, clutching at Wyndham's hand, saw a
+woman just step back in time from under the horse's head. The driver
+cracked his whip and shouted something angrily, and then the hansom
+moved on again. Wyndham stared out into the night. He saw the line of
+lights gleaming along the parapet of the river, and recognised they were
+within a short distance of Tite Street. But the woman was already lost
+in the gloom.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+At the table that evening, Alice Robinson announced that she was going
+to meet Wyndham immediately after dinner. Had her parents not been
+accustomed to her departure at such summary notice, they might have
+observed the touch of embarrassment that accompanied it. For, although
+the expedition had been planned and considered for twenty-four hours on
+end, Alice found the initial falsehood singularly agitating. Painfully
+conscious of this lack of sangfroid, and fearful of betraying herself,
+she felt she must escape from the house as soon as was plausible. So, a
+little later, she rose in feverish haste from the dinner-table, and went
+to her room to put on her wrappings. No one was to wait up for her, in
+case she might be late, she said; she was taking a latch-key as usual.
+Then she slipped out of the house, and went down the street rapidly.
+
+Some little time had elapsed before she had control of her wits and
+began to reflect. She had been impelled to start far earlier than she
+had calculated, and thus she undoubtedly ran the danger of finding
+Wyndham there, if she went straight to the studio. It was half-past
+eight; by taking various omnibuses she could fill out the time and be
+there by half-past nine. But even that seemed too early--he might be
+only just on the point of going out to his club engagement. No, to be
+absolutely safe, she would not venture actually to intrude till ten
+o'clock.
+
+However, she decided to make the journey at once, and to pass the
+remaining time in that neighbourhood. So she mounted the first omnibus
+that came along, and, once settled down for the long drive, she drew a
+deep breath of relief. Now that she was definitely on the way, some of
+the stress and pressure seemed to leave her, and the expedition seemed
+less terrible. She pictured herself stealing down Tite Street, standing
+nervously on the opposite pavement in the shadow, and looking up to see
+if the studio were illuminated. Even if all were dark, Wyndham might
+still be dressing in the room at the back; for, from the state of the
+hall, nothing could be deduced, as often he would not take the trouble
+to light the oil-lamp on which he at present depended. No, it would be
+certainly more prudent to wait long enough for certainty. Should she
+once break in upon him, she knew he would take good care she should not
+see the picture; for no doubt he had taken measures against such a
+surprise visit.
+
+Immersed in these reflections, Alice was dimly aware of the miles of
+streets through which she was being carried. Indeed, she forgot to
+change omnibuses at Oxford Street, and was borne some distance out of
+her way before she discovered the omission. The whole town seemed to her
+like a dream; the street and the studio at her journey's end were all
+that existed for her. And even when she gazed at the world around her,
+it refused to take on any reality; the people that were abroad, going
+their way and standing out brilliantly in the night wherever a blaze of
+light fell upon them, seemed all strangely irrelevant. The only figures
+that mattered were her affianced husband and the beautiful, sad woman of
+stately presence, whose loveliness and nobility had drawn him from her.
+She knew now she hated Lady Lakeden--definitely, terribly. It was
+shameful, it was wicked--to hate like that! Lady Lakeden was blameless,
+and had not the least idea of all this suffering which her loveliness
+had caused to a fellow-woman, and to Wyndham, too. Yet how good it was
+to let this mad fury against Lady Lakeden develop in her heart!
+
+She pictured the portrait as standing with its face to the wall,
+unobtrusive, even lost, amid the hosts of other canvasses. With what
+terrible eagerness she would dart on it, turn it again, and let the
+light fall on it! At last she should gaze on the face, should satiate
+her consuming curiosity!
+
+At Sloane Square she alighted, deciding to eke out the time by walking
+the rest of the distance. As she plunged into the heart of Chelsea, and
+was so sensibly near her journey's end, her pulse beat faster, her
+breath came irregularly, and again her whole mind was concentrated
+vividly on her goal. The streets through which she passed were almost
+deserted. The old houses, the gardens, the stretches of brand-new
+buildings, the great Hospital itself, were all vague silhouettes; above,
+the stars were keen, but her eyes were fixed rigidly before her.
+
+At the corner of Tite Street she stopped to draw breath, for her heart
+was now thumping painfully. At the same time she felt almost afraid to
+set foot in the street itself. The hesitation was unexpected; she had
+imagined herself going straight to the studio, all of the same impulse.
+But here a sense of wrong-doing came upon her; the underhandedness of
+the whole proceeding stood out in that moment, curiously revealed,
+strangely impressive. A strong temptation assailed her to turn, to run
+off with all her force, to go back home. But she set her teeth, again.
+No, she must not go back without seeing Lady Lakeden's portrait. She
+must not yield to these moments of cowardice. It was stupid. Other women
+dared much greater things; would hesitate at nothing, however false and
+ignoble, to gain their own end!
+
+She crossed to the opposite side, and flitted down the street like a
+shadow. She had so effectively lengthened out her journey that it was at
+last nearly ten o'clock. Wyndham's whole house was dark, and she had
+little doubt but that he was already out. Yet she wanted to be
+absolutely certain, so she moved on again, and sauntered off into a
+network of neighbouring streets. But she was too impatient to go far
+afield, and, after a few minutes, she retraced her steps till once more
+she found herself looking across the street at the silent house that lay
+all in deep shadow. How dark and deserted; how unnaturally still the
+whole quarter! Then tramp, tramp, tramp, came the heavy foot of a
+policeman, and she made him out dimly approaching her. She crossed the
+road, nervous indeed of any human scrutiny, and walked on briskly, only
+venturing to turn back when he had finally passed out of the street.
+Now, she told herself, was the moment.
+
+With every muscle tense, her heart beating now with terrible strokes, so
+that she felt she might fall swooning at any moment, she approached the
+house, and mounted the few steps that led to the doorway. Her key was in
+her little purse-bag, and she extricated it tremblingly. At last she had
+the door open, gave a last, quick, furtive, glance around, and then
+stepped into the hall. For a moment she stood listening, her ears
+intensely on the alert for the least sound in the house. But the sense
+of absolute emptiness was too profound: the measured ticking of the tall
+hall-clock seemed to be sounding a curiously vigorous note. She let the
+door slam behind her, and moved forward a step or two, her feet sinking
+into the deep Turkey carpet that she herself had chosen; then she sank
+on a hard oak chair, and sat there gratefully, trying to master her
+breath, and waiting for her heart to thump itself through sheer
+weariness into a gentler measure. She unfastened her wraps and threw her
+coat open, for from head to foot she was burning. She did not note the
+time that passed, but when she rose again with a start she heard from
+some neighbouring church clock the single stroke of a quarter. She
+hesitated no longer, but determined to go up at once to the studio.
+
+But first she lighted the hall lamp. Now that she was here she intended
+to take possession openly, as was her right. If he should come back
+suddenly, he at least should not imagine that she was there in secret.
+But the cunning of the reasoning gave her a twinge of shame; she knew
+that she was throwing dust in her own eyes in thus spouting of her
+right. Admit at once that this liberal illumination was a piece of
+craft, was intended to maintain the surface of innocence that was the
+cover for woman's guile from time immemorial. Well, so be it! She had
+been a child all her life. If perhaps she had been less truly innocent,
+even she might have kept the man who had slipped from her. She was
+graduating in womanhood now; how splendid it was to be unscrupulous, to
+do absolutely what you wished, yet skilfully maintain the blind belief
+and confidence of those you tricked! What great power, what joy could be
+gathered for yourself that way! Yes, that was the only thing for woman
+in this world; otherwise she was left to rot!
+
+And, as if to emphasise the conviction, she deliberately lighted a
+second spare lamp that stood in the hall, so that the spaces were
+illumined resplendently. Then she mounted the flight of stairs, letting
+her hand trail along the graceful sweep of balustrade, and pushed open
+the door of the studio.
+
+Peering into the darkness, her eyes at first could distinguish nothing
+save the objects in the spaces near her, as some of the light flowed up
+from below. But presently she was able to distinguish the familiar
+furniture, and cautiously felt her way across to the mantelpiece. Soon
+two powerful lamps were in full flame, and she sat down again to rest
+for a minute, whilst her eyes wandered round seeking for the portrait
+that was the object of her pilgrimage. She did not remove her coat and
+wraps, although, spacious as the room was, the atmosphere felt
+oppressive and the slow fire, banked up with ashes, seemed to give out
+an immense heat. Yet she felt singularly at leisure, in full possession
+of her purpose.
+
+Obviously Lady Lakeden's portrait was not on any of the easels; nor
+could she distinguish any fresh unit amid these many canvasses, all
+individually familiar to her--like a card-sharper, she could identify
+any one of them immediately from its apparently featureless back. Her
+first feeling was one of astonished disappointment, and she rose now,
+ready to institute a closer search. The possibility of being baulked of
+her purpose stirred a sudden rage in her. She no longer knew herself. "I
+am mad--mad," was the thought that echoed through her brain. "But if I
+am," she reasoned grimly, "my sufferings all these weeks have made me
+so. I would sooner die than endure this all over again." Then she set
+about examining all the canvasses, turning them one after the other to
+the light, in the vain hope that her too accurate knowledge of them
+might prove in some instance mistaken. But in vain! Was it possible that
+the portrait was already on its way to Paris?
+
+But wait, was there anything behind the screen so carelessly sprawling
+in the corner there under the great window? In a moment she had dashed
+across, and had half-dragged, half-flung it out of its place. Ah! she
+could almost have screamed with fury at Wyndham's cautious
+foresight--this unmistakable provision against an accidental visit from
+her. It was then true; definitely, absolutely true! The man whom she
+loved to madness, who had professed to love her for herself alone,
+belonged heart and soul to another woman!
+
+A mist palpitated in the air before her, and the gold foliage and
+convolutions of the ornate Venetian frame shone through it distorted and
+terrible. But the canvas itself was a vague blur to her. She staggered
+over to the nearer lamp and bore it over to the corner, kneeling so as
+to bring the light full on the picture and her own face opposite Lady
+Lakeden's. And as now she saw this rare princess, bathed in a mystic
+light, this figure, full of a sweet dignity and a stately grace; as her
+eyes rested on the girlish face whose character yet shone out in a
+splendid illumination, though the rounded, youthful features were free
+from any stamp that might have touched the bloom of their spring-tide
+beauty, a cruel knife worked in Alice's heart, a knife that seared as
+well as stabbed. For a long minute she gazed at the portrait, letting it
+burn itself on her vision in its every shade and detail--the fresh sheen
+on the hair, the proud yet sweet tilt of the face, the wonderfully fresh
+and deep violet-grey eyes, the veritable rose-bud mouth that was yet so
+firm and true! This, then, was her rival! How could she, the plainest
+of the plain, hope to struggle against the irresistible might of this
+loveliness! A sense of absolute defeat, of complete hopelessness invaded
+her whole being; it was the same submissive acquiescence with which she
+had contemplated herself in the glass on that momentous evening when
+Wyndham had appeared in her father's house for the first time. But then
+the hope had never been roused; now the joy was literally snatched from
+her lips. But, though her intelligence saw the hopelessness, her heart
+was full of desperation. And while yet her eyes were riveted on the
+picture, fascinated, yet loathing it with a passion that seemed to flame
+and to dominate her as though her real self were too puny to stir
+against it, a wild whirling thought came to her that made her body rock
+and shiver, and she set the lamp on the floor to save it from crashing
+down out of her hand. What if this woman were as guilty as the man?
+
+"I understand now," her lips broke out involuntarily. "They loved each
+other from the beginning, but she married another for convention's sake.
+Now they have resumed their old love, but I am in the way. He will not
+jilt me, because his honour is at stake, but as a man of honour he would
+not think it dishonourable to deceive me." She laughed aloud in
+bitterness. That was it! They would both deceive her, though he would
+never break his word. Had she not seen the point exemplified in a
+hundred books and plays?
+
+Ah, this honour of the fashionable classes! And she had believed Lady
+Lakeden to be true; had, in pity and sympathy, set her on the highest
+pedestal of womanhood. How her belief in her rival's perfect goodness
+had blinded her! What a fool she had been, going through life with such
+simplicity! With a heart so open and trusting! No wonder nothing had
+come to illumine her existence!--that what had seemed to hold the
+promise was a cheat and a delusion!
+
+And, as her mind ran back over the past weeks, a thousand things seemed
+to confirm her new inspiration at every turn. Ah, God! how she had been
+tricked! Was there another woman in the world who would have been so
+trustingly stupid? The blood seemed to surge all to her temples:
+everything before her faded. An impulse to give vent to her fury seized
+her. She longed to tear and rend the canvas, to crush and break it with
+her fingers, to bite it through and through with her teeth. And she
+would have carried the imperious impulse into effect, had not a new
+thought, like a zigzag of lightning, come flashing through her brain.
+Lady Lakeden had no doubt written him letters; there must be a whole
+packet of them somewhere here in the studio! She would read them; they
+would not lie!
+
+Intent on this new end, she darted across to the bureau (of which the
+lid was permanently down and laden with papers and portfolios), and
+scrutinised the pigeon-holes. These were always open to her without
+restriction, but she had never thought of examining the contents, though
+she had often put away papers and receipts for him. She made a quick,
+feverish inspection of them now, not hoping to find the letters she
+sought in a place thus conspicuous, but yet fearful of overlooking them.
+The pigeon-holes yielded in fact nothing to interest her, and then with
+trembling fingers she turned out the little drawers, one at a time,
+replacing the contents of each carefully before proceeding to the next.
+She was reckless now, having no control over itself. She did not fear
+his sudden arrival on the scene; she would face him--she would taunt him
+with the truth!
+
+Suddenly her physical powers seemed to break down, and she clutched at
+the bureau for support. And as soon as she had steadied herself, she was
+glad to drag over a chair, and continue her search with feeble, tired
+movements. And with this abrupt collapse, her crude, violent emotions
+seemed to have blazed themselves out. She felt now a poor forlorn,
+helpless creature; her eyes were wet with tears, and she was choking
+down her sobs. And it seemed to her that she was gulping down an
+infinite bitterness. "I have it," she said suddenly, a momentary
+illumination flitting across her features. He had once shown her in
+this old provincial French bureau a receptacle which he had spoken of as
+his secret drawer, a space neatly stowed away amid the other surrounding
+spaces so that its ingenious existence might remain reasonably
+unsuspected. She immediately stopped her operations, replacing things
+with a movement that was increasingly languid and feeble; and eventually
+opened the principal compartment in the centre which was on a level with
+the writing-lid. Removing all its contents, she inserted her nail in a
+little innocent slit, made the floor of the compartment slide along,
+then thrust her hand into the space revealed.
+
+Clearly a packet of letters was there. She drew it forth--over a dozen
+of them, carefully preserved in their fashionable-looking envelopes and
+tied together with a broad piece of tape. A faint perfume of violets was
+in her nostrils as she handled them. And this packet, too, seemed
+strangely imbued with the personality of their writer, reminiscent of a
+world of dream and books. How remote from her they seemed! How remote
+from her, indeed, all the amazing history of these past months! That,
+too, belonged rather to a world of dream and books. What! these great
+tragic complications and emotions had sprung up in her simple,
+uneventful existence! had related themselves to a brick bow-windowed
+house in the suburbs!
+
+She gazed at the packet again, conscious that her fingers were
+faltering. How mean, low, hateful to read letters that had not been
+meant for others' eyes! And what purpose would be served by her reading
+them? She needed no further proof of the intrigue that had been carried
+on in the shelter of her own credulity and simplicity. Besides, she
+could divine what passionate vows of love were written herein, and to
+pry into them would be to renew her tortures beyond human endurance. She
+feared and turned away from them as from a furnace heated seven times
+hot. The packet dropped amid the masses of papers that encumbered the
+desk. Her tears came anew, and she gave them full vent; a storm of
+hysteric sobbing shook her convulsively.
+
+When eventually the attack had spent itself, she sat there listlessly,
+without the force to stir hand or foot. But her brain was working
+feverishly, definitely recognising that her life was spoilt. She had
+made her great cry of revolt in this mad dash and underhanded search;
+better perhaps to have made it in the silent depths of her heart! Ah,
+God, it was bitter, it was cruel! But what had she expected? Had she not
+known from the beginning that she ought never to accept one so far above
+her?--that she was not the ideal his heart would crave for, but that, at
+the best, a deep secret dissatisfaction would rankle in him all his
+life? Had she not steadily seen this, while yet a shred of sanity
+remained to her? But it had all happened in spite of herself; she had
+been stricken with blindness, and her clear-seeing mind had been
+possessed with inexplicable folly. She--Alice Robinson!--and the thought
+made her laugh out aloud--had wholly believed that this man sincerely
+loved her! She laughed again and again, seized suddenly by the pitifully
+comic spectacle she presented to herself--Alice Robinson, shy, awkward,
+devoid of all the graces, lacking _savoir-faire_, neglected not only by
+men, but even by her own sex: Alice Robinson, the granddaughter of a
+carpenter, seriously beloved by an aristocrat with all the graces and
+culture, an artist, moreover, for whom beauty was always the primal
+appeal! She--Alice Robinson--had been under this wondrous delusion! Was
+there anything more ridiculous since men and women were? Her laughter
+could not be repressed, but it rang out through the studio weirdly, with
+a strange note of hardness and bitterness, and somehow it echoed and
+re-echoed through all the house, coming back to her mockingly from the
+empty rooms beneath her.
+
+Even when her laughter had died away she sat there brooding. And for the
+first time there was mingled in her emotions a touch of pity for
+Wyndham. She was conscious now of a softening, in spite of all. Poor
+Wyndham! Had he not loved Lady Lakeden years before he had set eyes on
+the Robinsons? If only he had not possessed that terrible code of
+honour! He might then have come to her frankly and begged her
+compassion! She would have released him. But he could not break his
+word. His honour only allowed him to carry on an intrigue!
+
+But time was passing, and she told herself she must not stay. She knew
+she was defeated and must accept it: she must leave him to his intrigue,
+whilst she herself stepped back into the old suburban existence!
+
+She replaced the letters in the secret receptacle, and restored
+everything in the bureau as it had been before. Then she dragged back
+the screen before the picture, turning away her eyes resolutely so as
+not to catch sight again of that gracious figure gleaming out in
+exquisite radiance. The lamps were put back as she had found them, then
+carefully extinguished. But the difficulty she had with them revealed to
+her the tense nervous condition under which she was still labouring,
+though she had appeared to herself quiet and resigned now. She stood in
+the dark a moment, conscious of the suffocating closeness of the
+atmosphere. How good it would be to be out in the air again! She would
+walk on the Embankment for a few minutes, and then ingloriously go home
+as fast as possible--in a hansom! having yielded to ignoble impulses and
+played the rôle of a common spy. But in one way she at least had no
+regret She was enlightened, knew as much of the position as Wyndham.
+
+She descended the stairs, put out the lamps in the hall, and stepped
+into the streets again. The cold air beat in her face deliciously; the
+stars were brilliant in the pure sky. She looked up to them now
+yearningly--their calm and beauty shamed the storm and fever in her own
+mind. The street, too, seemed so exquisitely still in the splendid
+darkness. She let her wraps hang loosely about her, and did not fasten
+her coat. She breathed the air greedily, and it seemed to allay the
+stress at her heart. Then somehow she turned her steps towards the
+river, wondering where Wyndham and Lady Lakeden were passing their
+evening! She could take that for granted now, she felt. How carefully he
+had built up the wall around his romance!
+
+At the bottom of the street the river night-scene, scintillating with
+points of light, burst on her vision, and seemed to draw her into its
+own strange mood of mystery. It was as though a new universe of stars
+had come into being, wafting some fascinating message which baffled her
+reading. And as she stood in the great avenue, under the far-spreading
+arch of foliage, a deeper calm seemed to fall upon her. She went to the
+parapet, and looked over. The long stretch of water, all gleams and
+shadows, lay gently between the two gray bridges that hung suspended
+from their steel network in soft silhouette.
+
+Alice strolled some distance down the bank, then turned and retraced her
+steps. She told herself it was foolish to linger here, that she ought to
+make at once for the busier streets, and take the first vehicle that
+offered itself. But it was so deliciously silent, so majestic, that it
+comforted her to stay here. Besides, somehow, she could not tear herself
+away from the neighbourhood of the studio. She looked at her watch; to
+her surprise it was nearly half-past eleven; she had been at the studio
+a full hour and more! Surely he must be coming home soon. Perhaps,
+indeed, he had returned already!
+
+She found herself instinctively turning up Tite Street again, keeping as
+before to the opposite side of the road. But all was as dark and still
+in the house as when she had left it. Then the idea came to her that she
+would wait and see. It was a mere whim perhaps; but she could not go
+home till she had watched him enter. Still, she could not wait here in
+one fixed spot; she had almost the sense of being observed by she knew
+not whom. Besides, she must be cautious; she did not intend that he
+should suspect she was actually so near to him at that hour of the
+night. It gave her an anguished thrill to think he would pass close by
+her, and yet never give her a thought.
+
+She was, however, loth to move away, for she could not know from which
+end of the street he would come. If she waited too long near one end, he
+might slip by from the other. And this, whether he came on foot or in a
+hansom. Feverishly she paraded the street, stopping here a minute, there
+a minute; keeping well within the shadow, and avoiding the encounter of
+every chance passer-by. Now and again she heard the ring of a hansom,
+the smart trot of a horse, and she held her breath with excitement. And
+there was even a minute when hansoms came dashing into the street one
+after the other; most of them to pass right through it, and only one or
+two to draw up in the street itself.
+
+Midnight sounded, but still no sign of Wyndham. She looked up at the
+sky, but was surprised to find the stars were blotted out. A spot of
+rain fell on her upturned face. Her sense of misery reasserted itself,
+and with it came a sullen resolution to stay out till dawn, if needs be.
+Again she went to the Hospital end of the road and took up a discreet
+point of vantage. But again the tramp of a policeman scared her away,
+and accepting this as a sort of unpropitious omen she definitely decided
+to keep to the other end. She was like a gambler uncertain how to stake,
+but at last abruptly deciding for any irrelevant reason.
+
+The minutes passed, infinitely long to her now impatient mood. The
+spots of rain kept falling. The neighbouring clock boomed out the
+quarters. At last another hansom--coming from the abandoned direction!
+Back she went again into the road, but it had stopped short farther
+down. The studio was still in darkness. Strangely disappointed and
+fatigued almost to the point of falling, she dragged her worn feet once
+more down to the Embankment, keeping her wits alert with a sustained
+effort, that grew harder and harder. This time she did not cross to the
+parapet, but walked under the great red brick houses, noticing idly
+their gates and doorways as they loomed on her. And her eyes were half
+closed in spite of her struggle. The trot of a horse, and the rattle and
+tinkle of a hansom sounded just then, coming smartly along the avenue.
+But she went on more and more as if in a dream, taking one step only
+because she had taken the last. Nearer and nearer came the hansom,
+louder and louder beat the horse's hoofs on the asphalte, but she
+pursued her meaningless way, without paying any heed to it. Her senses
+had almost left her. She opened her eyes suddenly, and, looking towards
+the river, saw that a greyish mist hung over it, that the pavements were
+wet and glistening. Ah, yes, the water lay below, dark and soft, full of
+an eternal peace. The message that had baffled her!--she understood it
+now! She had nothing to live for! In a flash all would be finished.
+Impulsively she stepped into the roadway to cross to the parapet.
+
+"Hallo, hallo!" The horse's head was almost on her, and she drew back
+with a natural unreasoned movement. The driver shook his whip and
+shouted angrily, then went onwards. But a moment's vision had burnt
+itself on her consciousness as deep as that first sight of the portrait
+of Lady Lakeden. Wyndham was seated in the vehicle side by side with
+Lady Lakeden, his face turned towards her, whilst her hand clutched his
+convulsively. And in that same swift moment Alice had felt Lady
+Lakeden's face encounter hers with mutual intensity. The sudden backward
+movement had almost paralysed her muscles; an agonising pain racked her
+at her knees and ankles. She dragged herself to the nearest wall and
+leaned against it. The picture of those two side by side was always with
+her: of Lady Lakeden's eyes flashing full on her own.
+
+She knew not how many minutes had passed when she was called to herself
+by the inexorable clock that had sounded its notes throughout this
+strange evening, and that now seemed to fling its boom through all the
+spaces of the night. Was the universe resounding with a peal of
+mockery?--disproportionately Titanic for so humble a soul as hers, so
+paltry a destiny? Ah, she remembered now her frustrated purpose; the
+instant when death had beckoned her imperiously and she had responded
+with every fibre of her soul and body. Why, then, had she not let the
+wheels crush her?
+
+But she shuddered. Ah, no, no! Thank Heaven she had been inspired to
+save herself. How his life would have been saddened and embittered by so
+ironic an accident! She had meant only to help him; never to be a cause
+of grief to him! Since apparently it had been thus fated, better perhaps
+to live on. "I have others as well to think of--father and mother!" she
+murmured. "How wicked it was of me to forget them! Besides, as I never
+expected anything in life, why should I be disappointed now at getting
+nothing?" The argument seemed convincing, so painfully she began to
+hobble along the Embankment, moving again towards the familiar street,
+why she knew not. But her lips kept muttering, to herself. "She has gone
+with him alone to his studio. She is a wicked woman."
+
+And opposite the house, that had held her brilliant hopes of love and
+wonderful happiness for so brief a period, she stood still again, and
+looked up to the great window of the studio that was now illumined with
+a warm light, though everywhere else the house was dark. She saw a
+shadow flit across the blind, and then another shadow. They were there
+together.
+
+How they would stare if she boldly used her key and intruded upon them!
+How they would tremble if they knew she was there, straining for a
+glimpse of their shadows!
+
+But she had no impulse now to disturb them. The game had been played,
+and she had been thrown out.
+
+With a sigh she moved away, turning her painful steps up the street,
+more instinctively than consciously. She walked and walked mechanically,
+retracing the route she had taken on her way there. The rain descended
+in thin, sharp lines, but she took no heed. But suddenly an arm was
+thrust through hers, and she looked round with a terrible start. A burly
+flush-faced man with a ruffled silk hat was holding an umbrella over
+her, was speaking to her. Her eye noticed irrelevantly they were just by
+a closed dark public-house whose nickel reflectors caught the light from
+an adjoining street-lamp.
+
+"Hadn't you better take me home with you, my dear?"
+
+For a second she stared at him, then, with a hoarse cry, she shook
+herself free, and with a supreme effort rushed off like a frightened
+fawn. As she turned into another street she overtook a hansom going at a
+snail's pace.
+
+"Where to?" asked the man through the roof, after she had got in.
+
+"Straight home as fast as you can," was her strange answer.
+
+The man looked down upon her. "Where's that?" he asked good-humouredly.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, vainly attempting to control her
+breath. She gave him the address, and off they went.
+
+At the end of the journey she paid him profusely, and he thanked her
+with as profuse a civility. She let herself in with her key, went up at
+once to her room, and threw herself across her bed. Her sobs broke out
+afresh. "Darling," she called; "I want you back again to be mine, and
+mine only."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Lady Betty did not let go the hand which she had clutched in terror, and
+her companion responded with a touch of caressing reassurance.
+
+"My heart is still beating," she said, as they turned off the river bank
+into Tite Street. "Suppose we had crushed that poor creature. What a
+terrible memory it would have left with us!"
+
+"Happily she wasn't in the least hurt," he replied. "She must have been
+in a fit of abstraction."
+
+"I caught sight of her face," said Lady Betty; "and I shall not easily
+forget it. Such a wild, haggard look I have seldom seen. She must have
+been labouring under some terrible stress of emotion." She gently
+withdrew her hand, and appeared lost in thought. "I hope, dear," she
+exclaimed suddenly, "that there is nothing horrible happening."
+
+"No, indeed! The thing has got a little bit on your nerves."
+
+"You did not see her," she insisted. "She came full into the light of
+our lamp, though it was barely for an instant. My face was turned that
+way and yours away from hers."
+
+"Naturally she was startled at the moment!" he ventured. He was certain
+Lady Betty's nervous imagination had deceived her, and that her alarm
+was groundless.
+
+"It was not a startled look. It was a set look, something like the
+desperation of a hunted animal. Some man has treated her badly. Darling,
+you don't think she was going to throw herself into the river?"
+
+"Seriously--I don't think anything of the kind. If she had wanted to
+take her life, would she have stepped back so promptly?" he argued.
+
+"I daresay you are right," she conceded, though her tone was not wholly
+one of conviction.
+
+The hansom pulled up, and he helped her down. They mounted the
+house-steps in silence, she unusually engrossed in thought, and with an
+unmistakable air of sadness, as if her mind still lingered on this
+woman's figure that had flashed on them out of the darkness.
+
+They entered the hall, and after some searching and fumbling he lighted
+one of the lamps. His companion shook herself out of her abstraction,
+and surveyed the place with affectionate interest. He was anxious she
+should take away with her a very definite impression of his future
+home, and threw open the various rooms, and led the way into them, as he
+held the lamp aloft. They went, too, below stairs, and here Lady Betty's
+eyes beheld the many evidences of domestic comfort and foresight that
+the Robinsons had established in these regions where they had reigned
+supreme. Her face lighted in comprehension, though her thought remained
+unexpressed. At last, after they had completely explored the rest of the
+house, he led the way up to the studio, and soon had it brilliantly
+illuminated. Lady Betty refused the chair he wheeled forward for her.
+She preferred to be moving about, to be examining everything at
+leisure--his bureau, his great oak worm-eaten armoires, his long, low
+chests on whose panels Gothic Church dignitaries stood solemnly in high
+relief, his wonderful easels, his model's throne, his draperies and
+costumes, and, so far as it was possible by this lamp-light, his old
+canvasses. She did not ask for Miss Robinson's portrait, as she knew it
+was at the house in Hampstead, and would remain there till its despatch
+to the Academy. She saw, however, the large picture; and although she
+did not love it (for she knew at what a cost it had been brought up to
+its present pitch, and felt, moreover, that it was too sensational a bid
+for public attention), she yet recognised that there was much excellence
+in it, and that it would probably bring him the actual success which was
+of importance even to genius. Her ideal for him, she repeated, would
+have been the most absolute "no compromise." "But I agree that we must
+take a strictly practical view of the situation. It is not really
+compromise," she added, "but only a surer grasping of the ideal in the
+future. The idealist who does not know when to make his concessions in
+practice is just the one who loses his ideal altogether, and never comes
+down from the realm of abstractions."
+
+He seized a favourable moment, whilst her attention was otherwise
+engaged, to fetch her own portrait from behind the screen and arrange it
+on one of the smaller easels. Then she turned with some curiosity to see
+what he had prepared for her, and gave a little cry of delight.
+
+"You are pleased with it?" he asked, gratified.
+
+"And touched--deeply," she answered. "You have chosen the setting with
+excellent judgment. But what pleases me most is the absolutely fresh
+impression I now get of the picture itself. Though I have seen it grow,
+and have lived with it every day, I am really seeing it for the first
+time. It is a beautiful piece of work--I speak for the moment as if I
+were entirely unconnected with it." She stood examining it in silence,
+and he watched her face and every shade of expression that declared
+itself.
+
+"And this truly is your personal impression of me?" she asked, with a
+new flash of the joyous, eager comrade.
+
+"My everyday impression of you! I have another which I keep for
+Sundays--something with more of the stateliness of an olden time, with a
+far graver outlook and a deeper thoughtfulness."
+
+"But this one is thoughtful and dignified, too, is it not?"
+
+"Most decidedly. But it is a real warm human being as well. To tell the
+truth, I stand a little bit in awe of the other one."
+
+"Poor me!" she laughed. She stood yet a moment contemplating the
+portrait, then turned her eyes away. "Oh, well," she said. "It will be a
+happiness to possess it, but a greater one to feel that, in some
+measure, it has helped to gain you the recognition that must be yours--a
+little sooner, a little later, signifies nothing. But I leave you in
+perfect confidence as to your career."
+
+He bowed his head. "I shall not dare to disappoint your confidence. To
+justify it is what I shall live for before all things."
+
+"I am content," she said. "I ask for nothing better than that our hopes
+shall be realised. I am glad you have chosen so charming a home for your
+labours. I hope you will be happy here."
+
+He did not reply at once, not trusting himself to speak. Lady Betty,
+too, looked sadly down.
+
+"Ah, yes," he conceded at last. "It is an ideal home for an artist!"
+
+There were bitter implications in his tone, and she made no pretence of
+not perceiving them.
+
+"Darling," she said, "you know it would be the dream of my life to help
+you. That is the only meaning happiness would have for me--to live by
+your side and help your work and your life. Before everything else, I am
+not the solemn, dignified being--the thought of me you keep for Sunday,"
+she interposed smilingly--"but a mere human being, a simple woman, for
+whom the love of the right man, once she has found him, is the principal
+thing in life."
+
+"I can't realise that you are going away," he broke out. "I want to keep
+you with me always. Don't leave me, darling! Let us begin our life
+anew--now, this minute! An ideal home here! I hate and loathe it. Let us
+make a home together--a home of our very own--far away from all these
+associations. Let us laugh at all else. I am strong enough to throw over
+everything, to fight!"
+
+She read the passion in his vivid face, in his terrible movement towards
+her. She stepped back, and held up her hands to check him.
+
+"It cannot be," she said. "Perhaps we are to blame for delaying our
+parting. Believe me, I thought and thought about it after our first
+meeting till I feared I should go mad. I felt I had already made my
+great blunder--I had revealed the awful secret of my life. I had till
+then nursed it all alone, but when I saw you again, after those
+miserable years, I had to pour it out. I did so recklessly,
+unthinkingly; it was such a joy to feel there was one friend in the
+world to whom such things could be said, and I put no curb on myself.
+And afterwards I was bitterly sorry."
+
+"No, no, darling," he interposed. "You hurt me."
+
+"Don't misunderstand, please. It was splendid to think that you shared
+my confidence; above all that you had cared for me as I had cared for
+you in the old days. But yet I was tortured incessantly. You had
+contracted other ties; there were your duties to others, and the tangle
+was horrible! After I left you on that first day I was determined that,
+if I was to be an influence in your life at all, I must be the first to
+keep you true to your duties. You and I are enlightened, you see. We
+have the advantage over these simpler souls. Therefore we must efface
+ourselves to leave them their simple rights."
+
+He stood humbly; silent before her gentle and unanswerable rebuke.
+
+"I struggled terribly with myself. I felt it would hardly be right to
+see you even a second time, and I was almost on the point of leaving
+London at once, perhaps without sending you a single line of adieu. But
+then the thought came to me that that perhaps would be a worse blunder
+than the first. My intrusion into your life might in that case have
+disturbed it to no purpose. I thought my sudden departure might leave a
+bitter memory for years. So I determined to stay long enough to soften
+the parting for both of us--for me as well as for you. And during all
+the time I meant to influence you to be loyal to your engagements. I had
+made the first mistake; on me lay the obligation of mending things. I
+stayed only to mend them! That was my sincere motive in asking you to do
+the sketch. I know I have had my moments of weakness; it is hard to live
+with one's hand in the fire without flinching now and again. Darling, I
+must go--far away from you, and you must not follow me. Your honour,
+dearest, is precious to me. The thought of your perfect loyalty to Alice
+will help me. I only ask you to remember the high standard I have set
+for you. Strive for the best; let your watchword be 'No compromise!' You
+will let me go now, darling. Say you understand my motives, and forgive
+me if they were mistaken. Perhaps, instead of mending things, I have
+only added mischief to mischief. I throw myself on your generosity and
+magnanimity. Promise me you will be the truest husband to her, that you
+will do everything in your power to promote her happiness."
+
+He seized her hands; his flesh burnt hers. "I love you, darling, I love
+you," he cried hoarsely. "I cannot let you go."
+
+She looked him frankly and firmly in the face. "Don't break my heart,
+dear," she said gently. "It is as hard for me as it is for you. Think,
+darling, what it might be, if you gave her up. If she were to kill
+herself, our love would be a curse to us. Dearest, the face of that
+woman we saw on the Embankment still haunts me. It was the face of a
+woman whose heart had been broken. I tell you, dear, that if I had not
+of myself the strength to part from you to-night, the awful glimpse I
+had of her face would have given it to me. I have always seen where our
+duty lay; yet I read it in that poor face a thousand times more.
+Darling, it must now be goodbye. I shall often think of you here, and of
+this evening--and of our whole glorious day," she added, smiling. "Come,
+you do promise all that I ask of you?"
+
+Her smile and her cheerful note won his surrender. "I promise," he said
+slowly and solemnly, yet with distinct decision. "All that you have
+urged on me shall be sacred, shall be the principle of my life."
+
+"Thank you, darling," she said simply. "I believe you, and I trust you
+absolutely."
+
+They gripped hands, looking each other full in the face. The
+neighbouring church clock sounded its preliminary change, then struck
+two sonorous notes. It recalled them to the sense of the night and the
+silent world without. "Come," he said at last. "I will escort you back."
+
+They went down, and out into the street again. "The clouds and the rain
+have vanished. It is a beautiful night again," she said. "Even that
+helps to soften the moment."
+
+He strolled along by her side; they spoke now of matter-of-fact points.
+If the picture were accepted by the Salon he was to send it eventually
+to her father's country-house in the North. She hoped, too, he would not
+entirely forget her father, but that he and his wife would call and see
+him at Grosvenor Place--they could count on finding him there most years
+during the height of the London season. And, by the way, she was curious
+to know how the picture would fare when it got to Paris. Was the Salon
+so considerate to foreigners that it took the trouble to open
+packing-cases and take care of them? Wyndham gravely explained that
+pictures were usually consigned to the good offices of a French
+frame-maker who unpacked and delivered them to the Salon, afterwards
+collecting them and sending them back to England when the show was over.
+Some of these people had a large foreign clientèle, and put only a
+moderate value on their services. Thus chatting in this trivial fashion,
+they were fortunate to meet a hansom, though they had abandoned the hope
+of one at that hour, and were prepared to stroll all the way.
+
+"Let us say goodbye here," she insisted. "It is simpler, and perhaps
+easier. We part just as two friends who have met casually."
+
+"Goodbye, then," he said huskily. "I wish you many happy days and dreams
+in your wanderings in the sun-lands."
+
+"And I wish you the power to be as great in your life as I am sure you
+will be in your work." She held his hand with a gentle pressure. "You
+will be loyal to her," was her last wistful whisper. Then she gave him a
+parting smile, full of sweetness and affection, and he heard the driver
+crack his whip, and the horse started off briskly.
+
+Wyndham was left standing on the pavement, his head bowed. For a long
+minute he did not stir, and when he roused himself again to look after
+the hansom, it was already in the distance, though the trot, trot, of
+the horse came sharply to him. He watched it till it was out of sight,
+then turned slowly and gently homewards.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+"Father," said Alice Robinson the next morning at the breakfast-table,
+"I want you to find some more portraits for us. This whole month has to
+be given up to the big thing for the Academy, and then we shall come to
+a stop for the present, at any rate so far as immediately remunerative
+work is concerned, and you must not forget we have a heavy rent to pay
+now."
+
+"I shall certainly keep my weather eye open," declared Mr. Robinson,
+"and my ears too. Portraits in oils are rather the thing just now in the
+City, and I daresay we shall be able to find something for you."
+
+"That is nice of you, father. I think I am just beginning to like you."
+
+Mr. Robinson smiled, and looked across at her affectionately. "You know
+it is my greatest pleasure to work for you both," he said.
+
+Alice bore his gaze heroically, sustained by the curious satisfaction
+she felt at having thus set the never-failing machinery in motion. But
+his trusting belief that all was well touched the tenderest chords of
+her nature. She longed to throw herself into his arms, to tell him the
+terrible truth. But why cause him suffering when she still hoped to
+avert it from everybody, and let the whole burden rest on her shoulders
+alone? She must do nothing abrupt, nothing to cause any trouble or
+scandal; above all, she must pay the most watchful regard to the peace
+of those around her.
+
+For she had seen the quietest and simplest solution of the tangle;
+nobody but herself need suffer a single pang! Since she had endured so
+much, she might now as well offer herself for the sake of everybody
+else's happiness.
+
+Such had been her dominating thought, as she had lain thinking through
+the night. And the moment had come when she held the solution clear in
+her mind. How glad she was that she had decided to live! Her parents had
+been spared a cruel grief, and her affianced husband would be left to
+his happiness without any alloy of remorse or tragic memories.
+
+There was only one worthy and rational path before her. She must break
+with Wyndham and leave him free. Mr. Shanner wanted her; she would give
+herself to Mr. Shanner. His ashen figure, gray-clad, rose before her,
+wistful, pleading, pathetic. She remembered his touch of sentiment, his
+hint of deeper feeling--how he would have treasured her promise; how he
+would have looked forward to "the new light to shine in his household."
+He was good and honourable; full of kind actions. She knew that Mr.
+Shanner had not found felicity in his first marriage. After all, if she
+could bring somebody a little happiness she might as well do so; and she
+could make this ostensibly the ground for her action. She and Wyndham
+were unsuited to each other--could anything be truer? She had made a
+mistake, since she now found she cared for Mr. Shanner, who reciprocated
+the sentiment, and for whom, as regards upbringing and ideas, she would
+make so much more suitable a wife. That was less true, and, after her
+surrender of the evening before to her ignobler side, she now loathed
+the idea of playing a further part. But the fiction that she cared for
+Mr. Shanner, and her actual marriage with him, constituted in essence
+the sacrifice that the position demanded of her. To Mr. Shanner she
+could atone by incessant devotion--she would illumine the light in his
+household he had spoken of so yearningly; her parents would be spared
+all but the first painful surprise; to Wyndham the break would come as a
+splendid release. It would restore to him his honour and self-respect,
+since in his eyes, and in the world's eyes, she would be taking all the
+blame for his freedom.
+
+Wyndham had told her that Lady Lakeden was leaving England indefinitely,
+and that he did not know when he was likely to see her again. But Alice
+now did not believe that. That was part of the wall he had been building
+behind which to pursue his romance; she had tested things far enough to
+feel sure of it. And even if Lady Lakeden was really going to travel for
+a time, there would be correspondence between them, and their relations
+would be renewed on her return. Since he loved this woman he should be
+free to love her openly.
+
+And all the world would be left at peace!
+
+In the days before she had come into his consciousness, had she not
+longed and prayed in vain for the joy of helping him to rise again; had
+she not dreamed of stretching out a helping hand across the abyss that
+separated them, telling herself that that alone would mean supreme
+happiness for her? It now came strongly upon her that that mission had
+been granted her, and the knowledge that she had achieved it should help
+her to be strong! Had not her love for him held a perfect unselfishness?
+Was not her goal his happiness before everything? Ah, there was far too
+much self in the earthly love of woman for man. This note of self, at
+first so carefully suppressed, had yet asserted itself insidiously. Yes,
+that had been the cause of all her suffering--poignant, shattering,
+almost beyond human endurance. It had been wrong of her; she ought to
+have kept closer watch over herself. She had not meant to be a source of
+pain and embarrassment to him. To burden his life with a marriage
+against his heart and true self were hate, not love. Let him mate with
+this brilliant, beautiful woman of his own world, who could tranquilly
+breathe the air of the great heights--of Society, of Art--in which his
+destiny had placed him. What more could she wish him than that he should
+find in life all that he desired?--all the joy, all the achievement, all
+the love! Was not this the supreme self-sacrifice of love?
+
+And she must be content with the privilege of the high mission that had
+been hers, nay, she must be proud of it--to have entered into his life
+at his moment of blackest despair, and set him on the road to heaven!
+Let her go back into the darkness now with the ecstasy of sacrifice for
+a great love, keeping herself for such service to others as she might
+find to her hand.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+But her mission was not yet complete. She thought of his inadequate
+resources, of the uncertainty of the future, if his exhibition pictures
+were not successful with the Press and the public. She wished to see him
+embarked on the full tide of success before she retired, so that all joy
+should flow to him at once. Her retirement must cause him some little
+emotion, but the intoxication of success would soon thrust that aside,
+and the lapse of a day would find him in full appreciation of his
+freedom. The projected period of their engagement had of itself three
+full months to run; there was time to withdraw at any moment she chose.
+And these months that remained should be devoted to her finding more
+work for him, so that he should be left with a substantial balance at
+his bankers.
+
+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.
+
+Thus the month flew away with almost unprecedented rapidity. Show Sunday
+arrived, and the great picture (on which he had worked till the last
+moment) was revealed to the world at large. The house was thrown open,
+the empty dining-room improvised into a commodious buffet, and the great
+studio arranged as a gallery, with the new portraits and the best of the
+old work all brilliantly framed and lining the walls. Alice's portrait,
+which had been brought across for the occasion, occupied a central place
+of honour immediately facing the masterpiece.
+
+The function was eminently successful, and a great many people of the
+very pink of fashion came to lend it the light of their countenances.
+The Robinsons had worked hard the previous fortnight preparing for it,
+and had arranged the house and buffet, and had seen to the framing of
+the pictures, and attended to the catering arrangements, without taking
+a moment of the precious time away from Wyndham. Everybody said the
+house was charming and the pictures works of genius. People could be
+overheard asking each other, "Well, what do you think of it all?" and
+then eyes would be turned up in ecstasy, and faces would glow with
+enthusiasm, and the long-drawn "Beautiful," full of conviction, was the
+epithet most largely utilised. There was in the air the dominant note of
+triumph, the unmistakable feeling of Success. Alice, who flitted about
+quietly, showing herself as much as good taste demanded, yet by no means
+in the centre of the world's eye, was keenly sensitive to the prevailing
+spirit of the afternoon, feeling closely the pulse of the assembly, and
+she knew at last that Wyndham's barque was to sail in full career.
+
+Mary, too, was there, immensely important as the host's sister,
+conducting special friends of her own round the walls, and talking
+ubiquitously in an unusual glow of zest and animation. If for Alice the
+occasion happily revealed the future, for Mary that future had
+emphatically arrived already!
+
+And in the midst of all the crush Sadler arrived, extraordinarily smart
+in an immaculate frock-coat and a beautifully embroidered tie, his big
+powerful face shining with friendliness. "Gee! What a swell affair
+you've got on!" he shouted in Wyndham's ear. "I thought there'd be
+something of the kind, you old brute, so I rigged myself out."
+
+"You are certainly fascinating," smiled Wyndham.
+
+"Yes, it's a jolly good coat!" declared Sadler, glancing down at
+himself. "I gave the tailor hell over it. Gee! you've fetched them this
+time! We shan't be able to squeeze past your damned picture at the
+Academy!"
+
+The crowd still kept surging up the stairs, and Sadler was swept aside.
+But Wyndham was not only receiving his visitors; with great address he
+was here and there, pointing out his Exhibition pictures, explaining his
+ideas and motives, accepting choruses of laudation. He had good reason
+to be elated with this afternoon of tribute and foreshadowing!
+
+In the last two or three weeks, moreover, Mr. Robinson had been drumming
+up the further commission for which his daughter had enlisted his good
+services. He had heard that one of the great joint-stock banks meditated
+presenting their retiring general manager with his portrait; the gift to
+be made with full ceremonial at the next meeting of the shareholders.
+Mr. Robinson was himself an important shareholder, and two of the
+directors were his personal friends, but although they worked strongly
+on his side, he had a far more difficult task than usual in achieving
+his purpose. He was forced to expend his choicest diplomacy and pull
+enough strings for a piece of international politics, but the majority
+of the directors, who knew what was appropriate to the dignity of the
+bank, wanted a full-blown Royal Academician, and were strongly in favour
+of following the lead of another great institution, which, under the
+like circumstances, had approached one of the most learned of the body
+Academic, and had honoured him and themselves with their command. There
+were dissensions at several board meetings, but the opposition,
+sedulously fanned by Mr. Robinson, could not be beaten down.
+Academicians, they argued, sometimes went down wofully in the sale-room
+only a few years after their demise. Surely it was better to choose a
+genius, the connection with whom would be everlastingly honourable to
+the bank, whose insight might become historic. In the end a small
+sub-committee was appointed to investigate and report on the matter. The
+members of this sub-committee were invited to Tite Street for Show
+Sunday, arrived together, were received by Wyndham with charming
+urbanity, had every attention showered on them, and were greatly
+impressed by this society gathering. They were enchanted at their
+reception, and, being kept and marshalled together, stimulated each
+other's enthusiasm. This great display of Wyndham's work astonished and
+dazzled them. Above all, the amazing _pièce de résistance_ of the
+afternoon won their obeisance to the genius. They stared at the vast
+canvas in wonder, at once conquered by this crowd of tattered labour
+intermingled with the silk hats and frock-coats of Bond Street, the
+smart brougham rolling along with its aristocratic occupant and her
+poodle, the pillared structure in the background, the vista of roadway,
+the trees and the foliage. At the buffet they talked it over among
+themselves, and presently Wyndham himself appeared again, and with a
+discreet introduction here and there to people of social importance, he
+quietly and swiftly sealed his victory. Such civility indeed was the
+only part that had fallen on him in the matter, and the commission was
+well obtained at that outlay of trouble, he told himself, since, with so
+fairly an expensive place on his hands, he could not yet despise so
+solid a piece of business. But with the new little heap of guineas to
+accrue from the month's work or thereabouts that would be involved, he
+felt he could face marriage and the beginnings of housekeeping with
+dignity, and yet carry out any artistic schemes he might next conceive.
+And he welcomed the work, too, as likely to keep him busily occupied
+during the time his great picture was in the balance at the Academy.
+
+When Alice reached home after the reception, with the full confidence of
+his success in her heart, she realised the end was now fast approaching.
+The afternoon had excited and unnerved her again, and she had once more
+to reassure herself that she had the strength to go through with the
+coming breach. Since her memorable secret visit to the studio she had
+borne up with firm strength, but to-night she felt frail and broken! A
+storm of sobbing shook her, but when at last she had controlled herself
+she knew that she would never weep again for her lost dream of
+happiness.
+
+And now all things began to go incredibly well with Wyndham. No sooner
+was he flourishing and doing work that was well paid for, than every
+other horizon opened out before him. The Academy received both his
+portrait of Miss Robinson and his great piece of allegory; and a couple
+of the other paid portraits found a niche in the New Gallery. The Salon,
+too, presently notified him of their acceptance of Lady Betty's
+portrait, but that he had really been counting on with an almost
+fatalistic confidence.
+
+On varnishing day he was delighted that both his Academy exhibits were
+hung on the line. His Press, too, was unmistakably good; the critics
+seemed all to conspire to hail him as the man of the year. At the clubs
+those who knew him accosted him enthusiastically, came thronging round
+and pressing hospitality upon him. There were so many anxious to "get"
+him for this and that occasion, to take possession of him, and have the
+honour of dragging him here and there. New names and faces bombarded
+him, and even his own special coterie were anxious to intensify their
+various degrees of intimacy with him, contending for the privilege of
+entertaining him, of being able to boast of an almost proprietorial
+friendship. In Society, too, he felt himself the object of a curious
+_empressement_; on all sides he was courted and flattered, and rival
+dealers were inquiring the price he set on his wares. It was the
+stampede of the world to acclaim Success!
+
+Well might his eyes be dazzled by all this glare of sunshine! Was not
+this success as persistent as the failure that had been his lot
+previously? It made him think of the run of red that sometimes followed
+a run of black at roulette. He was indeed a public personage now! And
+rolling in prosperity to boot!
+
+A touch of worldly bitterness indeed lingered with him; there was the
+remembrance of the lean years behind him. But his nature was too
+mercurial, too affable and genial, to dwell on that aspect of his career
+for long. He took all this homage very seriously, and thought
+tremendously well of himself as an artist, walking through the world
+with elastic step and as one of the elect of the earth.
+
+Yet in the still moments when he sat alone at night with his lamp for
+sole company, he would lose himself in reverie; and then he would feel
+saddened ineffably by the ironic side of the case, since the more
+brilliant the success that came to him, the deeper his sense of the
+mockery of things! How splendid if the woman he loved were by his side
+to share it all with him! How near too he had come to attainment, yet
+destiny had played him this shameful, this merciless trick!
+
+And just as his absorption in work had helped him hitherto in the
+situation, so now this new excitement of business and the world coloured
+his everyday demeanour and conversation; wrapped the Robinsons, too, in
+the whirl of busy interests, and carried him safely towards the
+inevitable time when he must seriously discuss the date of the wedding.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+One morning early, towards the end of May, Alice sat down at her desk,
+and wrote the following brief letter to Mr. Shanner.
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,--I owe you an acknowledgment. When you ventured
+to raise the question of the wisdom of my engagement to Mr. Wyndham, you
+were right in one respect. He is in every way a man of honour, and I
+have nothing against him. But, as the time goes by, it grows upon me
+more and more that he and I have made a mistake, as you were first to
+see, and that we are not suited to each other. His world and his ideas
+of life are not mine, and I have decided that it is wiser for me not to
+attempt to adapt myself to them. I recognise this before it is too late,
+and I have determined, not lightly, but after full and serious
+consideration, to draw back. I promised you that I should let you know
+if ever I arrived at such a conclusion. I now carry out my promise."
+
+
+She directed it to his office, carefully marking it "Personal and
+Confidential." Shortly after noon she was startled by the rat-tat of a
+telegraph boy. "Approve of your decision with all my heart. Please
+remember that I am the first applicant for the privilege." Such was the
+answer he had flashed back the moment her letter had reached him, and
+the perusal of it gave her the satisfaction that accompanies the
+realisation step by step of an elaborate purpose. "So be it," she
+exclaimed. "To-day I shall ask for my release."
+
+Wyndham was expecting her to join him at the studio. They were to dine
+together, then go to a Paderewski recital. But now she decided she would
+not go. What good to face him personally? Besides, it was easier to feel
+that she had already seen him for the last time. She went back to her
+desk, and began the laborious composition of a long letter. On and on
+she wrote, breaking off only to join her mother at lunch, and returning
+to her desk at the earliest moment. She had covered several sheets, when
+brusquely she changed her mind. Perhaps this was not really fair to him,
+and, besides, he might feel he ought to come to the house to see her
+again. Surely they might at least shake hands and part as friends. So
+she tore up the letter, and went to prepare herself for the journey to
+Chelsea. "I have been brave all through," she murmured; "and I mustn't
+spoil it at the end by turning coward. I am taking all the blame--let me
+be strong enough to take it face to face with him."
+
+And now she was impatient to have done with it all. Her mission was
+ended. So, although he would not be looking for her yet, she would
+descend on him, even at the risk of disturbing him. The commission from
+the bank had already been completed, and at present he was making
+cartoons and sketches for new pictures. But he would be all the more
+grateful afterwards that she had not delayed her coup.
+
+She got into a hansom, which, choosing its route through unobstructed
+back streets, arrived at her goal wonderfully soon. She got down firmly,
+paid the driver, and walked up the steps unfalteringly. She felt her
+calm and self-control as a great blessing; she had so long schooled
+herself for this moment, and it was splendid to feel how actual a fact
+was her resignation, how completely ingrained in her this acceptance of
+the inevitable.
+
+She let herself in with her key for the last time, and put it on the
+hall table lest she should forget to leave it afterwards. Then she went
+upstairs, and tapped gently at the door of the studio, though it stood
+half open. She found Wyndham in a mood that was even a shade more
+affable than usual. Indeed, he seemed almost light-hearted to-day as he
+came forward with a friendly alertness to greet her, and pressed his
+lips affectionately to her forehead, and wheeled forward a chair for
+her. She was in a close-fitting coat and skirt, of a heliotrope shade,
+and there were roses in her hat. But, in spite of this burst of spring
+gaiety, her face retained the marked pallor that had characterised it of
+late. He indeed observed it for the first time.
+
+"You must have a little of this light Chambery," he said. "It clears the
+head and nerves. I remembered I used to have a glass at the Café des
+Lilas in the old days whenever I felt done up, so I laid in a few
+bottles."
+
+"Do I seem so unusually flurried?" she asked.
+
+She smiled, but he saw at once that the note was forced, and began to
+suspect that something was amiss.
+
+"It's rather close to-day--the heat has come upon us all of a rush. It's
+sure to be crowded and stuffy at the concert to-night. Now do try my
+remedy, child."
+
+"If you don't mind, we'll not go to the concert."
+
+"By all means," he agreed. "We'll dine early, take a stroll on the
+Embankment, and if there's a boat going up or down, it doesn't matter
+which, we'll get on, and see where it takes us. Not a bad idea, little
+girl, eh?"
+
+"I'm sorry," she said, "but I meant that we were not to pass the evening
+together at all. I came now, instead of later on, to see you and talk to
+you."
+
+He looked at her hard. "You rather mystify me."
+
+"I'm sorry," she said again. "I sat down to write you a long letter
+to-day," she resumed, after an almost imperceptible hesitation. "In
+fact, I really began it, or rather I wrote a good many pages, and then I
+thought it would be fairer and braver to come here to you at once
+instead."
+
+He leaned up against the table for support. "My dear child, I don't in
+the least understand your drift--I am bewildered."
+
+She smiled wanly; yet the smile of one about to set forth in a cool,
+reasonable way a case that needed exposition, and that necessarily must
+carry conviction. "I was writing to ask you a favour. Now I have come to
+ask for it in person."
+
+"It is yours to command." He inclined his head graciously and gallantly.
+
+"You are sweet to me, as always," she returned. "But, as you will see, I
+am quite undeserving of your graciousness on this present occasion."
+
+He laughed. "Modest as usual, my dear child! I'm afraid it's going to be
+one of the tasks of my life to impress you with a sense of your own
+merits."
+
+"Please don't say any more nice things to me," she implored. "Your
+kindness hurts me."
+
+He looked hard at her again, then passed his hand across his face. "Let
+me see," he said; "where were we? I confess I'm rather confused. Ah,
+yes, you said you preferred that we shouldn't go to the concert."
+
+She drew her breath hard; her bosom palpitated. "Because I want you to
+set me free altogether." Her face was suddenly on fire, but an
+exultation thrilled through her. At last the words had been spoken; she
+was near the end.
+
+But she felt his eyes upon her; she saw his face set in a strange
+expression, half-vacant, half-surprised. "To set you free?" he murmured.
+
+"To break off our engagement," she launched out. "Oh, I know it is
+horrible of me," she went on quickly, feeling herself giving way at this
+moment of trial, despite all her fortitude and all her schooling. She
+saw that his lips made as if he were about to speak, but, dreading to
+hear him yet, she gathered up her force and hurried on piteously.
+"Please don't think that I have anything against you, that you are in
+the least to blame. You have been chivalrous and kind throughout. The
+responsibility must all rest on my shoulders."
+
+He winced at the pain she was visibly enduring, the expression of her
+eyes, the convulsive catch of her breath.
+
+"But what on earth has come between us?" he exclaimed, in a sort of dull
+despair. He felt no joyous glow at the return of his liberty. The
+occasion seemed too miserably tragic, and his human association with
+her had made him care for her enough to be deeply distressed at the
+agony under which she was labouring. Even now, if it could have made her
+happy, if it could have induced her to withdraw all she had said, he
+would have taken her hand tenderly, and melted away every cloud between
+them. "Yesterday all was well, and to-day----" He gave a gesture of
+blank bewilderment.
+
+"I have arrived at the conviction that we are not suited for each other,
+that I am not the sort of woman to make your life all that it should
+be."
+
+"Oh, come," he said. "I am surprised to find such morbid nonsense
+running in your head."
+
+She was taken aback at this resistance on his part; and she rightly set
+it down to pure fraternal consideration for her. She let herself go now;
+best to give her explanation at full length.
+
+"It is not a sudden impulse I have yielded to, or a passing wave of
+depression," she urged, trying to conjure up the ghost of a smile again.
+"Believe me, I have seen the right path before me only after the deepest
+consideration."
+
+He interrupted her with a gesture.
+
+"But what has come between us?" he insisted again. "You do not say you
+have ceased to love me."
+
+With a great effort she looked straight at him. "Yes," she said with
+steady voice, and no physical flinching. "I have ceased to love you. I
+searched into my heart before it was too late, and I found my affections
+had gone to another."
+
+A flash of understanding seemed to come to him. "Mr. Shanner!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+She averted her eyes. "He was my friend before I knew you," she pleaded,
+as if driven to defence.
+
+"I see now you are perfectly serious," he murmured, hurt at last, and
+firmly believing her. "Does love come and go in women with such
+momentary capriciousness?"
+
+"Perhaps," she said with a weird dreaminess. "It comes and goes like the
+blossoming of a flower in the sunlight--beautiful for the day or two it
+lives. My love for you is dead. I should not be happy with you, so why
+make the pretence? I should not ask you to forgive me, only I am not
+worth your remembrance for any reason. Let us shake hands and part not
+too bitterly."
+
+He stood silent, his head bowed. There was no thought in his mind, only
+a sense of shame and of poignant regret.
+
+"Believe me, it is for the best," she resumed, trying to smile. "And be
+assured, the guilty party alone shall be condemned, should the world
+discuss us!" She held out her hand. He took it and held it gently, in
+sign that he bore her no ill-will.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+In the first profound depression into which this unforeseen occurrence
+had plunged him, Wyndham remained totally indifferent to his freedom.
+His thought in a feeble way reached out, recalling her words, lingering
+on her crowning confession. Suddenly he laughed out aloud. How much
+greater the irony of his life than even he had imagined! For the second
+time he and Lady Betty had come together, only voluntarily to part that
+they might not disturb the happiness of this other life! How they had
+tortured themselves; how Lady Betty had sought deliberate martyrdom,
+staying near him only long enough to school him to perfect loyalty to
+Alice! "Whilst I was fretting my heart away," his lips murmured, "lest I
+should wound her with a chance word, she was vibrating again towards her
+own kind, and was planning her retreat. Surely the gods are pulling the
+strings and making us poor puppets dance for their amusement!"
+
+And then he thought of the Hampstead street miles away, where he had
+passed so many years of his life in suffering and degradation; and the
+sense of its distance helped him. Were he still in the old studio, the
+sense of the Robinsons' house within a stone's throw would have been
+intolerable. He would hardly have dared to set foot out of doors for
+fear of the painful accident of stumbling up against one of the family.
+He desired no further explanations and apologies. He shuddered at the
+very idea. Here at least he could take shelter silently within his own
+pride.
+
+And the thought of his pride made him rise up again, and pace to and fro
+vigorously. It was beneath him to admit that that had been wounded. But
+he came to a standstill, and the blood rushed to his temples at the
+abrupt remembrance that all the prosperity and success that must still
+remain his had come to him through the Robinsons. Were not the
+humiliating evidences here before his eyes? This charming house and
+studio, the successful pictures hung in the galleries, the money at his
+bankers, the promise of unlimited treasure yet to flow into his coffers,
+the acclamation of the world and his social lionising--how much of all
+this would have been achieved without the timely co-operation of the
+Robinsons? He staggered in moral agony under the burden of good they had
+heaped on him so lavishly.
+
+Nothing of course could be undone. Wisest to acquiesce silently, and
+start forward afresh from the point at which he stood. But since it was
+now only the end of May, and the best of the season was yet to follow,
+he felt that to stay in London would be intolerable.
+
+The world seemed to swarm with people, all intent on chattering about
+his affairs, on discussing and misunderstanding this sensation in the
+life of the lion of the season. A lovely titbit for the social gossips
+to relish! He could not possibly meet people, shake their hands, answer
+their stupid questions, listen to the hateful sympathy of the more
+intimate. He must shut up the house and fly from London. But where could
+he hide himself for the time?
+
+He resumed his pacing to and fro, sometimes perambulating the studio to
+vary his movement. So far he was under the influence of the first
+excitement attendant on the rupture. Whatever his astonishment at having
+been ousted in the affections of a woman by a man whom he had more or
+less despised, whose rivalry he had brushed aside as easily as a cobweb;
+the bare idea that a broken engagement should figure in his life was so
+distasteful that it made the wound to his mere vanity a secondary
+matter. He could not at once extricate his mind from the contemplation
+of these immediate bearings of the event. His relation to Lady Betty,
+indeed, was present to him, but he had not yet turned the flood of his
+thought in that direction.
+
+In the reaction of feeling, however, when the first sting and shock had
+somewhat lightened, it was natural for his whole soul to turn to Lady
+Betty longingly; not with the joyous impulse of one unexpectedly free to
+claim his true comrade, but like a bruised child to find relief for his
+hurt. But how to reach her again he did not know. So thorough had been
+their sacrifice that he had even promised never to write to her.
+Besides, letters would only follow her if sent through a certain banker,
+whose name she had withheld from him. And though now he felt that
+circumstances absolved him from the promise, he did not care that such a
+letter as he must write, once he put pen to paper, should go to her
+father's deserted house, and thence be tossed about the world in perhaps
+a futile pursuit, with the possible fate of being read in a dead-letter
+office, and finally returned to him. He would wait awhile. Perhaps, if
+the gossip got abroad, it might by some circuitous route arrive even as
+far as Lady Betty's ears, and then no doubt she would announce her
+whereabouts to him. The pressing problem before him was to decide on his
+own plans for the immediate present.
+
+How stale and tired he was! How terribly he had toiled these past
+months, sustained by he knew not what mysterious energy. It seemed
+almost as if he had exerted a supernatural strength, and the work he had
+accomplished might well have claimed double the period. And now,
+something had suddenly gone snap. He was finished; a mere hollow shell
+of a man.
+
+His mind turned again towards other climes and other skies. It seemed so
+long since he had crossed the Channel; so many years indeed that it was
+hateful to count them. It reminded him too much of the big slice of his
+life, the years of his prime, that had been so miserably sterile.
+
+But his face brightened as his thought played again amid the haunts of
+his early manhood. Ah, those were happy times--the work in the schools,
+the discussions in the café, the pleasant camaraderie, the freedom to
+laugh, to feel master of one's own soul. The brilliance and green
+avenues of Paris beckoned him; his blood beat pleasurably. And then of
+course there was his portrait of Lady Betty in the Salon. What better
+shrine for a pilgrimage!
+
+He would linger a little in Paris, then proceed further South. He was
+not of the great crowd that refuses to venture in those regions during
+the summer. He knew well how to adapt himself to the conditions, and the
+lands of the South would be soon in their full glory. His imagination
+dwelt on the prospect, and sunshine broke in on his mood. Perhaps, too,
+there was the hope, deep in his heart, that he might encounter Lady
+Betty somewhere--by some charming train of events! Heigho for the
+orange trees, for the old Italian palaces, the Venetian canals, the
+coast-line of Salerno! He would make a leisurely progression, working a
+little as he went--just a few distinguished sketches, odd impressions of
+light and beauty caught on the wing! Late in the year when time had done
+its work, when the wretched affair was forgotten, and himself recovered
+from the sordid experience, he might return to London. But never here to
+this studio again!
+
+The prospect of departure stirred him! "Here I cannot breathe another
+day!" he kept murmuring to himself.
+
+Then why not start this very evening?
+
+He glanced at his watch; it was not yet four. There would be time to
+dash round to a local bank and provide himself with funds for the start.
+But on investigation he found he had enough to take him to Paris, so he
+could devote the whole time to his preparations and necessary
+correspondence.
+
+And no sooner was the decision arrived at than he adjusted his outlook
+to it as an accomplished fact. Without any further delay, he got ready
+his trunk and dressing-case, and started his packing in earnest.
+
+The train left at nine that evening. He had five good hours to catch it.
+So he worked deliberately and carefully, overlooking nothing in the
+haste of departure. Lady Betty's wizard, his most cherished possession,
+went down deep into the trunk, and he did not forget his cheque-book and
+his private papers. Otherwise, everything was in such excellent order
+that his task was comparatively simple. Whatever he lacked for his
+journey he could count on purchasing in Paris, where also he could renew
+his funds for travelling.
+
+At last everything was ready, and he had ample time for his
+correspondence. This was speedily disposed of, since his letters were
+mostly to cry "off" from invitations already accepted. Only one was of a
+more intimate character, and that was to his sister Mary. But even that
+was brief and to the point. "Dearest Mary," he wrote,--"I regret I have
+rather disagreeable news for you, but I trust you will not take too
+serious a view of it. Alice asked me to release her to-day, and of
+course I had no alternative but to accede to her wishes. I cannot bear
+to stay in London just now, so I leave this evening for a long stay
+abroad. Forgive this brief note, forgive me also for not coming to kiss
+you goodbye, but, as you may guess, I am off on impulse, time is short,
+and there were a few matters to arrange. Perhaps you may be able to join
+me later when your vacation comes, and then we shall have a happy time
+together. I am all right, so please don't worry about me. I shall write
+to you soon, and keep you posted as to my adventures."
+
+He took out the batch of letters to the post, picking up a cab on his
+way back. In a few minutes his traps were on the roof, and he was being
+driven to the station.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a serene summer night, and the crossing was ideal. As he
+promenaded the deck, and looked into the spacious darkness, and let the
+breeze play free about his face, the sense of strain and fatigue, all
+the broken feeling that remained from the stress of his tussle with the
+world, seemed to be swept away. His early manhood, when he had gone to
+and fro as he listed, began to stir in him again, and the consciousness
+of mature power and ripe experience which were now added to it awakened
+an almost overweening sense of well-being and confidence.
+
+The episode of his broken engagement already began to look absurd rather
+than tragic in this new spirited mood of his. The whole thing seemed
+beneath his dignity. Of course, in some ways, he would always look back
+upon it as a bitterly unpleasant incident; but, in this life, you were
+necessarily called upon to be a stoic in some degree. The point was to
+choose the degree yourself. In face of unpleasant things stoicism was no
+doubt the wisest; but where good things were concerned it was best to
+preserve all the fresh feelings of the natural human being.
+
+The Robinsons were already receding into the mists of distance. Despite
+the reality and the closeness of his connection with them, they were
+taking their place among the shadows that peopled the past. His own
+vision was turned forward--ever forward!
+
+"Strange," he thought, "how things and people cease to have any
+consequence, once you have turned your back upon them!"
+
+The night passed like a dream. In the train from Calais to Paris he
+dozed lightly, and woke only at dawn. The sky was cloudless and
+wonderfully blue, but the sun shone as yet coldly over the landscape,
+and the fat fields sparkled with dew. Save for the quiet herds of
+cattle, the world was deserted. Immediately all his faculties were
+pleasurably alert again. He noticed with delight the hamlets and
+sleeping villages, the still wayside stations where moustachioed old
+women, who surely dated from the Revolution, stood on guard with flags
+at the cross-ways. At last they were running through the environs of the
+capital, and Wyndham tasted the sensation of entering the great city of
+light and intellect as keenly as in his jubilant boyhood.
+
+The drive through Paris in the early morning was exhilarating and
+enchanting. At that hour the streets at first were surprisingly
+thronged, the roadway sometimes blocked with a heavy traffic of carts
+all converging to the Halles. But soon they were passing through quieter
+neighbourhoods, through stately avenues lined by vast hotels with
+far-stretching lines of shuttered windows. Wyndham surrendered himself
+to the charm of steeping himself again in this atmosphere, drawing freer
+breaths, subtly attuned to it, aided by golden memories.
+
+The brisk buxom matron, who was already at her post in the hotel bureau,
+recognised her old client, and welcomed him with a cry of joy. Her face
+beamed with pleasure as he shook hands with her, and he had a joyous
+sense of home-coming!
+
+"But one has not seen you for eternities," she exclaimed. "We had
+thought that you had quite abandoned us!"
+
+"The loss has been more mine than yours, madame," he returned. "I should
+have announced my arrival beforehand, if I had not left London so
+suddenly."
+
+Presently he took possession of his room, and, as it was not yet seven,
+he sank into an arm-chair and dozed for a time. At nine he awoke,
+washed, changed into more civilised clothes, then strolled out
+cheerfully on to the Boulevards, and had his morning coffee at a little
+table in the open, with a budget of French papers to look through, and
+the spectacle of the passing world in the sunshine for his
+entertainment.
+
+He sat on for a long while in leisurely enjoyment, then proceeded to
+stroll by way of the Place de la Concorde (which looked vaster and
+finer than it had ever appeared to him) round to the great Palace of Art
+off the Champs Elysées. It had sprung up during these years of his
+absence, and he wandered round it delightedly, examining all the
+façades, familiarising himself with all the points of view.
+
+At last he entered through the nearest turnstile and went straight to
+see how Lady Betty's portrait was hung.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Wyndham did not linger in Paris as he had intended. He had found
+Lady Betty beautifully placed on the line, and had returned to her
+daily, not to gaze at the painting, but at the features of the woman he
+loved. And then there surged in him a fever of impatience. He had not
+the least hope of finding her here in Paris--he took it for granted she
+had long since seen the Salon, and he had the strangely settled
+belief--he did not know why--that she was not then in France at all. And
+somehow he was unable to conceive of himself now save as actively in
+search of her. All the first impulsion towards holiday and repose that
+had swept him headlong across the Channel had mysteriously died away, to
+give place to this haunting, this imperious, idea of a mission. He must
+push on with it at once!
+
+He chose his route largely haphazard, yet zigzagging through her
+favourite cities. His heart thrilled with hope as he was borne again
+through the outskirts, and Paris lay behind him. In this dash through
+Europe, the happy chance might perhaps befall him! He knew the quest in
+that way was wholly irrational, but it had its charm. He might pass
+within a stone's throw of her a score of times, and yet remain
+unconscious of the proximity. A billion to one at least against him!
+
+Yet he pursued his journey feverishly; passing through Belgium swiftly,
+thence to Dresden by stages, then hurrying down to Munich, next on to
+Vienna, and passing further southwards; vibrating off the beaten path at
+every turn; staying here a day, there a night, rarely anywhere longer;
+guided by no principle, but darting about at random, often doubling back
+on his track, and yielding to every fantastic impulse that rose in him.
+
+At Belgrade, where he found himself some four weeks after leaving Paris
+(though the days, packed with changing scenes and impressions, had
+seemed to run into months), he had an inspiration, and abruptly took the
+train straight back again. Might not Lady Betty gravitate once more to
+the portrait, before the Salon closed its doors for the season? Even
+though it was to be her own possession in the end, she might well desire
+to pay it that tribute. Had it not given them their brief companionship
+in avowed affection? He would haunt the Salon daily; he would wait and
+watch for her. He journeyed all day, all night, and all the next day,
+impelled by the same fever of impatience, which now oppressed him
+tenfold. He stepped out of the train in the evening amid the bustle and
+lights of the terminus. He was in Paris again! He breathed with relief
+as at a goal accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+One blue summer morning, Wyndham, for the twentieth time at least,
+entered the Salon through his customary turnstile, and stood in the
+great central court, under the crystal roof, amid the gleaming display
+of statuary. There was already a goodly number of people about; not yet
+a crowd, but enough for the costumes and hats of the fair sex to colour
+the whole place like a flower-garden. He moved about among them for
+awhile, his eye keen and ready; then ascended the staircase, and entered
+the nearest doorway. He spent an hour or two in leisurely progression
+through the galleries, long since familiar with all the pictures, and
+staying only before the interesting ones, yet with attention ever on the
+alert.
+
+At last he had set foot in the particular room, which was to him the
+shrine, the inner sanctuary, of this Temple of the Arts. It was already
+crowded here, and his first impression was of a mass of silk hats and
+beflowered millinery rather than of pictures. He hesitated in the
+doorway an instant, then began the slow tour of the room, pausing
+before every picture in turn, so as to indulge in the pleasurable
+make-believe of coming on Lady Betty again suddenly. Gradually he worked
+his way along and it was not till he had come again within reach of his
+starting-point that his own frame gleamed on his vision. He manoeuvred
+through a bevy of ladies, and then found himself side by side with a
+girlish figure in a light flowered muslin costume and a pretty hat
+trimmed with violets. He had stepped quite close to her out of the
+crowd, by which she had been entirely hidden; but, his eyes drawn
+imperiously to the portrait of Lady Betty, he was merely aware of his
+neighbour as one of the crowd, and he did not even look at her
+definitely. He saw just her gloved hand holding her catalogue, and, in a
+vague way, he wondered what she was thinking of the picture. He felt
+rather than saw that his neighbour had stepped back a little, as if
+naturally to make way for him. Then some mysterious impulse made him
+turn, and their eyes met. In all those winter days that were past he had
+never seen her so bright and gracious as she appeared now, clad for the
+summer, and in this sparkling universe. Never before had those violet
+eyes shone with so perfect a light, as of the full freshness of
+childhood. Yet her face was pallid and awestruck as she gazed at him.
+But a wild joy sang at his heart, and he felt his blood pulsing with a
+glad note that seemed to be at one with the note that sang to him from
+horizons of enchantment opening before him; at one, too, with the note
+that sang to him out of all this exquisite Paris!
+
+"I am free," he whispered. "Do you understand? Free!"
+
+"Free?"
+
+He divined rather than heard the breathed exclamation from the movement
+of her lips--read the amazed questioning of her eyes.
+
+"I have not broken my promise to you!" The crowd surged round them,
+struggling to see his picture, ejaculating banal words of admiration.
+"You do not doubt!" he whispered tensely.
+
+The blood came back to her face at last. "No! But the how?--the why?"
+
+"She sought her release!"
+
+"She suspected the truth!" She was pale again.
+
+"We cheated ourselves. She cared for one of her own kind. Our
+renunciation was an irony."
+
+Lady Betty bent her head. Her brow was wrinkled for a moment in thought,
+and her hand trembled visibly.
+
+"An irony--no," she said gently. "We were true to ourselves--the future
+lies the fairer before us."
+
+The press around them grew closer.
+
+"Mais c'est chic ça!"
+
+"Un beau talent!"
+
+"C'est exquis!"
+
+She took his arm, as if seeking freer air, and they moved through the
+throng that continued its compliments, unsuspecting of the proximity of
+either artist or subject. They stood at last on the great balcony, and
+looked down on the splendid court agleam with sculpture and greenery.
+
+"I have searched Europe for you!" he said.
+
+"This great change in our lives--it is too wonderful to grasp all at
+once," she murmured musingly.
+
+"I do not see why we should not stroll round to the Embassy now, and
+inquire," he suggested stoutly.
+
+"Inquire about what?" she asked, her deep absent look changing to
+bewilderment.
+
+"As to when they can marry us, of course!"
+
+"Oh, I see," she said, with a quick smile; but her glance was inward
+again.
+
+"You don't think me precipitate?" he asked uneasily.
+
+"I am thinking of Alice," she returned. "I could have sworn she was the
+soul of constancy."
+
+    THE END.
+
+
+UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRAHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
+  BROWN, LANGHAM & CO.,
+  78 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W.
+
+
+
+
+  Life of the Right Hon Thomas Burt, M.P.
+
+  By AARON WATSON.
+
+  With Portrait and Illustrations. 8vo. 15s. net.
+
+Mr. Burt's life is indissolubly bound up with the rise of the Labour
+Movement in this country.
+
+ "Mr. Aaron Watson places at the beginning of his deeply interesting
+ biography of Mr. Thomas Burt the following tribute, paid to the
+ veteran labour leader by Earl Grey: 'The finest gentleman I ever knew
+ was a working miner in England, whose gentleness, absolute fairness,
+ instinctive horror of anything underhand or mean, or anything that
+ was not the strictest fair-play, gave him a character that enabled
+ him to rise to the position of Privy Councillor.' Never was eulogy
+ better deserved.... Mr. Burt's host of friends will be grateful to
+ Mr. Aaron Watson for his excellent work."--_Daily News._
+
+
+  The Automobilist Abroad.
+
+  By FRANCIS MILTOUN.
+
+  Author of "Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine," "Cathedrals of
+  Northern France," &c.
+
+  With Illustrations and Decorations by BLANCHE McMANUS, a number being in
+  full colour. 8vo. boxed. 10s. 6d. net.
+
+Mr. Miltoun's new book of travel "_en automobile_" is the record of
+hundreds of miles of motoring through regions rich in beautiful views,
+in strange costumes, and quaint peoples, whose pictured and narrated
+charms form a volume of exceptional attractiveness.
+
+The trip is across seven frontiers, through the British Isles, France,
+Belgium, Holland, and Germany, and contains much of historical sentiment
+and romance that could only have been gleaned by leisurely travellers.
+
+
+  England and America, 1763 to 1783.
+
+  The History of a Reaction.
+
+  By MARY A. M. MARKS.
+
+  2 vols. Demy 8vo, gilt top. £1 10s. net.
+
+An important historical work dealing with the War of Independence.
+
+
+  Letters of Christina Rossetti.
+
+  With Memoir and Introduction.
+
+  By W. M. ROSSETTI.
+
+Many interesting Portraits and Facsimiles. 8vo. 15s. net. _Shortly._
+
+Miss Rossetti had many correspondents among the distinguished artists
+and literary personages of the day.
+
+
+  Diary of Dr. Polidori.
+
+  Edited, with Introduction and Notes by his nephew,
+  W. M. ROSSETTI.
+
+  Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s. net. _Shortly._
+
+Dr. Polidori was travelling physician to Lord Byron during his tour in
+Europe in 1816. His diary gives an account of this tour, in which
+Shelley and many other interesting personages appear.
+
+
+  SECOND EDITION.
+
+  Some Reminiscences.
+
+  By W. M. ROSSETTI.
+
+  2 Vols. 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top. 42s. net.
+
+This important work contains a full account of the early days of the
+Rossetti family, with most interesting side-lights of the Pre-Raphaelite
+movement, and the literary and artistic career of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti. The volumes are illustrated with numerous reproductions, very
+few of which have been published before. Mr. Rossetti's "Reminiscences"
+are very complete, dating from his birth in London, 1829, down to the
+present day. Most of the great names in the art and literature of this
+epoch are to be met with in his pages.
+
+
+  The Western Avernus.
+
+  By MORLEY ROBERTS.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth gilt. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+ "All who think of going to the far West of America or British
+ Columbia, would do well to read this book carefully before booking
+ their passage."--_To-Day._
+
+ "These powerful sketches of life in the Western States of America are
+ written from first-hand knowledge, and are memorable pictures of a
+ period which has largely passed away."--_Echo._
+
+ "This story of his wanderings and hardships in Western America reads
+ like a novel--even like a novel by Mr. Roberts himself. As a picture
+ of earlier days in British Columbia, it should soon be
+ invaluable."--_St. James's Gazette._
+
+
+  Moons and Winds of Araby.
+
+  By ROMA WHITE.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth gilt. 5s.
+
+Amusing sketches of official life in Egypt.
+
+
+  Pranks in Provence.
+
+  By PERCY WADHAM, A.R.E.
+
+  With coloured Cover-design by Cecil Aldin. Profusely Illustrated.
+
+  Square 8vo, gilt top. 5s.
+
+An amusing skit on modern books of travel.
+
+
+  Si Mihi
+
+  By "Egomet."
+
+  Crown 8vo. 3s. net.
+
+A volume of thoughtful, personal essays, by a new writer of very
+considerable promise.
+
+
+  Going Through the Mill.
+
+  By Mrs. GERALD PAGET.
+
+  Crown 8vo, gilt top. 5s. net.
+
+ "It is impossible to deny the force of much which she avers. She
+ throbs with indignation, and her book raises many thoughts, unusual
+ to mankind (in the narrow sense), but none the less salutary.
+ Possibly all will be remedied if women get the vote; certainly the
+ case could not more effectively be put. The beauty of the language
+ and the intense conviction which lies behind the polemic cannot be
+ gainsaid. In many respects Mrs. Paget contrives to say fresh things
+ on old subjects, and certain very awkward subjects are most
+ delicately handled."--_Liverpool Post._
+
+
+  Auction Bridge.
+
+  By VANE PENNELL.
+
+  2s. 6d. net.
+
+A treatise on the new variation of bridge as now generally played.
+
+ "To any lover of bridge the new game will prove most fascinating, and
+ intending players cannot do better than study Mr. Vane Pennell's
+ book."--_Western Mail._
+
+
+  POETRY.
+
+  Nineveh and other Poems.
+
+  By GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 5s. net.
+
+Mr. Viereck is a poet who will have to be reckoned with seriously. The
+son of a German father and an American mother, he has "listened to the
+music of two worlds." This volume is his introduction to English
+readers.
+
+
+  FICTION.
+
+  An Engagement of Convenience.
+
+  By LOUIS ZANGWILL.
+
+  6s.
+
+ "He is one of the forces to be counted with in contemporary
+ literature.... Mr. Louis Zangwill is bound to travel far."--_Weekly
+ Sun._
+
+
+  The Brotherhood of Wisdom.
+
+  By FRANCES J. ARMOUR.
+
+  6s.
+
+  A Story dealing with the occult.
+
+
+  Follow Up!
+
+  By ARCHIBALD D. FOX.
+
+  6s.
+
+  A Story of Harrow School.
+
+
+  Faith Unfaithful.
+
+  By FRED E. WYNNE.
+
+  Author of "Fortune's Fool." 6s.
+
+
+  A Mirror of Folly.
+
+  By HAROLD WINTLE.
+
+  6s.
+
+ "A powerful tale of modern society."--_Spectator._
+
+
+  The Barony of Brendon.
+
+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
+
+  6s.
+
+ "The plot is excellent and it is handled with delicacy."--_Daily
+ News._
+
+ "Cannot but add to his already considerable reputation."--_Daily
+ Mail._
+
+
+  Fortune's Fool.
+
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+  The Making of a Man.
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+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
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+ seems to us, has fallen, in no slight degree, upon Mr. Maynard Smith;
+ nor can we repress the thought that if the great essayist had had the
+ privilege of reading these pages, he would never have perpetrated the
+ atrocity, with which tradition charges him, of toasting the memory of
+ Herod the Great."--_Church Family Newspaper._
+
+
+  NEW AND CHEAP EDITION.
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+  Reflections of a Householder.
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+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
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+  With Cover Design in Colour. 1s. net.
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+  Benedictine.
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+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
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+  With Cover Design in Colour. 1s. net.
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+  Cheap editions of Mr. Watson's sketches and light essays.
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+ when we consider the humour and literary quality of the
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+  Hints to Young Authors.
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+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
+
+  Crown 8vo. Cloth extra, gilt top. 2s. net.
+
+ "We unhesitatingly recommend young authors to accept the advice
+ tendered as that of one who knows what he is writing about."--_St.
+ James's Gazette._
+
+
+  THIRD EDITION.
+
+  Litanies of Life.
+
+  By KATHLEEN WATSON.
+
+  Cloth extra, gilt top. 2s. 6d. net.
+
+ "A little book containing five short stories, but every one of them
+ is worth reading, and the note of all sounds sweet and free. The
+ reader will lay down the book, as I did, with a feeling of profound
+ sympathy and gratitude to the writer."--Mr. W. T. STEAD.
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+
+
+  THE HANDY VOLUME EDITION OF
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+
+  Lambskin, 2s. 6d. net, each.
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+
+  London: BROWN, LANGHAM & Co., Ltd., 78, New Bond Street, W.
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+
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+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
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+
+  Punctuation has been normalized.
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+  Page 106, "unobstrusive" changed to "unobtrusive". (her unobtrusive
+    walking-costume)
+
+  Page 273, "any thing" changed to "anything". (was there anything more
+    ridiculous)
+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's An Engagement of Convenience, by Louis Zangwill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Engagement of Convenience
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Louis Zangwill
+
+Release Date: September 17, 2010 [EBook #33747]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENGAGEMENT OF CONVENIENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Pat McCoy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><i>An Engagement</i><br />
+<i>of Convenience</i></h1>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3><i>A Novel</i></h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><i>By</i></h4>
+<h3><i>Louis Zangwill</i></h3>
+
+<h4><i>Author of "The World and a Man,"<br />
+"One's Womenkind," &amp;c., &amp;c.</i></h4>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><i>London</i></h4>
+<h3><i>Brown, Langham &amp; Co., Ltd.</i></h3>
+<h4><i>78 New Bond Street, W.<br />
+1908</i></h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="blockquot2">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"In tragic life, God wot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No villain need be!"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="signature2">
+<span class="smcap">George Meredith.</span>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h1>An<br />
+Engagement of Convenience</h1>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<p>Miss Robinson had first seen Wyndham and
+fallen in love with him on the day that he
+appeared in the road as a neighbour and set
+up his studio there. But that was years before,
+and she had never made his acquaintance. He
+was the Prince Charming of the romances,
+handsome, of knightly bearing, with a winning
+smile on his frank face. From her magic
+window in the big corner house where the road
+branched off into two, she had narrowly observed
+his goings and comings, had watched
+eagerly all that was visible of his romantic,
+mysterious profession&mdash;the picturesque Italian
+models that pulled his bell, the great canvasses
+and frames that, during the earlier years at
+least, were borne in through his door, to reappear
+in due course as finished pictures on
+their way to the exhibitions&mdash;and it was sometimes
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+possible to catch glimpses of stately
+figure-paintings and fascinating scenes and
+landscapes.</p>
+
+<p>Then, too, there was the suggestion of his
+belonging to a brilliant social world: she had
+indeed felt that at her first sight of him.
+Smart broughams and victorias in which nestled
+stylish people not unfrequently drew up at his
+studio about tea-time, and in the season he
+could be seen going off every night in garb of
+ceremony; not to speak of his occasional
+departures&mdash;to important country-houses, no
+doubt&mdash;with portmanteaus and dressing-bags
+stacked on the roof of his hansom.</p>
+
+<p>And not less eagerly had Miss Robinson
+followed his work, scanning the magazines for
+his drawings, and haunting the galleries in the
+search for his paintings. No one guessed how
+much he was the interest of her life: her
+parents had no suspicion at all, though they
+knew of their unusual neighbour, and spoke of
+him occasionally at table. But Alice Robinson
+was the humblest of womankind. Her youth
+lay already in the past: she accounted herself
+the plainest of the plain. So she idealised and
+worshipped her hero at a distance, feeling
+immeasurably farther from him than the
+hundred yards of respectable Hampstead pavement
+that separated their lives.</p>
+
+<p>One morning at breakfast her father read
+out from his paper the news of a sensational
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+bankruptcy. A world-famous house of solicitors
+had fallen, and some of the first families
+in England were losers. Immense trust funds
+had gone for building speculations, and
+amongst the fashionable creditors who had
+been hit the worst were Mr. Walter Lloyd
+Wyndham, the artist, of Hampstead, and
+Miss Mary Wyndham, his sister. It seemed a
+curious little fact to Mr. Robinson that this
+affair should vibrate so near to them, and a
+mild and not unpleasant stimulation was thereby
+imparted to the breakfast-table. But Miss
+Robinson was hard put to it to dissimulate her
+deeper interest in the announcement. Her
+agitation was profound, shattering: she was
+glad to escape, and sit alone with her secret.
+It seemed a sacrilege that earthly vicissitude
+should touch this brilliant existence. And
+thereafter she watched her hero more narrowly
+than ever, reading in his bearing a stern defiance
+of adversity.</p>
+
+<p>At first indeed there was little difference
+visible in Wyndham's outward seemings, and
+Miss Robinson was thankful that the calamity
+had ruffled him so imperceptibly. Yet, as the
+year went by, it began to dawn upon her that
+things nevertheless were changing. She had
+learnt to read with consummate skill all the
+little activities that beat around the studio,
+and it did not escape her attention that he
+was going into society rarely, that smart
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+visitors were fewer, and that pictures were being
+returned to him after astonishingly brief
+intervals. And gradually, as if in corroboration
+of her own conclusions, she found his work
+missing from the exhibitions, and knew with
+a sinking of her heart that his brilliant days
+were waning.</p>
+
+<p>And as time further passed, and one year
+merged into another, she realised definitely
+that his vogue had ended. She could not even
+find anything of his in the magazines, though
+she purchased them prodigally, and searched
+them through with a hope that was desperation,
+and a fear that was well-nigh frenzy.</p>
+
+<p>The last year or two a dead unnatural calm
+had settled over the studio. Pictures were
+neither despatched nor returned: if models
+rang the bell, it was only to turn away the
+next minute with disappointed faces. Of
+fashionable visitors there was never a sign
+now: not even a comrade or fellow-artist came
+to look him up. But only a tall, sad-faced girl,
+who somehow resembled him, called there at
+long intervals, and Miss Robinson envied this
+sister the sympathy she could bring him.</p>
+
+<p>He did not leave London now. All through
+the summer he kept in town, lying low, as
+Miss Robinson could well see from the pallor
+of his face on her return from her own conventional
+holiday at the seaside. She could
+cherish no delusions&mdash;he was a beaten man!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+    Time and again she brushed close to him,
+passing him by chance in the street, and
+observed the languor of his step, the growing
+sadness of his features. Other details did not
+escape her. There was no one to attend on
+him; no one to care for him. Even a charwoman
+was a rarity at last, and Wyndham
+could be seen shopping almost furtively in the
+adjoining streets, and bearing back his own
+provisions to the studio. Miss Robinson divined,
+under their wrappings, the tin of sardines, the
+potted tongue, the loaf of bread. She knew
+that he never took a meal out now, and that,
+if he left the studio in the daytime, it was only
+to escape from the misery of solitude and hopelessness.</p>
+
+<p>She alone observed him so minutely. Her
+mother had in some degree shared her interest
+in his work, and had sometimes accompanied
+her to the galleries; but the common interest
+of the family in their neighbour was casual and
+fitful. Miss Robinson hardly dared mention
+his name now: it seemed to her that to draw
+attention to his poverty was to humiliate him.
+Besides, she feared to reveal her own emotion.</p>
+
+<p>One day Miss Robinson's own life caught her
+with a breathless upheaval. An honoured and
+intimate friend of her father's, successful, opulent,
+came forward with an avowal of esteem
+for her; deferentially desired her association
+with him in his second essay in matrimony!
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+Mr. Shanner seemed to spring it on her with
+untempered abruptness; though the attentive
+courtesies that had preceded the crisis might
+have glimmered some little warning. But Mr.
+Shanner's footing in the house was as old-established
+as the rest of his appertainings;
+and Miss Robinson's spirit was ever at the
+nadir of diffidence. Men as a rule shunned her:
+women cared as little to talk to her. That
+anybody might ever wish to marry her had
+seemed impossible, inconceivable. Mr. Shanner
+had many pretensions to style, yet, to her
+spoiled eye, he seemed merely of clay indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>She strung herself to the ordeal of refusing
+him, though her real strength knew no faltering.
+For he proved insistent; wooed her&mdash;soberly&mdash;decorously&mdash;as
+became the dignity of five
+decades completed; wooed her with reasons of
+urgency, and implications of sentiment. He was
+to depart on a mission to the New World;
+wished to bear her promise with him. He
+would treasure it; would think of the new light
+to shine in his household. But within her lay
+an unfailing inspiration, and her innermost soul
+stood like a tower impregnable; though she
+was all wounds and distress, and quivered with
+the hurt. Was not her heart with her Prince
+Charming? her one dream in life the privilege
+of helping him?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shanner had to sail away disconsolate!</p>
+
+<p>But, though Miss Robinson's mind was occupied
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+day and night with this problem of Wyndham's
+salvation, she could arrive at no plausible
+solution. For how should she ever dare to give
+him a sign? She who would have yielded her
+life for him could only watch him drifting
+downwards with an agonised sense of her
+helplessness.</p>
+
+<p>And he all the while unsuspecting of this
+obscure, loving historian of his existence; of
+the warm heart that beat for him in these evil
+days on which he had fallen!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<p>For hours the rain had beaten against his
+windows, and at last, now that a lull had
+declared itself, Wyndham dragged himself to
+the door, and looked out into the gray afternoon.
+His eye took in the familiar vista, but,
+as it rested on the great bow-windowed house
+at the corner where the road branched into two,
+he turned away with a shudder. For years the
+sight of that house had irritated him: its ugly
+brick bulk had been symbolic of all Suburbia, of
+everything in life to which he was instinctively
+hostile as an artist and a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>But presently he laughed: it had struck him
+as comic that he should have preserved in its
+freshness his full youthful contempt for all this
+Philistine universe!&mdash;he, a half-starved devil of
+an artist, down in the mouth, with a solitary
+half-crown in his pocket, speculating with bitter
+humiliation whether his hard-worked sister had
+yet a little to spare for him, after all the life-blood
+which, leech-like, he had sucked out of
+her! Nay, more, he was conscious that his
+distaste for this surrounding wilderness of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+affluent homes, in the midst of which he had so
+long dwelt as an isolated superior intelligence,
+had grown more marked in direct proportion as
+he had become poorer and poorer.</p>
+
+<p>The prosperous figure of the owner of the
+bow-windowed house rose before him. Immersed
+in his own existence, Wyndham had deigned to
+notice very few indeed of his neighbours. But
+old Mr. Robinson was one of the few, not only
+because of the regularity with which he passed
+the studio every day at six o'clock as he came
+home from business, but also because he invariably
+bore something in a plaited rush-bag that
+had a skewer thrust through it, suggesting visits
+to Leadenhall Market, and purchases of game or
+salmon for the good wife according to season.
+But Mr. Robinson's mild aspect, benevolent
+white beard, and gentle amble had never impressed
+Wyndham with much of a sense of
+human fellowship. He might concede that the
+old man was "a decent sort, no doubt, in his
+own way"; but they were creatures belonging
+to different planets.</p>
+
+<p>Still amused at his own disdain, though the
+corners of his mouth were set a trifle grimly,
+Wyndham turned back into the studio with the
+idea of making himself presentable and going
+to see his sister&mdash;since it now seemed possible to
+get across town without the prospect of an
+absolute drenching. Happily his wardrobe had
+substantial resources: in the old days he had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+kept it well replenished, and his simple life of
+late here in the studio had made small demands
+on it. Thus he could still go out faultlessly clad
+and shod. Nobody need suspect his poverty, he
+flattered himself, if he ever chose to dip into his
+own world again. Only he did not choose;
+there was always so much questioning to face.
+"We've seen nothing of yours in the last two
+or three Academies&mdash;when are you going to
+give us another masterpiece?" "Still on the
+big picture? How is it getting along?" However
+genially thrown out, such usual interrogation
+annoyed him beyond measure. It was so
+long since anything had been "getting along."
+On all sides he was regarded as a doomed man,
+and suspected it: suspecting it, he was morbidly
+sensitive. His life was unnatural and not worth
+the living. Months and months had been wasted
+in apathy. Each day he dreamt of a new lease
+of energy and courage to begin on the morrow;
+but, after making his bed and clearing away his
+breakfast and purchasing his food for the day,
+he would find himself dejected and incapable of
+a single stroke.</p>
+
+<p>And yet he could not wholly realise the
+change that had come over the scene. He
+rubbed his eyes sometimes, as if expecting to
+awake from an unhappy dream. Was not the
+flourish of early trumpets still in his ears?
+The dazzle of admiration still on his retina?
+The gush of extensive and important family
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+connections still tickling his self-esteem? The
+sweeter approval of a superior art-clique still
+flattering his deeper vanity?</p>
+
+<p>He had been born with a silver spoon; his
+childhood and youth had been ideally happy.
+From the playing-fields of Eton he had passed
+to the quadrangles of Oxford. A distinguished
+student of his college?&mdash;not in the ordinary
+grooves; yet favourably known as an intellect
+with enthusiasms. Phidias was more of an
+inspiration to him than Aristotle; Titian more
+actual than Todhunter. Ruskin, Pater, Turner,
+had stirred him; left his mind subdued to their
+colours. From boyhood had been his the swift
+skill with pencil that ran as easily to grace as
+to mockery. And, left early arbiter of his own
+existence, with gold enough for freedom, he had
+made for the one career that called to him.</p>
+
+<p>Genius cannot prove itself at a stroke: it has
+its adventurings to make. Seldom it realises at
+the outset that it is adventuring in the dark,
+therein to grope as best it may to self-discovery.
+Even this first stage may be long deferred; yet,
+however sure of himself at last, the artist has
+still to tread the unending road with the great
+light of self-realisation ever in the distance.
+There are the years of strenuous search, of
+faithful labour; of bitterest failure on failure
+to bring the deep, mysterious impulses to bloom
+and fruition. But there is yet another, if independent,
+adventuring. The great light that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+crowns the artist's journey shines only in his
+own spirit. The world sees and knows nothing
+of it. He has none the less to find his way into
+that other light&mdash;the lurid, mocking limelight
+of the world's acceptance; to seek a place beside
+or beneath the charlatan. This is the bitterest
+stage of all&mdash;- to stand shivering in marketplaces
+that are knee-deep with dung and offal;
+to be upholding precious things to the vision
+of swine. What wonder if in the course of so
+harsh a journeying, as he lives and breathes
+in his own universe of striving, his precise
+moral relation to things external grows dim,
+intangible; and, if money one day give out, he
+clutches at any crust for sustenance.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham began his journeyings. His advantages
+were many and obvious; his disadvantages
+subtle and unseen. There was the danger that
+facile talent and social prestige might bring him
+an early delusive success; a failure, rightly seen,
+however tricked out with glamour.</p>
+
+<p>His beginnings, indeed, were pleasant: it was
+great fun throwing himself into this new queer
+Bohemian world of art. He worked hard as a
+student, the sheer interest of his labours lightening
+them astonishingly. And, after some preliminary
+swayings in varying directions, he at
+last "found himself," as he supposed; developing
+a dexterous imitative craft, and joining an
+advanced crowd with Whistler and Sargent for
+his deities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+    Wherever he pursued his studies&mdash;in London,
+or Paris, or Italy&mdash;there he was remarkably
+popular. Everybody said: "Wyndham belongs
+to very good people. They're swells&mdash;tip-top!"
+And indeed he had obviously the stamp of being
+"the real thing," and even the elect of Bohemia
+were flattered and fascinated by personal association
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>When ultimately he set up his studio here in
+Hampstead, he had his policy definitely before
+him. With the means and the leisure to aim at
+a high career, he would make no concessions
+to popularity or the market. He had chosen
+the locality deliberately. It was London, and
+within reach of the world; but not so near the
+world as to endanger his labours. The little
+tide of fashion that rolled up to his door was
+not a tribute to fame, but merely the fuss and
+interest of his non-Bohemian circle pleased for
+a time with the novelty of having a studio
+and a genius connected with them.</p>
+
+<p>So in the early years he worked enthusiastically,
+and was able to win some footing in the
+galleries. But, in the eyes of his numerous
+family connections, he was seriously launched;
+especially when a couple of his pictures at last
+attracted buyers, and he moreover found himself
+earning guineas from the patronage of friendly
+editors whose humbler commissions he carried
+out in the same spirit of the dignified, ambitious
+worker.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+    Then the financial crash came, leaving brother
+and sister entirely dependent on their labours.
+Both met the crisis with commendable philosophy.
+Mary, who had long before taken up
+educational work as an amateur, was soon able
+to establish herself as a professional, and had
+taught ever since at a high school in Kensington;
+picturesquely settling herself in a tiny flat in
+an artisan's building, and living as a homely
+worker. The dignity and serene simplicity of
+her life had of late furnished the one ideal thing
+for Wyndham's contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham himself had stood up straight and
+felt very strong; had reassured his fussy,
+frightened folk that he could rely on his profession.
+He felt in himself an endless ardour
+for achievement, a confidence of triumph in the
+contest with men. Nay, more, he would gain
+his bread without descending from his high
+standpoint! The task was fully as difficult as
+he had anticipated; but at any rate he contrived
+to live for a couple of years. Then, somewhat
+to his surprise, the Academy began to return
+his pictures; and somehow, to his greater surprise,
+everything else went against him at the
+same time. He could not even get "illustrating"
+to do. Those who had acclaimed him
+before because he was a "swell" were now
+turning against him apparently for the same
+reason. Your aristocrats were never to be
+taken seriously; they were necessarily amateurs!
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+It was all so unanimous, so settled and
+persistent, that it had almost the air of a conspiracy.
+Wyndham saw well enough that
+everybody had tired of his work, that he had
+had his hour and his vogue; his career lay like
+a squib that had blazed itself out. All bangs
+and fizzings, and then a blackened bit of casing,
+silent, extinguished! Yet he had the discernment
+to recognise that the dying-down had been
+really inevitable; that his present relative
+poverty had little or nothing to do with it. He
+had been dexterous on the surface, but the
+sameness of his note&mdash;without even the saving
+grace of convention&mdash;had destroyed him commercially.</p>
+
+<p>Well, he believed in himself, and he refused to
+accept this erasure. On the contrary, he would
+launch out more daringly than ever. An end to
+facile imitation of other people's styles! He
+must express his own deeper self. The strict
+Whistlerian creed was much too narrow. Art
+was not merely a bare abstract aesthetics:
+humanity counted for something after all.
+Was woman's loveliness something really apart
+from woman herself? True that art meant
+beauty&mdash;in the largest sense, of course; but why
+should not humanity and beauty fuse together?</p>
+
+<p>So, scraping together all he could command in
+the way of money, he set himself to work out
+a large dramatic idea, suggested by the sight
+of a May-day demonstration. The canvas was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+gigantic, and he strove to depict a mob of
+strikers straggling out of the Park after their
+great meeting, with elements of fashion caught
+in this <i>mêlée</i> of labour. The pictorial irony had
+greatly interested him, and he felt that this
+painting on the grand scale was being sincerely
+born out of his own emotion, that it would
+trumpet out a warning to the age.</p>
+
+<p>The beginnings were full of promise, and he
+decided to stake everything on it. But for so
+realistic a representation of Hyde Park Corner
+he needed to make a great many sketches on
+the spot. So, through the friendly offices of an
+amiable acquaintance, he obtained access to a
+convenient window in Grosvenor Place, and
+made free use of the privilege. The master of
+the house, a nobleman of the old school, who at
+first sight seemed stately as the portraits in his
+own dining-room, proved on acquaintance to be
+singularly bluff and genial, sometimes almost
+slap-dash. He had made Wyndham welcome
+and at his ease, bidding him come and go as he
+pleased, and "never to mind a bit about turning
+the room into a studio." And this charming
+nobleman had likewise a charming daughter,
+who sometimes came for a minute or two to
+talk to Wyndham and interest herself in the
+sketches. Lady Betty was a brilliant figure of
+a girl; had travelled a good deal and knew the
+world. She was sunny and friendly, yet naturally
+on a pedestal. She was clear-headed and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+capable; in the home supreme mistress. Wyndham
+was the subject of many graceful little
+attentions. If he came in the morning she saw
+that his glass of sherry and biscuit was never
+neglected; in the afternoon she presided over
+tea in the drawing-room and expected him to
+appear there.</p>
+
+<p>Of course poor Wyndham never dared tell
+himself that he was in love with her. A girl
+like that must naturally be reserved for a great
+match, as regards both position and fortune.
+He could not think of her save as presiding over
+a plurality of palaces or voyaging in a magnificent
+yacht. Palaces and yachts were not the
+rewards of painters, so Wyndham kept his mind
+sternly fixed on the purpose for which he was
+there. Even so, the intervals between his
+appearances grew wider and wider. And when,
+after some couple of years of toil, discipline,
+searching, it had come home to him that in this
+terrible picture he had undertaken a task
+beyond his strength and experience, he found
+himself too shamefaced to "abuse" further the
+courtesy that had been extended to him. The
+consciousness, too, of his growing poverty was
+becoming acuter and acuter. Already he was
+drawing back into his shell, and, once he had
+ceased going to Grosvenor Place for the sake of
+his work, he had not the heart to continue his
+visits as an ordinary acquaintance. More than
+a year afterwards he read of Lady Betty's engagement
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+in the papers&mdash;it was the very match
+one would naturally look for. Yet the news
+"shattered him to bits"&mdash;absurdly enough, he
+told himself, since he had known her at best
+irregularly, and not in the ordinary course of
+social intimacy. He was really half-surprised
+at receiving an invitation to the wedding. He
+could not prevail on himself to go; but, remembering
+she had once admired one of his Academy
+pictures, he sent her a photograph of it on a
+miniature silver easel as a trifling wedding gift.
+She wrote back a gracious acknowledgment,
+which had since remained one of his treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile he had been struggling on with
+the picture, determined to conquer. But its
+difficulties and problems were endless. After
+all his toil it stood on his easel in a terribly
+unfinished condition, though he had stinted his
+own body to lavish his money on it. At last,
+gulping down the humiliation, he was forced to
+accept of Mary's little store of savings to pay his
+rent and his models. It was his first step of the
+kind, and he paid the full proverbial cost of it.
+But he had still the hope of returning the loan a
+thousandfold. Was not his success to redeem
+her life as well as his?</p>
+
+<p>Certainly Mary believed in him and the picture,
+and looked forward to its scoring a great
+triumph. The whole heart and hope of the
+sister centred on that vast canvas. She sometimes
+ran across town to see it, though&mdash;poor
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+child!&mdash;Hyde Park Corner always looked the
+same to her at every stage of its long creation.
+But the picture was Wyndham's backbone; it
+was his stock-in-trade before his world. He was
+more and more of a recluse now, refusing all invitations,
+discouraging his friends from coming
+to interrupt him&mdash;as he put it. Certainly
+Wyndham would rather have died than confess
+to failure after all the magnificent trumpeting.
+Even as it was, the time came soon enough
+when the big picture no longer served to protect
+his dignity. He imagined half-pitying glances
+and ironic smiles, and so eventually he found
+himself avoiding everybody without exception.</p>
+
+<p>It was only on Lady Betty's wedding day,
+after more than three years of futile striving,
+that he had the resolution to remove the great
+canvas from the easel and stand it with its face
+to the wall.</p>
+
+<p>He was tired now, but he must make an effort
+to emancipate himself from Mary's exchequer.
+Till then he could not hold his head up. So he
+painted some smaller and pleasanter pictures,
+but again he could do nothing with them. The
+Academy sent them back, the minor galleries
+sent them back, the Salon sent them back the
+following year. The dealers offered less than
+the cost of the frames. Meantime he had ceased
+to count up the five-pound notes Mary had
+starved herself to keep for him. He knew he
+was a coward and dared not. He had reached
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+that stage of moral confusion which Nietzsche
+registers as in the natural history of the artist-type,
+and which may not be eyed too harshly
+from the point of vantage of ordered and organised
+existence in this outer universe. One idea
+stood clear beyond all others; grew into his
+mind; grew till it became his mind. He must
+cling to his studio, hold desperately to this
+atmosphere of paint and canvasses.</p>
+
+<p>He was getting on in years now&mdash;past thirty-three.
+It was like the striking of a pitiless
+clock, this adding of swift year after year to his
+unsuccessful life. His hand began to fail him.
+The necessity of now doing his own house-work;
+of bothering with coals and cinders, preparing
+his makeshift monotonous meals, pouring oil
+into lamps, and boiling kettles, and washing
+plates and teacups, had begun by encroaching
+on his time and energies, and ended by absorbing
+them altogether. The care of ministering
+to his own primary needs had at last
+superseded art as his profession. Even so, the
+cobwebs multiplied and the dust lay thick.</p>
+
+<p>Months now slipped by, he scarcely knew
+how; he was astonished to realise how time
+might elude one, how a colourless day might be
+trifled away without appearing to hold the
+possibility of even a morsel of achievement.
+Yet he still grasped the hope that something
+would "arrive"&mdash;an unexpected magazine commission,
+a request from a dealer. Ideas for a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+new start would teem in his head as he lay tossing
+on the narrow iron bed up in the gallery at
+the end of the studio. Why not do some pretty
+little things&mdash;to fetch ten guineas apiece, say&mdash;Cupids
+playing amid wreathed flowers with pale
+Doric structures in the background? If Mary
+could manage just another few pounds for him,
+he would have time to turn out a number of such
+decorative trifles. Such things were in constant
+demand and were a sure source of livelihood.
+He had stood out long enough, much longer
+indeed than he had had the right. He had consistently
+worked on a basis of high endeavour,
+but now he must withdraw his dignity and enter
+on the pot-boiler phase. Better that than this
+abominable leech-like existence. Continued
+misfortune had befogged his wits, and this
+last year certainly he had been half mad.</p>
+
+<p>So be it! He must wake up now, and no
+longer lose his days in this stupid pottering
+about!</p>
+
+<p>Every dog had his day, and his own turn
+would come in time. He was an artist. He
+felt it in his bones and blood. Art was his life
+and destiny. He had blundered in attempting
+too big a feat too early in his career, but he did
+not intend that that should wreck his existence.
+No, no! he would never throw up the sponge.
+He would rather die than admit defeat, with all
+those who knew him looking on at the game.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<p>He dressed himself carefully to go to Mary's,
+trying hard not to think of the real purpose
+of his visit&mdash;he had merely informed her that
+he would be in the neighbourhood and would
+look in for a cup of tea. But, though it was
+distasteful to dwell on these unending demands
+on her earnings, he was anything but profligate
+in spending them. He had spun out her previous
+five-pound note so that it had kept him
+going for weeks and weeks, and he had grudged
+himself even a newspaper. In view of the
+newly-projected work to tickle the dealers, he
+regretted more than ever that he had not been
+able to pull himself together sooner: in these
+past precious weeks he might have knocked off
+half a dozen of such pretty-pretty things.</p>
+
+<p>A series of omnibuses took him across London
+to Kensington Church, where he descended,
+presently turning out of the High Street. The
+"Buildings" where Mary resided were in a side
+alley at the back, and Wyndham made direct
+for them. He walked straight in through the
+large front door that stood perennially open,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+and followed the trail of muddy footmarks up
+the worn stone stairway. On the third landing
+he came to a stop, and pulled a bell half hidden
+in the obscurity of a corner. The door opened,
+and Mary stood before him. He could not help
+seeing how unnaturally slim she appeared to-day;
+how her simple stuff dress seemed to hang
+loosely on her.</p>
+
+<p>"This is so good of you. I am so glad to see
+you, dear." Her earnest face brightened with a
+wistful yet pleasant smile.</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and kissed her, then followed her
+into her tiny sitting-room. It was evidently the
+home of a gentlewoman. With the shelf or two
+of books, the escritoire, the few prints, and the
+little trinkets and photographs she valued, she
+had contrived to make a dainty little nest of it,
+and all these simple things gave the place a
+peculiar personal stamp. The table was laid
+for tea, and the kettle sang on the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"You have had a dreary journey," she said,
+as she gave him a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"No, the weather has been unexpectedly
+kind," he reassured her. "The sun peeped out
+just for one moment. I believe I was the only
+person in London that noticed it: the rest of
+the world were intent on other things. Have
+you been keeping well?"</p>
+
+<p>"You forget I am just back from vacation."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;I had forgotten," he laughed.
+"How did you spend your time?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+    "I passed the first three weeks with Aunt
+Eleanor, as I told you I should. We were a
+big, merry party, and everybody made a great
+fuss of your little sister." Again that wistful
+smile. "They all spoiled and petted me shamefully."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that was good for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not so sure about that," she returned
+thoughtfully. "I am certainly not used to the
+sort of thing, and I really found it restful and
+refreshing to go on to old Lady Glynn, who had
+me to herself."</p>
+
+<p>"So that's your idea of a holiday&mdash;taking care
+of paralytic, deaf old people whom everybody
+else shuns like the plague." He shook his finger
+at her. "And you call it restful and refreshing."</p>
+
+<p>"Service is the greatest of all happiness," she
+answered gently. "Even as it is, I'm sadly
+afraid I'm a sham and a fraud. I'm not really
+a worker&mdash;in the same sense as others I know.
+They have no fashionable friends with big houses
+in the country."</p>
+
+<p>She brewed the tea and gave him his cup.</p>
+
+<p>"Do people inquire much about me?" he
+asked, as the uncomfortable thought recurred
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not of me," she returned. "You
+neglect them, you refuse their invitations, they
+never hear a word from you, and naturally they
+suppose you wish to be quit of them all. And
+so, no doubt, they feel it the proper thing not
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+to appear to wish to discuss you with your
+sister." There was a pause. Both seemed lost
+in thought for the moment. "And so you, poor
+Walter, have had no holiday at all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well," he sighed. "I try to content
+myself with the thought that I'm saving it up.
+One of these days I daresay I shall go off to
+Rome or Venice, and recuperate from several
+points of view. I daresay a bit of luck will be
+coming my way presently, and I'm keen on getting
+back to Italy again. I've often planned it
+out. A month or so at Paris, a couple of months
+in the South of France, three at Rome, and three
+at Venice&mdash;with a look-in at Naples some time,
+of course."</p>
+
+<p>"What a lovely holiday that would be!"
+He did not surprise her quick flash of longing.
+Both remained pensive.</p>
+
+<p>"But tell me about everybody," he said at last.
+"You see I take more interest in them all than
+they suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"That's natural enough. After all, Hertfordshire's
+your home."</p>
+
+<p>He winced visibly, half sorry that he had set
+her mind in that direction. She, however, proceeded
+to draw for him various pictures, and he
+presently found himself listening with a deeper
+eagerness than he had foreseen. She brought
+him close again to his own world, uplifted him
+in his own eyes: he had almost the sensation of
+being restored to a sphere which it had been
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+more painful to abandon than he had ever
+admitted. The minutes passed, bringing him a
+warm, happy sense of social comradeship with
+his sister. The little fire burned brightly, and
+the feeling of the well-ordered nest was fragrant
+and exquisite. He felt his bitterness softening
+under its influence; a deep peace seemed to
+surround him, filling the little haven, radiating
+from Mary's wistful face, from her gentle smile
+and voice. How thankful he was this terrible
+London yet held her sympathy!</p>
+
+<p>"It is a great thing for me to have you to
+come to, Mary," he broke in on her suddenly.
+"It helps me tremendously."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Walter!" she breathed. Her eyes
+filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment both were too moved to speak
+again. But abruptly, as with a courage and
+firmness long since resolved upon, she looked
+straight at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you give it up, darling? This
+art is ruining your life."</p>
+
+<p>He did not seem surprised at this sudden turn
+of the conversation, though such a suggestion
+had never before fallen from her lips. He took
+her words as a cry of despair rather than an
+attempt at a stern reckoning.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't I give it up?" he echoed.
+"That's an easy question to ask. The answer
+is difficult. But I can't give it up. It is
+impossible."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+    "It is not so impossible as it seems."</p>
+
+<p>"What can I turn to? I am fitted for
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Go to the Colonies. Labour on the soil&mdash;or
+work with hammer and saw."</p>
+
+<p>"I am willing to labour, willing to face anything
+in life. But, Mary&mdash;the confession of
+failure&mdash;you don't see how deep, how mad the
+pride is in me."</p>
+
+<p>"You have nothing to confess. The whole
+world knows you are a failure. They talk
+about it openly. They spare me as much as
+possible, but I can't shut my ears."</p>
+
+<p>It was a staggering blow. "They despise
+me!" he breathed.</p>
+
+<p>Her lips hesitated, clenched together, the
+corners convulsed with pain.</p>
+
+<p>"They despise you!"</p>
+
+<p>He found his defence. "Because I have not
+succeeded commercially." His voice was full of
+scorn. "It matters little that these gross
+Philistines misjudge me. They will yet regret
+it. I shall yet show them that I am not so self-deceived
+as they imagine. I am an artist&mdash;art
+was born in my blood, art is my whole existence.
+I shall stick to it till I fall dead. I ask you,
+Mary, to believe in me a little longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven knows I have never wavered in my
+belief a moment. But it is not my belief that
+can save you. You have made a brave attempt,
+but you have been defeated. I am only facing
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+the simple facts. The present position seems to
+me a hopeless one to start from. You have no
+means behind you now, so what is there before
+you save to go on in the same miserable way as
+you have lived the last year or two? I see no
+possibility of anything but repetition of the
+same unhappy experience&mdash;the world is not
+going to step out of its way for your sake.
+And remember it has already made up its
+mind about you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I have lost your sympathy!" he exclaimed.
+He stared gloomily into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>She saw now that the morbid sensibility of
+the man who had failed would never face clear,
+cold reason, however gently administered.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear; you have not lost my sympathy.
+Please don't think that," she pleaded. "Don't
+you see I want to be a real friend to you; don't
+you see that you are more to me than your
+art?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must fight it out," he insisted. "To-morrow
+I am starting a fresh lot of things&mdash;to
+sell! I have always stood out for the big
+accomplishment, but now I offer my labour in
+the market. Pretty designs, prettily coloured&mdash;Cupids
+and pearly clouds and wreaths of
+flowers. The dealers will take them. You will
+see, Mary, I shall manage to pull through yet."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head incredulously. "Better
+to give it up altogether before it is too late."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't mean it," he exclaimed. "You
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+have stood by me so long that I can't believe
+you are going to turn against me."</p>
+
+<p>"I repeat that I care for you more than for
+your art, and I cannot see you sacrificed. No, I
+have not turned against you. I have been against
+you all this long, unhappy time. To-day I am
+your friend for the first time. Listen, darling.
+When I got your letter yesterday, I knew that
+things were as bad as ever, that you were at
+your wits' ends again for money."</p>
+
+<p>He maintained a shamefaced silence, not
+daring to make any pretence to the contrary.
+She looked straight at him as she continued:
+"I am sure you will be the last to think I have
+ever considered the few pounds I have been able
+to put aside for you&mdash;my heart's best affection
+has always gone out to you with them. But the
+whole of last night I kept awake, and prayed
+for strength to refuse you any more money."</p>
+
+<p>He held his head down; he was too abased to
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Strength has been granted me at last. You
+are dear to me, and I will not help to continue
+this unhappy state of affairs. Sell off your
+studio, try your fortune in the Colonies, and you
+will yet pull your life out of the mire."</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and took up his hat. "I daresay
+you are right, Mary. But I am an artist. Art
+is my life. Outside that there is nothing for me.
+Don't think I am ungrateful for all you have
+done. Goodbye!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+    "Goodbye, darling. Perhaps you will yet
+think it over."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head wearily and turned away,
+not seeing that she had held her lips to him.
+The next moment he was descending the muddy
+staircase, slipping and stumbling on the bare
+stone. He was conscious that Mary was standing
+in the doorway a moment, but he did not see the
+convulsive working of her face, nor know that
+as soon as he was out of sight she had thrown
+herself on her bed, heart-broken, her body shaken
+in a terrible burst of sobbing.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<p>In the High Street Wyndham waited impatiently
+for an omnibus to take him home
+again. Instinctively he turned for refuge to
+the bleak studio, from whose loneliness he had
+so often been impelled to escape. But it was his
+own corner, and all he had. He would not light
+his lamp; he would lie there in the gloom till
+his pain and self-abasement should have worn
+themselves out. Merciful sleep might come;
+perhaps&mdash;and the idea seemed sweet to him&mdash;the
+sleep of all sleeps.</p>
+
+<p>So he possessed his spirit as best he could,
+while the vehicle lumbered along through the
+endless streets; shivering a little in the autumn
+dusk as now and then a gust of wind arose.
+The sky clouded heavily, and, when finally he
+descended, the rain was falling swiftly again.</p>
+
+<p>At last he was at home! He thought of the
+studio now with affection, and quickened his
+pace feverishly. Then he became aware that a
+familiar figure, holding a familiar rush-bag with
+a skewer thrust through it, was trudging just
+ahead of him in the growing darkness. But he
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+was not surprised at catching sight of Mr.
+Robinson, since it was the regular hour of the
+merchant's appearance after his homeward
+journey from the City. As usual, Mr. Robinson's
+house filled the centre of vision, looming vast at
+the cross-roads, and softened in the evening
+mist; and for the first time the figure plodding
+towards it under the dripping umbrella struck
+Wyndham as interesting and strangely human.</p>
+
+<p>Steadily, steadily, Wyndham gained on his
+neighbour; then, acting on some vague instinct,
+slackened his step so as not to have to pass him
+to get to his own door. But just outside the
+studio Mr. Robinson slipped, swayed, then came
+to the ground heavily. Wyndham at once
+hurried forward, and helped him to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not hurt, I hope?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I think not," returned the old man. He
+leaned against the studio door, whilst Wyndham
+took the rush-bag from his clenched fingers,
+and gathered up the umbrella from the gutter
+into which it had rolled. Mr. Robinson surveyed
+his soiled garments ruefully, and shook his head
+sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> beastly," assented Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be helped," said the old man;
+"though mud like this on a new suit of clothes
+puts a hard strain on a man's philosophy."
+There was a good-natured gleam in his eye and
+a brave smile on his face. Wyndham found himself
+unexpectedly attracted, and was much concerned
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+when Mr. Robinson tried to take a step
+or two, but was pulled up painfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, don't alarm yourself, sir," said Mr.
+Robinson, as Wyndham caught at his arm
+solicitously. "I am only a little bruised, and
+have had rather a wrench. I must just breathe
+for an instant."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you come into my studio, and rest for
+a moment or two?" suggested Wyndham. "I
+shall be delighted if you will."</p>
+
+<p>He produced the key from his pocket, turned
+it in the lock, and threw open the door. Then
+he offered Mr. Robinson the support of his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very kind of you, sir," said the old man,
+as he linked his arm in Wyndham's. "My name
+is Robinson. I live just up the road. I daresay
+you may have noticed me: I have often noticed
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am enchanted to make your acquaintance,
+though I regret the particular circumstances,"
+said Wyndham, as they passed through the little
+ante-room into the dim interior.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot share your regret," returned Mr.
+Robinson, with a touch of suave conviction.
+"No, not even if the accident were more serious,
+since I have been afforded the pleasure of knowing
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was surprised at the sweetness and
+old-world courtesy revealed in the old man's
+personality. "You are very kind," he said
+with a smile. "I hope indeed I am worth so
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+pretty a sentiment. But please take this arm-chair."</p>
+
+<p>He pushed it forward, then set the rush-bag
+down on the table, hastily throwing a serviette
+over the litter of his last meal, which he had
+not had the energy to clear away, and which
+now brusquely offended his fastidiousness. But
+as Mr. Robinson, good careful soul, hesitated to
+soil the chair, Wyndham got a rag and wiped
+away the more lurid splashes from his garments.
+Then, whilst the old man rested, Wyndham
+trimmed his lamp; and presently the glooms
+vanished before a cosy illumination. Mr. Robinson
+at once began to scrutinise the studio on
+all sides with amusingly deep interest. The
+old Normandy presses, the model's throne, the
+giant easel, the well-worn Persian carpet, the
+hosts of canvasses of all sizes standing with their
+faces to the wall, the disorder and informality
+everywhere&mdash;all seemed to strike for him a note
+of youth and gaiety, to animate him with a sense
+of a new romantic universe. His face lighted
+with pleasure. He gazed up at the lofty roof
+and the oak cross-beams that supported it, and
+finally his eye rested on the little stairway and
+gallery at the far end, now almost lost in the
+shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your bedroom up there?" he hazarded,
+his naïve interest slipping out on his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," smiled Wyndham, as he tackled the
+dying fire. "It's the traditional arrangement."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+    "What a fascinating place you've got here!
+It's all a new world to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it's a very ordinary sort of world&mdash;when
+once you've settled down to work."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never known an artist before,"
+pursued the old man, "and it is all fresh to me.
+I think that if I were a youngster again, I
+shouldn't at all dislike having a place like this,
+and making my home of it. Not that I mean
+I should ever have made anything of an artist,"
+he added with a smile. "It's the spirit of the
+thing that appeals to me. You must be very
+happy here."</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessarily," said Wyndham. He saw
+the old man's eyes fixed on him gravely. "You
+see, I'm not one of your successful artists, and
+the years have a way of passing on." He
+struggled with the fire, making the sticks blaze,
+then piled up the coals unsparingly. Mr. Robinson
+was the only person in the world to whom
+he had ever admitted failure, but somehow it
+did not seem to matter.</p>
+
+<p>The old man gazed at him in frank astonishment.
+"Why, you are in the prime of early
+manhood!" he exclaimed. "Really it is most
+extraordinary to hear a splendid young man
+like you complain of the years passing!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm thirty-three," volunteered Wyndham.
+"And an unlucky devil of thirty-three, who has
+as much trouble in getting rid of his work as I,
+feels old enough in all conscience."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+    "But you artists have to expect these adverse
+experiences," said Mr. Robinson. "Art of
+course isn't like other things&mdash;it isn't exactly a
+business or profession in the ordinary sense, and
+so long as a man has the gift, he ought not to
+get disheartened. In our business world, of
+course, pounds, shillings and pence are everything,
+but in the world of art it wouldn't do to
+set up a standard of that kind."</p>
+
+<p>Such sentiments on the part of a Philistine
+who came home every evening from the City
+at six o'clock struck Wyndham speechless.</p>
+
+<p>"The struggle of genius is proverbial," Mr.
+Robinson added, before the younger man could
+find his tongue; "and genius wouldn't be genius
+without it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, if I were only a genius!" said Wyndham,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you are a genius," said the old
+man very gravely. "I have often thought
+what a clever face yours was. At home we
+have often spoken of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose then I must be a conspicuous figure
+in the road. I had no idea of it!" Wyndham
+laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been in the neighbourhood some
+years now," said Mr. Robinson half apologetically;
+"and neighbours naturally notice one
+another. Besides, if I may say so, you are quite
+unlike the ordinary run of people. You are not
+the sort of man one sees in the City."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+    "You interest me. In what way do I differ
+from others?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have the stamp of belonging to leisured
+people; it is plain from your walk and bearing,
+from your voice and manner of speech. And
+then there is something about your clothes even&mdash;I
+don't quite know what." The old man's
+eyes rested on him with a sort of approval and
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was amused. "You are really an
+original character," he exclaimed. "I like you."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robinson smiled with gratification. "I
+more than return the compliment, I can assure
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"But pray go on," said Wyndham. "I believe
+you're a wizard. I must get you to cast my
+horoscope."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robinson raised his hands. "I don't
+think I could manage that," he laughed. "I am
+only a quiet observer of my fellow-men. In the
+present case it is very easy to see that yours is
+the face of a gentleman by birth. There is a
+certain composure in your whole style. Whatever
+you had to face, you would never have
+that appearance that men get in the City&mdash;of
+wearing themselves out."</p>
+
+<p>"Better to wear out than to rust out," said
+Wyndham meditatively. "I rust out."</p>
+
+<p>He was astonished at his own frankness.
+But there was a deep pleasure in being natural
+for once, in throwing off the cover of sham and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+pretence that had characterised his intercourse
+with his kind in the past. He did not even
+consider it was strange that the person he
+should be baring himself to so freely was one
+whose existence hitherto he had merely
+deigned to notice. But nothing could exceed
+Mr. Robinson's amazement at this last profession
+of his.</p>
+
+<p>"Rust out!" The old man's eyes opened
+wide. "Why, you have done an immense
+amount of work!" He waved his hand significantly
+towards the army of canvasses ranged
+against the walls.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham affected to be impressed by the
+consideration. "Yes," he admitted; "I have
+used up a considerable amount of material in
+my time, I must admit." He had suddenly
+perceived that Mr. Robinson was largely discounting
+his ingenuous frankness, and was
+really taking his profession of failure, which,
+as it happened, he had thrown out in an offhand
+way, as rather affectation than literal
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>"And no doubt will be using up still larger
+amounts in the future." The old man smiled
+and rose. "But I am taking up your time!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed," Wyndham assured him. "I
+hope you have quite recovered now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, quite," returned Mr. Robinson. "I had
+altogether forgotten the little accident in the
+pleasure of our conversation."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+    There was a pause. "I am sorry there's no
+light," said Wyndham; "else I should show
+you some of my work&mdash;that is, if you cared
+to see it."</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked eager. "Couldn't you
+make the lamp do?" he exclaimed. "I'm sure
+it would give me a very good idea of your pictures.
+But I am presuming on your kindness."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," protested Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>He began to move about the studio, conscious
+of a new energy. Somebody was here to
+appreciate him; somebody desired to see his
+work, was looking up to him in admiration!
+He felt strangely rejuvenated&mdash;it was as if he
+had taken a dose of some wonderful elixir. He
+selected half a dozen of the smaller pictures, and
+brought them forward. Then, as he wheeled
+the great easel into position, the whim took
+him to see how his huge "masterpiece" looked
+after all this long interval of time.</p>
+
+<p>For, since he had stood it with its face to the
+wall on Lady Betty's wedding-day, he had never
+had the heart to glance at it again. Not merely
+failure and wasted years were associated with
+it, but it stirred memories of the hours he had
+spent at Grosvenor Place in the first freshness
+of his hopes, when he had worked with the
+passion of youth. Then, too, there was the
+silent drama that had played itself out in the
+depths of his own spirit. Looking back, it
+seemed to him that no man could ever have
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+cherished a more hopeless love, or have encountered
+a more inevitable one. Nor had the
+lapse of time softened the bitterness of that
+strange romantic chapter. Lady Betty's figure
+and personality would remain with him as his
+ideal of woman for the rest of his life; and he
+clung to the memory of his hurt as typical of
+his whole fortune.</p>
+
+<p>But though the thought of the picture to-night
+inevitably stirred up some of these old
+emotions, there was joined to them a sudden
+overwhelming curiosity. What would be his
+impression at the first glance? Would all its
+deficiencies and crudities stand out in relief, and
+make him turn away from it in sickness and
+loathing? Or would it strike him, however
+unfinished it might be, as having yet promise in
+it, as justifying some at least of the time&mdash;nay,
+even life-blood&mdash;he had consecrated to it?</p>
+
+<p>"What a huge thing!" ejaculated Mr.
+Robinson, as Wyndham tilted it back from
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> tremendous," smiled Wyndham. "I'm
+afraid I shall have to ask you to give me a hand
+with it."</p>
+
+<p>Together they carried it to the easel, and
+Wyndham hoisted it to its old place. "I don't
+know whether we shall be able to make head
+or tail of it," he said; "but I'll do what I can
+with the lamp. As you see, it's a powerful one."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I don't profess to be a connoisseur
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+of oil paintings," Mr. Robinson warned him.
+"But I know what I like, though I daresay you
+will think me extremely benighted."</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed," protested Wyndham; "I shall
+value your opinion highly." He worked away
+at the little wheel at the back of the easel as he
+inclined the canvas at the most favourable
+angle, whilst the old man watched the process
+fascinated.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment Wyndham was holding the
+big lamp high in the air, and carefully illumining
+the surface of the picture. For a
+moment everything before his eyes was blurred,
+and he could see nothing at all; but he stood
+his ground firmly, and gripped the lamp heroically.
+And before the mist could clear he heard
+Mr. Robinson's voice rise in admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful!" exclaimed the old man, his
+tone vibrating with an immense conviction; and
+at that moment Wyndham received the picture
+full on his vision and felt at once he had there a
+basis that could be worked up into a splendid
+achievement.</p>
+
+<p>"The crowd of strikers with their banner is
+the most life-like thing I've ever seen. Wonderful!"
+Mr. Robinson gazed and gazed, his interest
+overflowing into a running comment. "It's
+Hyde Park Corner! Why, of course&mdash;there's
+the Duke of Wellington's house, and there's
+Lord Rothschild's. Marvellous! What a variety
+of faces and characters! And the old fellow
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+there in the corner&mdash;what powerful features
+full of despair! And the old woman with the
+red shawl&mdash;she hasn't had a morsel of food, poor
+creature, for twenty-four hours, I'll wager.
+Why don't you leave her alone, you old ruffian
+of a policeman! And then that fashionable lady
+in her brougham with her over-fed poodle&mdash;what
+contempt on her face for all these
+artizans! How real everything is&mdash;the perspective
+is grand! Why, you could take a walk
+out there in the distance! Marvellous! It
+doesn't need an art education to see that's a
+work of genius."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham stood listening in elation, though,
+in his own perception of the work just now, he
+felt as aloof from it as if it had sprung from
+another's labours. His brain seemed emancipated
+from the tangle of its old problems and all
+his old flounderings. And as Mr. Robinson continued
+his admiring ejaculations, Wyndham put
+in now and again a word of explanation,
+drawing attention to a point here and there,
+though this was at first rather by way of
+soliloquy than conversation. But, presently, as
+he moved the lamp to and fro, up and down, he
+warmed to the occasion; even enlarging on his
+pet ideas, and pointing out where he had failed
+to realise his own scheme and formula. Mr.
+Robinson listened, wholly absorbed and fascinated
+by these new horizons that opened before
+him. His respect and worship for art was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+contagious: Wyndham began to worship it
+more himself.</p>
+
+<p>And the younger man grew eloquent, expatiated
+on the old art and the new, on
+academies and masters, on realism and symbolism,
+on plein air and sunlight, on colour and
+technique. And as he spoke, he was enchanted
+with his own voice. It was splendid to feel
+himself speaking again after all this long
+suppression&mdash;he was realising the strength and
+infallibility of his own artistic convictions.
+Never before had he felt so sure of his conceptions;
+his former humility had only led to
+confusion and hesitation. In future, his own
+mind should dominate&mdash;he would not be blown
+about by all these conflicting schools and critics.</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious of standing more vigorously
+upright; and, as he enlarged on the picture, he
+seemed to get a new and sure hold of it, seeing
+more and more the potentiality of a great and
+powerful structure that no Academy could dare
+refuse to recognise. He saw now that his long
+interval of hibernation had not been unfruitful.
+And it had made a necessary sharp division
+between the two parts of his life&mdash;the first,
+uncertain, stumbling, unsuccessful; the second,
+confident, mature, triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>The picture before him was transformed.
+Problems that had baffled him seemed to solve
+themselves in a flash. Effects he had vainly
+sought through maddening months stood at
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+once revealed, flowing naturally out of what he
+had already set down. His hand longed to be
+wielding the brush again.</p>
+
+<p>"But if I may make the remark," interposed
+Mr. Robinson at length; "it seems matter for
+surprise that a gentleman like you should be
+attracted to the choice of such a subject. I
+should hardly suppose that you have ever come
+into any real contact with labour, and workmen
+on strike would therefore scarcely come within
+the sphere of your sympathy."</p>
+
+<p>"The artist is of universal sympathy," said
+Wyndham gravely, and himself believed it. At
+that moment he felt his endless sympathy
+spreading itself out, embracing all creation.
+"And then it was not only the humanity of the
+scene that touched me, and inspired me to
+attempt to put it down finely and greatly;
+there was also the pure art part as it appealed
+to the trained vision&mdash;the splendid difficulties to
+be vanquished, the opportunities for draughtsmanship
+and subtle colour, the sense of far-stretching
+space to be produced from only a
+narrow gamut of light and shade."</p>
+
+<p>"Marvellous!" echoed Mr. Robinson again.</p>
+
+<p>"But if I may make the remark in my turn,"
+said Wyndham, "your sympathy with labour
+surprises me equally."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so?" asked Mr. Robinson.</p>
+
+<p>"The natural antagonism between capital and
+labour!" smiled Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+    "Oh, I started as a poor boy&mdash;right at the
+foot of the ladder," explained Mr. Robinson.
+"My father was a carpenter. Wages were low
+in those days, and prices of all necessaries were
+high. I remember in my childhood we had a
+pretty hard time of it. In my own firm we
+share the profits with all the employees. So
+you see I'm rather partial to labour so long as
+it's decent and reasonable. When I think of
+my own struggles, I like to see every man get
+fair opportunities. When a man has no particular
+talent&mdash;such as myself, for instance&mdash;it
+is ever so much the harder to go through discouragements.
+But, at the worst of times, it
+must be a great thing for a gifted man like
+yourself to be conscious of his own powers."</p>
+
+<p>"So you set up to have no particular talent!"
+explained Wyndham. "You amuse me. Haven't
+you made your fortune unaided? I confess that
+that seems to me the most difficult thing in the
+world&mdash;immensely cleverer than anything in
+the way of art or painting."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robinson laughed. "Now you're making
+fun of me."</p>
+
+<p>"I was never more serious in my life," insisted
+Wyndham, now wheeling forward a
+smaller easel, in order to display the pictures he
+had at first selected. "I consider it frightfully
+clever to make money."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear sir, fools often make money," Mr.
+Robinson assured him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+    Wyndham shook his head incredulously.
+"Do you care much about this landscape?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Very much indeed. It is so green and fresh
+and airy, and those are grand old trees."</p>
+
+<p>"It's our old home in Hertfordshire. I lost
+the property and a modest fortune through a
+rascally set of lawyers."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robinson's face expressed deep concern.
+"Yes, I remember the affair well," he said. "I
+remember reading it over the breakfast-table
+to my wife and daughter. We saw your name
+among the creditors. It was a bad business."</p>
+
+<p>"They had managed all our family concerns
+for thirty years."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was now wound up to enter into
+more personal matters than he had so far
+touched upon. As before, he was perfectly
+frank, recounting in the intimacy of the moment
+all the details of this financial catastrophe. He
+spoke freely of his relations in the country, and
+of his sister Mary, and the independent way in
+which she was earning her bread; passing from
+canvas to canvas the while, and breaking off
+frequently to discuss the paintings.</p>
+
+<p>At last they had gone through all the selection,
+but the unfailing appreciation of his visitor
+was so pleasant to the artist that he could not
+help bringing forward two or three more, and
+then finally another. And still yet another
+after!&mdash;like the preacher's "one word more."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+    "I have passed a very happy time here with
+you," the old man declared, as Wyndham restored
+the lamp to its usual place on the table.
+"You see I was right; the occasion was well
+worth the accident that brought it about."</p>
+
+<p>"Happily you were not really hurt. So all's
+well that ends well."</p>
+
+<p>The old man took hold of his rush-bag. "I
+mustn't forget my middle of salmon," he smiled.
+"I generally fetch something home for my wife&mdash;some
+game or fish fresh from the market."</p>
+
+<p>"You make me wish <i>I</i> had a husband in the
+City," sighed Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robinson laughed. "Well, I suppose I
+must make up my mind to be off, else my wife
+and daughter will be wondering what has
+become of me."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham came forward hurriedly. "I hope
+I have not been keeping you," he murmured.
+Somehow he did not like being left alone now.
+The old man's coming had saved him for the
+time being from the clutch of a terrible despair,
+and he saw it waiting to descend swiftly on him.
+The half-hour of self-respect would vanish like
+an illusion.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Robinson's voice was breaking in on
+his mood again.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be presuming too much on our
+slight acquaintance if I suggested&mdash;&mdash;" The old
+man hesitated with an evident shyness that
+was very winning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+    "Pray suggest anything you like," said
+Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>Thus encouraged, Mr. Robinson launched out
+boldly. "Would you come home and dine with
+us&mdash;quite without ceremony. We're the simplest
+of people, but we shall offer you the heartiest of
+welcomes."</p>
+
+<p>"That is very kind of you," said Wyndham.
+"I should not be deranging your household?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure my wife and daughter will be as
+delighted to see you as I am. Will you not
+come home with me now&mdash;in a simple, friendly
+way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Since I am to meet ladies," smiled Wyndham,
+"I should like to make myself presentable. I
+have just been across town, and in this filthy,
+murky atmosphere one gets to feel so utterly
+unclean."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; am I not in the same plight
+myself?" smiled Mr. Robinson.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham escorted him to the door, and the
+old man again thanked him for the pleasure
+the visit had afforded him.</p>
+
+<p>"We dine at half-past seven," was his parting
+reminder, and Wyndham, promising faithfully
+to be punctual, closed the door after him.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<p>But his visitor had no sooner departed than
+Wyndham experienced a sharp revulsion of
+feeling. How stupid to have accepted this
+invitation! His isolation in this suburban
+wilderness had always afforded him a certain
+satisfaction&mdash;he had consistently maintained
+his magnificent want of interest in all this
+Philistine population. His studio was his
+castle, and if he chose to starve therein it was
+at least a mitigation of his misery to be able to
+do so without the sense of others' eyes prying at
+him. And now he had surrendered his privacy.
+The indiscretion was really inexplicable! And
+he had let his tongue run on so recklessly and
+confidentially! He might even have drawn
+back at the very last&mdash;alleged an engagement,
+and cut short the acquaintanceship there and
+then. Perhaps it was not yet too late!</p>
+
+<p>In his annoyance he started pacing the length
+of the studio. But the great canvas, still
+glistening there on the easel, suddenly claimed
+his attention again, and brought him to a standstill.
+Impulsively he caught up the lamp, and
+once more directed its light on to the surface.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+The picture took deep hold of him, and he stood
+absorbed in it. And somehow Mr. Robinson's
+wondering voice began to sound its praises.
+"Marvellous!" the old man seemed to be saying.
+"It doesn't need an art education to see that's
+a work of genius." And as he recalled each
+stroke of admiration, he nodded his head in
+agreement.</p>
+
+<p>Was not the old man's appreciation of good
+augury? Surely it foreshadowed a popular
+Academy success. Whatever one's personal
+art ideals, it did not detract from their worth
+if one could carry them out and please the
+crowd at the same time&mdash;incidentally, of course&mdash;without
+deliberate intention. Did not
+Molière first try his comedies on his housekeeper?
+Mr. Robinson's tastes were the tastes
+of the great public&mdash;nay, of even the better
+classes that went to the galleries. Like him,
+they dwelt entirely on the illustrative aspect of
+painting, and were altogether swayed by the
+humanity of a picture, by its dramatic or anecdotal
+interest. No wonder some of his fellow-craftsmen
+had been driven to the opposite
+extreme, and tried to rule out humanity altogether.
+But the human side of art need not
+be necessarily on a low plane, or descend to
+mere anecdote. In his hands art should be
+the vehicle of real intellect and emotion.</p>
+
+<p>If only he were not forced to do those idiotic
+trifles! After holding out so long, to capitulate
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+absolutely for want of bread! No, he would not
+dine with Mr. Robinson&mdash;he would starve rather!</p>
+
+<p>"Better to starve than stoop to inferiors!"
+he exclaimed, as he set down the lamp again.
+How little, indeed, he had eaten all that day!
+And with the thought a distressing weakness
+came over him. There was a humming at his
+temples: the studio disappeared in a mist, then
+reappeared oscillating. He was constrained to
+steady himself by clutching at the table.</p>
+
+<p>In a minute or two the vertigo passed off,
+leaving him with a dull craving for food and
+drink. He might make some sort of a meal
+from such poor provender as his larder afforded&mdash;a
+portion of a loaf, the remainder of a tin of
+sardines, a hunk of cheese; but somehow the
+prospect was singularly uninviting. He might,
+indeed, add variety to the store by laying out
+his last shilling in the streets adjoining, but the
+shilling was too precious, and anyway he had
+not the energy to go shopping. There swam up
+before him the picture of a well-lighted, comfortable
+dining-room with a heavily laden table,
+and of a middle of salmon, piping hot, that was
+being served with a dainty white sauce. And
+then there were hosts of bottles on a mahogany
+sideboard: fat, gold-tipped bottles; tall, long-necked
+bottles; fantastic twisted bottles. Good
+well-cooked food was nourishing him, a delicate
+wine was moistening his feverish palate, touching
+his whole dull self to a lighter mood.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+    He had accepted the invitation. The Robinsons
+were expecting him, would be troubled and
+put out if he did not arrive. He carried the
+lamp up to the gallery, and began his preparations.
+And then the whim took him to change
+his clothes again. Not that he supposed the
+Robinsons affected to be fashionable of an evening,
+but the pride of the half-starved man rose
+in irrational self-assertion.</p>
+
+<p>So he dressed carefully, tying his bow to
+perfection, and arranging the set of his waistcoat
+fastidiously. It was so long since he had
+put on evening clothes, and as he saw himself in
+the glass, well set up, and bearing himself
+exquisitely, the fact of his poverty seemed
+absurd and incredible. His face, too, seemed
+to have recovered some of its olden confidence
+as he scanned it critically. True the cheeks
+were a trifle thin and shrunken, but the lines
+of dejection and sadness had lightened at the
+new stirring within him.</p>
+
+<p>Then for the first time in all these years he
+made his way up the road to the ugly house at
+the corner that had stamped itself upon him as
+the symbol of all Suburbia, as the stronghold of
+a type of life that Bohemia mocked at and
+Belgravia waved aside as impossible.</p>
+
+<p>If he had not yet entirely overcome his
+distaste, it was at least mitigated by a splendid
+sense of condescension.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<p>A handsome Phyllis, in cap and apron, opened
+the door, and Wyndham stepped into a broad
+corridor, carpeted in red, and hung with
+popular engravings that he had seen in the
+windows of all the carvers and gilders in
+London. Next, he was ushered under a
+crimson door-hanging into a resplendent
+drawing-room, lighted by a dazzling crystal
+chandelier, and sensuously warmed by a great
+red-hot fire. There was nobody to receive him
+yet, and he was left to amuse himself with the
+show-books on the tables&mdash;padded photograph
+albums full of old-fashioned naïve people posing
+against rococo backgrounds, collections of views
+of the Valley of the Thames and of the Lake
+District, and richly bound volumes of Tennyson
+and Sir Walter Scott.</p>
+
+<p>The interest of these treasures was soon
+exhausted, and Wyndham, sinking into a
+remarkably soft arm-chair, impatiently beat
+with his foot at a cluster of roses on the
+brand-new "Aubusson" carpet. The room
+was almost triangular, a large bow window
+commanding the vista of the main road, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+pairs of other windows, straight and tall,
+overlooking the streets that branched on either
+hand. And all these windows were elaborately
+draped in a would-be Renaissance style, with
+many loops and festoons, and with big gilt
+cornices above. And between each pair of them
+stood a gilded consol table surmounted by a
+mirror that reached to the ceiling. Oval
+mirrors with lighted candles in sconces glittered
+from several points of vantage, and crimson
+couches and the immense piano completed
+the tale of splendours.</p>
+
+<p>At length the door opened softly, and Mr.
+Robinson entered. Wyndham rose, not displeased
+to observe that his host was likewise
+in evening clothes; as he had been already
+regretting the self-assertion to which he had
+yielded.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you are in good time," said the old man,
+coming forward in his quiet, gentle way, and
+shaking hands again. "I am sorry to say that
+my wife and daughter are not down yet."</p>
+
+<p>His tone was apologetic, and Wyndham
+smiled, readily understanding that the announcement
+of a guest to arrive had scared
+the ladies to a more elaborate toilette than
+usual.</p>
+
+<p>"They were enchanted when I told them you
+were coming," Mr. Robinson continued. "As for
+commiseration over my fall&mdash;not a word!"</p>
+
+<p>The two men had conversed for some few
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+minutes before the hostess and her daughter
+came sweeping into the room; and, as he had
+half expected, Wyndham found he knew them
+more or less vaguely by sight. Mrs. Robinson
+was a tall dame, fully sixty, with gray hair, and
+a most amiable expression; stately, even handsome,
+in her black silk dress with its tasteful
+lace at the throat and wrists. The daughter
+who followed rather shyly behind her gave
+Wyndham the impression that he was beholding
+the most simple, homely person he had ever met;
+and this despite the complexity of her costume,
+which seemed to be built up almost entirely of
+old lace that lay over itself in thick folds and
+rich creamy masses. Timidity of temperament
+and modesty to the verge of self-distrust were
+at once suggested by the almost awkward
+constraint of her bearing and the quiet, half-averted
+glance of her dark eyes. He could
+see that she hardly dared look at him. He
+gallantly supposed that she was a year or
+two younger than himself, and as he met her
+desperately friendly smile (intended for him
+but hardly bestowed in his direction) with his
+choicest bow, he received a further impression
+that was distinctly more favourable than the
+first of unrelieved plainness. For, once his eye
+had taken in her features, the artist in him was
+ready to do justice to her throat and arms,
+which were really good: and her dark hair, her
+greatest glory, lay in a superb coil, which, with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+a surprising touch of coquetry, was set off by
+a velvet band and some lilies of the valley.
+It was curious that the figure of Lady Betty
+should swim up before him just then, as if to
+emphasise his real ideal of woman's beauty, and
+to make him feel once for all how impossible
+it was ever to step down from that standard.
+But he could not help smiling covertly at the
+thought that the family were making such a
+serious business of so casual an invitation&mdash;these
+toilettes were really so very much more
+elaborate than anything he might conceivably
+have looked for; though at any rate it reassured
+his pride in the fullest degree&mdash;evidently, his
+frank admissions to Mr. Robinson notwithstanding,
+they were not taking him as a poor
+devil of an artist, but were looking up to him
+with a perfect appreciation of the respect that
+was his due.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham's presentation to the ladies over,
+there followed an instant of general embarrassment.
+Mrs. Robinson smiled again, and quickly
+tried to make conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"How pleasant to become acquainted at last,
+after being neighbours so many years!" she
+murmured. "And so unexpectedly, too."</p>
+
+<p>"When the unexpected does happen," said
+Wyndham, "it generally is delightful. I suppose
+that's because most of us in this hard life
+get into the habit of expecting only the opposite
+sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+    Miss Robinson laughed shyly, whilst her
+mother seemed somewhat puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"They say that the unexpected always happens,"
+ventured the younger woman tremulously.
+"I'm sure the proverb must be wrong, because
+nice things happen so seldom." Her voice was
+soft, vibrating with gracious amiability.</p>
+
+<p>"I disagree with Mr. Wyndham," said her
+father. "I was not at all expecting to slip
+down. When the unexpected happened, I am
+bound to say I did not find it delightful."</p>
+
+<p>They all laughed; and then Mrs. Robinson
+resumed the interrupted tenour of her discreet,
+agreeable way. She herself had often thought
+how pleasant it would be to know him; but in
+London one could live for ever so many years
+and yet know absolutely nothing of one's next-door
+neighbour. In the country, of course,
+things were different: there etiquette was more
+human, and people called of their own accord.
+Was Mr. Wyndham exhibiting anything just
+now? They had seen pictures of his in the
+Academy in past years, and were great admirers
+of his. Wyndham was by now too faint and
+exhausted to do more than hold his own in a
+smiling, conventional way: the splendours of
+the room, too, dazzled him to the verge of confusion.
+He was thankful when Phyllis appeared
+with the announcement that dinner was served;
+and Mr. Robinson, giving his arm to his daughter,
+led the way across the hall, under another
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+crimson door-hanging, and into a long dining-room,
+wherein was set out a great table with
+flowers and fruit and silver. The covers were
+laid at one end, which gave the dinner an air
+of informality and family intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>A glass of sherry at the start revived
+Wyndham considerably, and soon he fell to
+conversing at his ease. Presently he found
+he was somehow taking the lead, and their
+evident respect and admiration for his lightest
+word made him clearly perceive that he was
+an important and brilliant figure for them.
+Such grains of resentment as he still cherished
+at having entered on the acquaintanceship were
+dying away. Meanwhile the seductive prevision
+of material joys that had risen before
+him at the studio at that moment of physical
+weakness was being literally realised, almost
+comically so. There on the immense mahogany
+sideboard stood bottles and decanters galore,
+and now up came the middle of salmon with a
+piquant sauce accompanying it! God! how
+delicious it tasted, after all these months of
+bread and cheese! Wine gave him inspiration,
+and food the strength to live up to the rôle
+they were allotting to him. He was good-looking
+and knew it; his voice, his bearing,
+his choice of words, were alike distinguished;
+his experiences were of worlds that were to
+them far-seeming and romantic. He was the
+sort of hero they had read about in novels&mdash;a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+handsome guardsman nonchalantly looking
+in at a Park Lane dance at midnight, or a
+brilliant attaché to an embassy in touch with
+wonderful horizons.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the supply of dainty food continued;
+a leg of lamb, spinach, fat, luscious
+asparagus, a melon from a Southern clime, a
+chicken, and the juiciest of French lettuces.
+The hock was of the most delicate, the champagne
+subtle and sparkling. Even so he felt
+himself sparkling in the eyes of the others.
+He was the lion to whom all this homage was
+his rightful due, holding them fascinated with
+his wide knowledge of men and cities, of social
+life in European capitals. He drew upon his
+wanderings in by-ways known only of artists;
+fascinated them with sketches of the art life
+of Rome and Paris. Reminiscences bubbled
+up of his student days, and with them were
+mingled deft touches of Eton and Oxford, and
+charming cameos of county life; this last developing
+insensibly into discussions of Anglo-Saxon
+character, its comparison with the Latin,
+relative estimations of intelligence, industry,
+ambition. Mr. Robinson here had many shrewd
+observations to offer, for they had now wandered
+into the domain of affairs. Wyndham
+was genuinely interested in his host's experiences,
+in his accounts of unusual men of
+business from strange, even barbarous parts of
+the world, with whom he had had personal
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+relations. They even touched upon financial
+operations; and Wyndham felt perfectly at
+ease amid complications in which millions were
+bandied about like tennis-balls, and the credit
+of banks and States was pawned as simply and
+swiftly as he might pawn his own watch. At
+last, over the dessert, there was a perceptible
+slackening. Wyndham, who so far had taken
+care not to let his eye rest on the many heavy-framed
+"oil paintings" that hung on the walls,
+for fear some discussion of them might thence
+arise, was now incautious enough to fix his gaze
+markedly on some sheep pasturing just opposite
+him. But Mr. Robinson seemed to welcome
+the opportunity thus afforded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course I know you won't find any of
+<i>those</i> things worth glancing at," he threw out
+with a laugh; and the others chimed in, highly
+amused at the thought of the impression "the
+things" must be making on their guest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, some aren't at all half bad," conceded
+Wyndham politely, his eye now promenading
+freely. "The girl with the mandoline is laid
+in with rather a charming touch, and the fruit-and-flower
+piece is really decorative."</p>
+
+<p>"We always considered those two the best,"
+declared Mr. Robinson. "I bought them at an
+auction in the City, many years ago now&mdash;more,
+in fact, than I care to remember."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham still affected to be examining the
+collection.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+    "Now, of course," resumed Mr. Robinson,
+"that Highland scene is the merest pot-boiler&mdash;a
+stream in the middle, a mountain on one
+side, and a cow on the other. I've seen hundreds
+of them for sale. But it's not likely I
+shall ever be taken in again that way, especially
+after examining the work I saw at your
+studio, Mr. Wyndham."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham inclined his head smilingly, and
+Mr. Robinson duly proceeded to describe to the
+others the great masterpiece which that afternoon
+he had had the privilege of inspecting.
+His memory of the details proved to be extraordinarily
+minute, and his face glowed all over
+again with the wonder and enthusiasm he had
+displayed at the studio. "The figures, the
+faces," he wound up, "were simply marvellous.
+I can't give you the faintest idea of how magnificent
+it all is. I could spend hours looking
+at it."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham could do no less than suggest that
+the ladies should come and see the picture for
+themselves, though just then a whiff of unpleasant
+thoughts urged on him again the imprudence
+of such further social developments.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be only too delighted; it will be
+a great pleasure," exclaimed Mrs. Robinson,
+and Miss Robinson's eyes shone with unmistakable
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"We must really take down that Highland
+scene, my dear," proceeded Mrs. Robinson,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+addressing her husband. "It is altogether too
+bad. We ought to have something better in
+its place."</p>
+
+<p>It passed through Wyndham's mind that one
+of his projected panels would do excellently,
+but of course it was far too below the dignity
+of the brilliant lion to appear to snatch at the
+opportunity of turning a few honest guineas
+through the grace of his humble entertainers.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us have the Highland scene down by
+all means," said Mr. Robinson. "And I've an
+idea! If we can induce Mr. Wyndham to paint
+our Alice's portrait, why, then we should have
+something first-rate to hang in its place."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Robinson turned fiery red; the quick
+glance she flashed at her father was the more
+conspicuous. "How splendid!" she exclaimed
+breathlessly. Her bosom heaved. Wyndham
+was almost painfully aware of the thumping of
+her heart.</p>
+
+<p>But he himself was caught quite unprepared.
+True that the unexpected had happened again,
+but that very quality of the event was in this
+instance disconcerting. No doubt they observed
+his slight hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it would be a great privilege
+for us," interposed Mrs. Robinson; "but it
+seems to me we are counting without Mr.
+Wyndham's authority."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham inclined his head graciously with
+a smile; swiftly master of the situation again,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+and improving the occasion with a compliment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I shall be most delighted." He gave his
+proposed subject the professional glance that
+the occasion authorised. "Miss Robinson will
+afford me the opportunity of a most distinguished
+piece of portraiture."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Robinson gazed at her plate, nervously
+peeling a banana. She had not spoken much
+during the dinner, but she had hung on Wyndham's
+words with a naïve, unconscious admiration,
+which, from a prettier and more brilliant
+woman, he would scarcely have passed with so
+little a sense of appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Wyndham,"
+she said simply. "I am afraid the
+distinction will be due more to your work
+than to your sitter."</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, Miss Robinson," he protested,
+with a suave gravity that made his polished
+assurance the more impressive and charming.
+"I did not intend any compliment&mdash;I spoke
+only as the artist." He was rather surprised
+that a woman should display so little vanity.
+And, in a subtle way, it did not enhance his
+estimation of her.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Robinson's banana occupied her more
+earnestly than ever; but her mother came to
+the rescue by raising the important question
+of costume. Wyndham, after further professional
+consideration of his client, preferred to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+paint Miss Robinson as he saw her now. And
+with a ready sense of detail he saw, too, that
+certain rings she wore, though he had not
+observed them closely at first, would make
+excellent spots in a scheme of decoration.
+These rings were unusually chosen, and were
+more artistic than extravagant. The one on
+her right hand was a small, subtle cat's-eye
+surrounded by fine pearls. On her left hand
+were an aquamarine, and a scarab that shone
+like the patina of an ancient bronze. Almost
+without a pause he dashed at once at a scheme,
+which he elucidated there and then, much to
+their overwhelming. He would pose her on
+an Empire chair. In a blue and white Oriental
+vase on a high stand at the side should be
+arranged three tall arum lilies amid some vivid
+carnation blossoms. Why, the Nankin bowl on
+the mantelpiece was the very thing! The
+background of the picture should be vague and
+of an olive-grey tone, laid in with free brushwork,
+against which the masses of creamy lace
+would show deliciously decorative. The great
+surmounting coil of hair would give character
+to the whole scheme, and the lilies of the valley
+in the velvet band afford a final contrast of
+lightness and graciousness against the intense
+note of the coiffure.</p>
+
+<p>The parents were radiant with pleasure,
+though poor Miss Robinson looked more and
+more scared each instant. In her trepidation
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+she could only echo stammeringly the elder
+people's wonder at his great skill and cleverness.
+The scheme unfolded itself before them
+richly beautiful&mdash;not one of your dull black
+portraits, but a canvas glowing with exquisite
+light and colour.</p>
+
+<p>"There, Alice, you ought to be proud of yourself,"
+said her father, rallying her good-naturedly
+as a parting shot, when the women rose to
+retire; and Wyndham attended their exit under
+the crimson hanging with his most engaging
+air.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, the men drew their chairs to the
+fire, and Mr. Robinson brought forward boxes
+of fragrant-smelling cigars, large and rotund.
+The atmosphere of comfort enveloped Wyndham
+soothingly: the sense of unlimited abundance
+seemed a miracle after his long privation.
+Fortunately he had not been tempted to have
+his glass filled too often: he had appreciated all
+these good and luscious things with commendable
+moderation, and had been stimulated to brilliancy
+without losing cool command of himself.
+He lighted his cigar at the little silver smoker's
+lamp that just then came in with the coffee,
+and, as he puffed, a splendid warm feeling of
+well-being took possession of him. He helped
+himself to cream and sugar with the masterful
+calm and something of the gesture of a stage
+hero.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Mr. Robinson raised the subject of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+Wyndham's fee for the portrait, approaching
+the point apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, we could hardly discuss this side
+of the matter before my wife and daughter,"
+said the old man. "But I must insist on your
+accepting a fair remuneration for the work&mdash;shall
+we say two hundred guineas?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be frank," said Wyndham, "if you had
+left it to me, I should hardly have mentioned so
+large a sum."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally a gentleman of your disposition
+would think more of the artistic pleasure of
+the work than of the money it brought. Still,
+in this life money has to be considered. In
+all things, sublime or humble, the labourer is
+worthy of his hire. I do not for a moment
+suggest that the sum I have named in any way
+expresses our appreciation of the work, even in
+anticipation, and certainly not in any way our
+sense of the privilege and honour you are
+bestowing upon us."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall endeavour to merit your kind words,"
+said Wyndham, not to be outdone in polished
+courtesy, though he conceded that, by force of
+simple sincerity and good feeling, Mr. Robinson
+seemed a past master in the delicate art. "At
+any rate," he pursued, "the work is developing
+in my mind. The more I dwell upon it, the
+better and better I like the scheme, and I shall
+work at it enthusiastically from start to finish."</p>
+
+<p>It being thus assumed that two hundred
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+guineas were to be the artist's reward, Mr.
+Robinson seemed by no means loth to wander
+from a point which he had approached with
+great hesitation and an immense sense of its
+difficult delicacy. As yet Wyndham did not
+measure the radical change in his personal
+situation; nor did he display any undue elation.
+But his cool demeanour was no mere pose.
+Indeed, he was surprised himself at the ease
+with which he was accepting the transaction,
+as if it were commonplace in his experience.
+But he merely supposed that he was meeting
+good fortune with the natural dignity of the
+artist&mdash;to whom commissions are due as a
+matter of right, however long they may be
+deferred.</p>
+
+<p>They did not linger in the dining-room, but
+joined the ladies after their first cigar; though
+not before Mr. Robinson had sedulously inquired
+as to his liking for the particular
+brand, which, he assured Wyndham, was not
+readily obtainable in London, and had made,
+him promise to take a box away with him.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-room Miss Robinson played
+to them, at first tremulously, but gaining confidence
+with the experience. She displayed a
+degree of trained taste and a certain individual
+choice, favouring the tenderer and gentler
+works of Mendelssohn and Mozart. She sang
+also one or two of Heine's love songs in the
+German with a touch of passion and regret,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+whilst Wyndham accompanied her; and he himself
+wound up the evening in more jovial mood
+with a rousing student's song from his old
+Munich days.</p>
+
+<p>Their parting with him had almost a touch of
+affection; and the final understanding was that
+he was to plan out the arrangements for the
+sittings, and to communicate with them in
+the morning.</p>
+
+<p>He was forgetting his box of cigars at the
+end, but Mr. Robinson carefully caught it up
+from the hall table, and brought it after him
+just as the servant was opening the door.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<p>The next morning early Wyndham jumped out
+of bed with a bewildered sense of some change
+in his life, and it was an instant or two before
+his faculties cleared and he remembered his
+adventure of the previous evening. His next
+thought was one of pleasure that he had at
+last carried out his resolution of rising early.
+The autumn had developed with unusual
+severity, but the morning was intensely clear,
+and the studio full of a strong light. He
+pushed aside the hanging, and looked down
+from the gallery on the familiar scene below.
+Ordinarily, on rising, the sight had filled him
+with disgust and apathy, but now a freshness
+and vigour pervaded him, a new imperious
+desire, not merely in his mind but in all his
+limbs and muscles, to enter again on the contest
+with men. As his thought ran back through
+the past intolerable year or two, his inaction
+and sloth seemed almost incredible. He saw
+himself rising at midday, suffering moral tortures
+before the work he was powerless to
+begin, letting the barren hours drift away into
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+the deep, then regretting them passionately.
+Was it not all a nightmare from which he
+had been curiously released?</p>
+
+<p>He dressed, and, whilst his little kettle was
+boiling, took careful stock of his professional
+materials. Colours, brushes, varnishes&mdash;all
+needed renewing; there seemed nothing but
+impracticable odds and ends, mere bits of
+wreckage from his disastrous life's venture.
+Then, too, the filth and disorder all around
+him struck him brusquely, stung him to annoyance.
+On every surface where dust might
+accumulate it lay in serene possession. Wherever
+spiders could spin, there the webs hung
+thick, amazing and complicated citadels, prodigious
+masses and networks.</p>
+
+<p>He felt he could not endure it a day longer.
+There must be a thorough physical cleansing
+at once. And he must return to the luxury
+of a daily bed-maker. This preoccupation with
+household things took off the keenest edge of
+one's first energy and enthusiasm; he must
+reserve himself jealously for his high calling.</p>
+
+<p>As he sipped his coffee he mused over the
+little financial difficulties that immediately beset
+him. Now that at last he had a valid ground
+for appealing to Mary, he felt reluctant;
+anxious to bring her only the sense of his
+success without alloy. He might explain the
+situation to Mr. Robinson, and ask for money
+in advance; but that seemed as impolitic as it
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+was repugnant in this new rapture of fine
+upstanding dignity. Payment of the quarter's
+rent that was already due could be easily deferred&mdash;for
+the bare humiliation of making the
+request. But he needed something for equipment,
+and must face the sacrifice of some of the
+older pictures to which he had clung so long,
+accepting any sum in exchange, if only shillings.</p>
+
+<p>He still felt no disposition to invest the
+accident that had turned the tide for him
+with any touch of superstition or romance.
+He regarded the whole matter in the same
+dry light as at his first acceptance of it the
+evening before. He had sat waiting for
+clients, and at last they had turned up. But
+he did not at all dislike the Robinsons: they
+were very much better than the great run of
+their class&mdash;they had evidently ideals, and
+aspired to a higher degree of refinement
+than they as yet possessed, or, perhaps, were
+capable of possessing. They were neither smug
+nor self-satisfied, and, in giving him this work,
+they had avoided indulging in any semblance of
+bourgeois patronage, whereas other people of
+their class, even if well meaning, might easily
+have been gross and intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>He had studied his sitter pretty closely. The
+profile, as is not unfrequently the case with
+"plain" women, had a curious individual interest.
+He felt it offered scope for "construction,"
+and he could import subtly into the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+drawing a certain distinguished sentiment that
+was not really in the original, though somehow
+it might easily have been there, and, in moments
+of enthusiasm on the part of the observer, might
+even be conceived to be there. Yes, the profile
+was undoubtedly the thing: that way, too, the
+great coil of hair could be handled the more
+effectively. Indeed, it seemed to him that,
+taking into consideration her dark eye with
+its soft lashes, and the long shapely arms,
+and the exquisite ivory tones of the old lace
+dress, the scheme should really turn out, as
+he had so promptly put it to Miss Robinson
+herself, "a most distinguished piece of portraiture."
+He was shrewd enough to understand
+the essential shyness of her disposition,
+and he felt he might well invest her expression
+with some suggestion of this, though it should
+come out as a sort of gentle spiritual modesty.</p>
+
+<p>And now his imagination returned to the
+contemplation of his own fortunes, and went
+soaring skywards. His luck having once
+changed, who could say what might not turn
+up next? Another sitter might appear, one of
+your great heroines, stately and brilliant&mdash;a
+sort of Lady Betty, in fact: he might as well
+admit he <i>had</i> Lady Betty in mind! Such a
+portrait, appropriately conceived, would form
+a remarkable pendant to this one. Then, too,
+he might make another dash at his masterpiece!
+Such a display of versatility in the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+next year's exhibitions must place his name
+on everybody's lips, must surely pave the way
+to his reputation not only as a great decorative
+portrait painter, but also as a modern of the
+moderns, touched to inspiration by all the stress
+and striving of his age!</p>
+
+<p>This roseate flight was abruptly disturbed
+by the advent of the postman. The rat-tat,
+one of the double sort, imperiously summoned
+him to the door. Had the "something else"
+already turned up? He rather prided himself
+on the coolness with which he rose to meet it.
+The postman handed him a packet and a letter.
+But at a glance he saw that the packet was
+a rejected drawing and the letter Mary's, and
+he went straight down into the depths again.
+He, however, affected a cheerful good morning
+to the postman; then, no sooner alone,
+tore open the letter, with the bitter taste of
+yesterday's scene with his sister full in his
+throat. To his astonishment, he pulled out two
+five-pound Bank of England notes, and only
+a few words accompanied them. "<span class="smcap">Dearest</span>,"
+she wrote,&mdash;"Since you left me to-day I have
+suffered beyond endurance. That you will
+ever forgive me for my harshness I cannot
+hope. I am the only soul you have to turn
+to, and yet I struck at you as with a whip.
+Your face as you turned away will haunt me
+for the rest of my life. I have been sobbing
+and sobbing, feeling my heart must break.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+I ask you to be good to me now, and take this
+little money. Darling, don't punish me by
+sending it back. Better times are coming
+presently, and, if God is good, this little help
+now may bring you the best of fortune.&mdash;Your
+loving sister, <span class="smcap">Mary</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was unnerved; realising to the
+full the torture her gentle, sympathetic nature
+was inflicting on her. What it must have cost
+her to gather up her strength for that critical
+interview he could only remotely surmise. Yet
+it had failed her after all!</p>
+
+<p>However touched he was by her sweetness,
+however much he was moved to respond to
+this prostration and surrender, he yet saw
+only too clearly that at bottom it <i>was</i> a failure
+of strength. The idea of using the money was
+singularly distasteful; even though he told
+himself he would have his hand cut off rather
+than doubt her perfect goodness and sincerity
+in sending it.</p>
+
+<p>This necessity of a difficult decision disturbed
+the nice cool balance with which he had started
+out to face the day. There was nothing for it
+but to put aside the letter for the present in
+the hope that counsel would come to him later.
+And in the meanwhile he went on with his
+programme. He tidied his papers, went to
+hunt out his old charwoman, and, ultimately
+leaving her in possession of the studio, he ran
+into town to get his new materials, and look
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+up the various accessories for the scheme of
+the picture.</p>
+
+<p>His first visit was to a shop in Oxford Street,
+where he had dealt ever since his student days,
+and where he could order what he needed
+without immediate payment. A burly man in
+a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers was making
+purchases at one of the counters, and his back
+seemed not unfamiliar. Wyndham brought out
+his list and was going through the various items
+with one of the assistants when a heavy hand
+was placed on his shoulder, and, turning, he
+beheld the big powerful head and pointed beard
+of one of the old gang of his Latin Quarter days.</p>
+
+<p>"Sadler!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>The big head was convulsed with laughter,
+and Wyndham's hand wrung in a mighty grip.</p>
+
+<p>"How jolly! I was coming to look you up!
+I've just ferreted out your address; you're still
+fixed out there at Hampstead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do come&mdash;I shall be delighted," said
+Wyndham genially. "Have you been in London
+long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three weeks. After knocking about for five
+years&mdash;what do you think of that, my boy?
+First went all over Spain&mdash;made scores of
+studies. Gee! First-rate! Cheapest place in
+Europe&mdash;exchange thirty-five to the sovereign&mdash;and
+lots of good eating. Went to see a bit
+of Velasquez down at Madrid. Gee-rusalem!
+And the Titans, stuck up in a funny little
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+room! You never see anything so fine in
+your life."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've been there," smiled Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>The vigour and enthusiasm of his old friend,
+the nasalities of the deep voice, had almost a
+complete freshness for him, after the long
+interval since their last meeting. He was
+pleased at the encounter&mdash;it brought him whiffs
+of old days of happy comradeship. He felt the
+stirring of the war-horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I put in a nice couple of years at
+Munich; saw some Boecklin. Gee! He's great!"</p>
+
+<p>"I once saw some wretched things of his,
+though," said Wyndham. "I remember&mdash;at a
+modern exhibition at Venice."</p>
+
+<p>"I grant there are one or two rotten ones,"
+conceded Sadler; "but they're interesting, if you
+take them in the right way&mdash;experiments that
+failed, though they were fine as he had them
+in him. Well&mdash;then I did a bit of a tour all
+over the shop&mdash;came along through Holland&mdash;made
+cart-loads of sketches; and then I came
+right along here. Been getting lots of fun in
+London; been round with the boys, and had a
+rattling good time. Taking the opportunity,
+too, of getting some nice suits of clothes." And
+here Sadler turned abruptly from art, and
+plunged into sartorial details. His interest
+in such matters was astonishing, almost touching.
+He revelled in fancy waistcoats and
+rioted in tweeds and broadcloths. London was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+the only place in the world where you could get
+the rakish cut. He, Sadler, had never suspected
+what a lovely figure he had, till this latest cutter
+had revealed him to himself!</p>
+
+<p>He paused at last for breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything particular on with you?" he was
+presently impelled to ask, observing that
+Wyndham was exercising a marked fastidiousness
+in the choice of his canvas.</p>
+
+<p>"A portrait," said Wyndham. "Not a bad
+little commission."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" ejaculated Sadler, his face shining
+enthusiastically. "A lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Wyndham, "and I've rather
+a charming scheme."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" roared Sadler again. "I heard you
+hadn't been doing much of late. They were
+running your work down&mdash;some of the boys,
+and I said they were talking rot. We nearly
+came to blows about it. I think I fairly shut
+them up."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham had at first winced a little. Then
+he felt like shrugging his shoulders. After all,
+the past had to be lived down. Besides, Sadler's
+championship was genuine and influential.</p>
+
+<p>"That was very kind of you. You always
+did stick up for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you mind 'em a bit, my boy. You
+just go ahead, and you'll come out at the top
+of the tree."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do my best," said Wyndham, smiling.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+    "That'll be good enough, I guess," said Sadler.
+"Perhaps this portrait will open up other things
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?" inquired Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"It all depends on the crowd you strike&mdash;I
+heard you came a bit of a cropper, and I daresay
+you're not too well off now to despise a job
+or two&mdash;you can always put decent work into
+them. Now there's Jim Harley&mdash;he struck a
+rich middle-class lot ten years ago, rotten out-and-out
+Philistines, twenty guineas apiece&mdash;and
+they've been keeping him going ever since.
+Does fifty of 'em a year."</p>
+
+<p>"The prospect hardly tempts me. After all,
+the main thing is to get back to big work."</p>
+
+<p>Sadler smiled. "I guess I should be the first
+to drag you back again&mdash;after a while. But
+Jimmy married young. A boy and girl affair.
+His wife's family weren't satisfied with his
+financial position, and there was a mighty row
+at the time. Of course the girl had only her
+pretty eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you don't approve of idealistic love
+affairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Not of that kind. I'm forty, and I've seen
+something in my time."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham had finished his purchases, and was
+telling the assistant to send the parcel to his
+studio. As they left the shop presently, Sadler
+pressed Wyndham very hard to lunch with him
+at a particular restaurant he mentioned, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+Wyndham could not do otherwise than accept
+the invitation, though he confessed the place
+was unknown to him. Whereat Sadler expressed
+great astonishment. It was one of the
+very few places in London where the food was
+fit to eat! Why, the cooking was even better
+than at Lavenue's in the Quarter, and that
+was saying a great deal. He, Sadler, could
+not endure any other place during his sojournings
+in London. Wyndham let the dear fellow
+gallop on to his heart's content. Sadler was
+a fine painter, and in the old days Wyndham
+as the junior had sat at his feet, and in the
+matter of technique had been greatly indebted
+to him. But he had observed with covert
+amusement at a very early stage in the acquaintanceship
+that Sadler, like so many others in
+the hard-working, hand-to-mouth world of the
+arts, had an amiable weakness for "being in
+the know" anent the good things of life, and
+affected a lavishness in public that was off-set
+by a sharp economy in the less visible phases of
+his existence.</p>
+
+<p>At the restaurant Sadler scrutinised the carte
+with the confident eye of a man about town,
+grumbled a little, held a fussy colloquy with
+the waiter, and finally ordered oysters and
+chablis to begin upon, the while a chateaubriand
+was being prepared for them.</p>
+
+<p>Over the meal Sadler talked a great deal of
+old times. He seemed to have kept himself
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+well in touch with scores of men they had
+known in common, despite scatterings and
+vicissitudes. His mind kept leaping across the
+world, beating them all out of their lairs for
+Wyndham's enlightenment. Did he remember
+Pycherley&mdash;the biggest duffer of them all?
+Well, he had married an heiress on the
+strength of his genius, and was painting awful
+stuff out in California; and Snyders, who
+had shared his studio, had built himself a
+Moorish house high up on a mountain-side
+overlooking the Gulf of Salerno; a third had
+settled down to "black-and-white" in a queer
+little creeper-clad house in St. John's Wood; a
+fourth was decorating a municipal building at
+Toronto. Marlowe was still in the avenue du
+Maine, where the fascinating American actress
+he had wed had since borne him a sheaf of
+daughters: and the beautiful Mrs. Smith they
+had known at Fontainebleau, the summer they
+had spent there together, had long ago divorced
+her husband, and married the Italian sculptor,
+in whose studio she had made such sensational
+progress. She now exhibited regularly, and
+had already received a gold medal of the second
+class.</p>
+
+<p>And so the conversation continued&mdash;for the
+most part about men who were now pretty well
+getting on into middle life, whose destinies had
+found definite declaration and were visible to all
+Wyndham expressed his pleasure that his own
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+future, on the contrary, still lay wrapped in
+mystery; that, though the curtain was full up,
+the interest of the drama was by no means
+played out.</p>
+
+<p>"You can afford to talk like that, Wyndham,"
+shouted Sadler. "What are you? You're only
+a boy! But I'm forty, and I tell you I'd give up
+the interest of the drama for a safe income, and
+think it a damned good bargain. I get along, I
+sell my stuff, but I tell you I sweat and groan."</p>
+
+<p>"I admit I should like my old income back
+again," said Wyndham; "not for itself, but for
+the sake of the splendid freedom to work."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just my point," shouted Sadler.
+"What the hell do I care about money for
+itself? And I tell you what, my boy, the right
+thing for an artist is to marry a woman with
+money." He struck the table hard with his big
+fist, making the whole restaurant rattle.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham almost jumped. "Good gracious!
+So that's what you were driving at! The idea
+to me is perfectly loathsome."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I used to think," exclaimed
+Sadler. "But you can't go on for ever with
+your head in the clouds."</p>
+
+<p>"The thing's so awfully brutal and sordid,"
+insisted Wyndham, shuddering visibly. "It
+makes my blood run cold."</p>
+
+<p>"You make me tired," snapped Sadler pettishly.
+"Where's the sordidness? I don't say
+a man ought to run after a fortune&mdash;but enough
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+to steady things. Taking it all round, we artists
+have less chance of making money for ourselves
+than other men of the same worth; and since
+most of us do marry some time or other, we
+ought to look to marriage to help our work,
+and not to drag it down."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was unconvinced. "If you take
+away the poetry out of life, the rest of it is too
+hideous to bother about. If a man marries to
+make himself comfortable, he's no better than
+a contented pig wallowing in muck. Rather
+than surrender the ideal, I'd give up marriage
+altogether, stand by my guns, and die fighting."</p>
+
+<p>"We artists are a damned sentimental lot,"
+shouted Sadler. He lifted a juicy morsel to his
+mouth. "This chateau's jolly good, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent," admitted Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you see I wasn't exaggerating when I
+said it's as good here as at Lavenue's." Sadler
+swallowed his mouthful. "We all begin with
+your idyllic ideas&mdash;Rossetti, Meredith, and all
+the rest of it. But I tell you it's hell! You
+dig the work out of yourself with sweat, with
+blood!" The veins began to swell in Sadler's
+mighty forehead. "And when you're not one
+of the lucky ones, what does the world do to
+help you to work for it?" He had wrought
+himself up to a tense excitement, and put the
+question with a hoarse shout. "Nothing! It
+prints your name in the papers, it talks about
+you at dinner parties! Painting is starvation&mdash;painting
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+is death! By the time you've worried
+along till you're forty, you begin to see a bit
+straight, my boy. Look around you&mdash;what do
+you see on all sides? You see the best of us
+and the luckiest of us fixing up some pretty
+little nook here in town or in the country, and
+then trying to clear a few hundreds or so by
+tempting somebody to buy it for double what
+it cost. We begin with ideals, and afterwards
+we are glad to come down to the level of the
+common speculator. Let us have no delusions
+about it&mdash;there's nobody keener for necessary
+money than we artists when we begin to feel
+the years slipping by. I tell you it's hell!"
+He gulped down a glass of wine and wiped
+his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I see your point of view," said Wyndham;
+"but I detest it. Better to fight to the end,
+and stand alone."</p>
+
+<p>"You make me tired," snapped Sadler again.
+"There are plenty of women of the right sort
+who'd prefer an artist with a name to some
+damned bore of a booby who hasn't an idea in
+his head. They're not fools, those women, I tell
+you. They know there's no money in the
+profession; they know you can't get everything
+in life. Life's a compromise. You've got to
+give and take. And when women have money,
+you'll find they understand these things better
+than when they haven't. A romantic boy runs
+after a rosy-cheeked, bread-and-butter miss
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+with nothing. The chit gives herself airs,
+expects what they call 'an establishment'&mdash;the
+rotten Philistines!&mdash;and then starts out to
+please herself in every way, places her whims
+and caprices first, and the happiness of the
+household nowhere. The brute exacts every
+sacrifice, and if she has to make the tiniest
+concession, it rankles in her all her life."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham dissented. The same things might
+happen even if the chit were a millionaire.</p>
+
+<p>Sadler dissented in his turn. He insisted that
+in woman money and good sense somehow
+went together. It was a fact. "Look how
+much happier French marriages are; look
+how the husband and wife are comrades and
+stick together. I tell you the French system
+is the best in the world. Every girl brings
+her husband a dowry of some kind, and they
+both work together for the common good.
+When the time comes it is easier to pass on
+the money to their own daughter in their turn."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham contended that these things were
+all a matter of temperament. "Even at the
+best you'd have to keep your mind very elastic
+as to the type of person, whereas, for my own
+part," he declared, with the Lady Betty type in
+his mind, "I not only hold on to my poetic
+standpoint, but there are certain personal ideals
+I couldn't possibly surrender."</p>
+
+<p>"If you stick out too much for ideals, you'll
+never get anywhere at all," said Sadler.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+    "There are things one must stick out for,"
+insisted Wyndham. "For instance, I could
+never marry a woman who wasn't intelligent,
+and certainly never one who wasn't beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Intelligent&mdash;yes. But what is beauty?"
+asked Sadler, shrugging his shoulders. "And
+if you get a woman too obviously beautiful,
+you'll have every man a mile round making
+love to her, like flies round a honey-pot. It's
+a sort of primitive law of the universe, and
+it'll hold good for all time, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I should chance all that," said Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"But what is beauty?" insisted Sadler.</p>
+
+<p>"I know when I see it," laughed Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me character," said Sadler. "Unselfishness
+and loyalty are the chief points, and a sort
+of sweet reasonableness, of course. If a woman's
+features aren't quite classical, it's wonderful
+what a good dressmaker can do to set them
+off. Waiter! Cigarettes!"</p>
+
+<p>When ultimately the waiter brought the bill,
+Sadler produced a silver sovereign purse, saw
+with unconcealed horror that it contained only
+half a sovereign, then felt in his pockets for
+loose silver. "It's rather awkward," he said,
+pulling the longest of faces. "I'm afraid I
+haven't enough left on me after paying for my
+colours and materials this morning. I shall
+have to ask you to lend me a little."</p>
+
+<p>A flash of surprise, an imperceptible raising of
+the eyebrows; then swiftly Wyndham accepted
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+the situation, and threw down one of Mary's
+banknotes. "Sorry I've nothing smaller," he
+said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, old fellow," said Sadler. "You
+pay this time, I'll pay next time."</p>
+
+<p>By the time the waiter brought Wyndham
+his change, the conversation had passed on to
+the last exhibition of the New English Art
+Club.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham arrived home, after completing all
+his business calls, late in the afternoon, and
+found that the charwoman had finished her
+work, and was replacing the furniture. A not
+unpleasant tinge of turpentine permeated the
+atmosphere. The oak presses, newly polished
+with beeswax, shone and glowed even in the
+shadow of the afternoon. For the first time
+for months the hearth was clear of ashes and
+cinders, and the stone scoured and whitened.</p>
+
+<p>When the woman had gone he devoted a
+few minutes to wandering about his domain,
+enjoying this new sensation of spotlessness,
+appreciating the professional hand, the skill
+of which had never before seemed so legitimate
+a theme for admiration. Then he sat down
+and wrote to Mary as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"<span class="smcap">My dear little Mary</span>,&mdash;Your sweet little
+letter came this morning, and at a moment to
+be of the greatest service to me. Fortune has
+already smiled on me again. For the immediate
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+present I have a portrait commission for
+a couple of hundred guineas! A great fortune&mdash;is
+it not?&mdash;after all these seasons of leanness!
+You will guess that I am now ambitious of
+getting to grips again with the big picture. I
+have taken a deep and engrossing look at it
+again, and I see how to resolve all its difficulties,
+I daresay, by the spring. I know this
+letter will make you happy, so, for Heaven's
+sake, don't give another thought to yesterday
+afternoon. I have been a great trial to you
+for so long, and I want to recognise your
+goodness and kindness in the only way I can,
+and that is by&mdash;succeeding. My heart is in
+the work, and your belief in me shall find
+justification.</p>
+
+<p>"I am keeping your money; it will remove
+my last anxiety and enable me to work at
+ease. I want you to come here as soon as I
+have made some headway with the new work,
+as I should like you to carry away the impression
+on your next visit of something real
+that has been accomplished.</p>
+
+<div class="signature">
+"Your loving brother,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+"<span class="smcap">Walter</span>."
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<p>The first sitting was eminently satisfactory.
+Miss Robinson and her mother were punctual
+to the very stroke of the clock, the new canvas
+stood waiting on the smaller easel, and everything
+was ready for an immediate start. Wyndham
+had been able to obtain on hire a most
+lovely Empire chair, with swans' heads for armrests,
+and exquisitely mounted with chiselled
+garlands. It did not take him long to find his
+arrangement, and he saw now how shrewd had
+been his idea of the Empire chair. It was remarkable
+how Miss Robinson and the chair
+composed together: it gave her distinction,
+heightened her personality, and the profile at
+once seemed to take precisely the quality which
+he considered essential to his scheme. Her right
+arm rested lightly along the swan's neck, and
+the subtle cat's-eye, with its border of tiny
+pearls, showed deliciously against the long
+hand and fingers that emerged from the lace
+lying loosely about the wrist. Her left hand lay
+on her lap, and here the ancient green scarab
+and the aquamarine made important decorative
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+spots amid so great a mass of lace-work. The
+nankin vase had been sent to the studio during
+the morning, so that Wyndham was practically
+able to build up his picture before him. Indeed,
+so interesting was the result that it promised to
+lessen by half the labour of creation.</p>
+
+<p>And, now that he had taken the measure of
+the Robinsons, he was easily master of the situation.
+They were not merely in his hands as
+clients who were availing themselves of his skill;
+but surrendered as to one naturally high above
+them. In posing Miss Robinson, he had once or
+twice given utterance to his satisfaction in so
+spontaneous a way that the tremulous sitter
+had no easy task to maintain her immobility.
+And then the kind and condescending explanations
+with which he accompanied the many
+little changes and refinements in the arrangement
+from moment to moment were so clever
+and penetrating! It was really wonderful how
+points struck him, and what surprising improvements
+he accomplished with a wave of the
+hand and imperceptible subtle shiftings of Miss
+Robinson's position. At last, after many scrutinisings
+of his sitter from varying standpoints he
+suddenly expressed the conviction "Splendid!"
+Then&mdash;"Wait; the left hand slightly forward, I
+think; so as to soften the bend of the elbow....
+Ah, that's better. Now it couldn't possibly be
+improved upon. Don't you think so, Mrs.
+Robinson?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+    And the mother was as fluttered as her
+daughter at this sudden appeal. "Alice looks
+lovely," she broke out. "You know so well
+how to make the best of people. I've never
+seen her so beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the beautiful accessories that produce
+the effect," stammered Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"They certainly produce some effect," conceded
+Wyndham. "That is why they are there. But
+it's you I'm painting, Miss Robinson. You are
+the picture, and the picture will be you&mdash;and not
+the surroundings."</p>
+
+<p>He had arranged his palette, and fell to with
+the brush in earnest, bidding her speak the
+moment she felt fatigued. And, indeed, he
+insisted on her resting frequently, though she
+struggled bravely to keep the spells of work as
+long as possible, and confessed to cherishing
+ambitions in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether the ladies were enchanted with
+their experience. Like Mr. Robinson, they had
+never before visited a studio, and it stirred them
+with a sense of play rather than of work,
+suggesting to them endless fun and merriment.
+Pleased with the promise of the picture itself,
+Wyndham chatted to them charmingly. Miss
+Robinson, reassured and encouraged by his
+gracious suavity, soon felt at her ease, and spoke
+more freely than was her wont at any time. A
+shade of animation came into her features, and
+she was ready to break into a laugh at a jest, or
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+to listen to a more serious little disquisition
+with the intensest absorption. They were not
+infrequent these charming little disquisitions of
+Wyndham's, and his visitors thought it wonderful
+(and told him so with engaging frankness)
+that he should be able to go on speaking so
+beautifully, and yet never relax his attention
+from the painting.</p>
+
+<p>He did not prolong the whole sitting beyond
+two hours, when he expressed himself delighted
+with this beginning, and offered them tea.</p>
+
+<p>They accepted eagerly. "Will you be making
+it, Mr. Wyndham?" they asked, their eyes
+shining with amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm an old hand at it," he assured them.
+He threw open a door which they had imagined
+to indicate a cupboard. "Kitchen, scullery, and
+every kind of domestic office rolled into one," he
+explained, and promptly disappeared inside it.
+They came peeping in gleefully, fascinated by
+the rough white-washed doll's interior with its
+miniature dresser, and they watched him fill
+his kettle and put together the tea-things.
+Then he emerged, set the kettle over the fire,
+spread the table with a fresh cloth, and emptied
+a large bag of cakes on to a fascinating plate
+of old-seeming majolica.</p>
+
+<p>"How nice!" said Miss Robinson, her face
+shining with make-believe gluttony.</p>
+
+<p>"There are some chocolate fingers among them&mdash;just
+the sort you like," said her mother.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+    "And tiny cream-cakes&mdash;just the sort you like,
+mamma," returned Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"How much tea do you put in the pot?"
+inquired Mrs. Robinson.</p>
+
+<p>"One spoonful for the pot, and one for each
+cup," quoted Wyndham promptly. "And I am
+always careful to warm the pot first with a little
+of the hot water, and, in scalding the leaves, I
+am equally careful to catch the water at the
+exact moment it boils."</p>
+
+<p>"If only our cook were as careful!" sighed
+Mrs. Robinson.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham asked them if they would like their
+tea in the Russian style. They didn't quite know
+what it was, but it sounded interesting, so they
+said they'd certainly like to try it. Whereupon
+he fished out a large lemon, and, cutting it
+up, put slices into their cups. They were in
+a happy mood. They kept him sternly to the
+rôle of host, refusing to spoil the fun by moving
+a finger to help him. And when he had completed
+all the processes, and poured the tea for
+them, they praised its fragrance and delicacy to
+the skies, and in a trice he was called upon to
+renew the supply. They likewise declared the
+cakes delicious, and ate them with affected greed.
+Meanwhile he let them see some of his pictures;
+showing off his tall, handsome figure, and occasionally
+balancing his cup to a nicety, as he
+talked and manipulated the canvasses from his
+point of vantage. And when tea was over, he
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+kept them some little time further, whilst he exhibited
+his overwhelming masterpiece, which he
+had kept to the end with its face turned away
+from them. As he wheeled the big easel round,
+and the picture came into view, a cry of admiration
+broke from their lips. They were indeed
+surprised to learn that it was "impossibly" unfinished;
+to them it seemed that, if justice were
+done, it should go straightway into the National
+Gallery. Their pleasure and gratification were
+extreme: they made not the least attempt to
+hide their sense of the privilege of sitting at his
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>And, when they rose to depart, they were
+absurdly grateful for the lovely afternoon he
+had given them. Still staggering under the
+magnificent impression of his brilliancy as an
+artist, Mrs. Robinson summoned her courage,
+and suggested that, if he hadn't any other engagement
+that evening, he might as well dine
+with them as dine alone. The argument struck
+him as forcible, and he accepted with an unhesitating
+simplicity that won her heart still further.
+He was thanking her for her kindness, but she
+raised her hands in horrified deprecation to
+check him.</p>
+
+<p>"Kindness," she cried. "Not at all, Mr.
+Wyndham. We know we are not worthy of
+the honour you do us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is very good indeed of you to come,"
+chimed in Miss Robinson, as they shook hands.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+She smiled at him quite frankly now, and her
+soft fingers lingered a friendly moment in his.</p>
+
+<p>He shut the door and turned back into the
+studio; then, as the thought struck him for the
+first time, his lips murmured almost involuntarily,
+"I do believe Miss Robinson's half in love
+with me." But he checked himself abruptly.
+"Good heavens! what a caddish thing to say."
+For, with his innate chivalry, he had certainly
+never been addicted to the habit of imagining
+that this or that woman was immediately
+enamoured of him.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to the portrait, lingered over it
+a moment or two, putting in here a stroke, there
+a touch or a smear. And somehow the train
+of "caddish" thought persisted in his mind;
+mastered his will and desire to suppress it.
+Suppose Miss Robinson should fall in love with
+him! He recognised her worth as a human
+being, but instinctively he placed her beyond
+a certain pale. It was not with that kind of
+woman that one connected the idea of loving or
+falling in love; the true type had been fixed for
+him once for all. The person, too, perhaps! As
+he had all but felt in his discussion of the subject
+with Sadler, matrimony was really excluded from
+his mind. His business in life was work, achievement&mdash;his
+spirit was almost one of revenge for
+the past.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, suppose she <i>should</i> fall in love with him!
+The speculation persisted, and again he tried to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+brush it aside. Well, he hoped to goodness that
+she would not, and brusquely wielded his paintbrush.
+In any case, it was all in the day's work.
+Take his own case, for instance! Had he not
+suffered atrociously during all the time he had
+known Lady Betty? In his bitter poverty he
+had hardly dared say even to himself that he
+had met the woman of his aspirations!</p>
+
+<p>Thus reflecting, he wheeled forward his
+masterpiece again, and worked on it tentatively,
+though he did not hope to make serious
+headway till he should be able to do some
+fresh sketches on the spot, and have a few at
+least of the models pose to him over again.
+But it was a pleasure to feel himself so eager-spirited
+and hopeful. The Academy dare not
+refuse it! The picture must establish his reputation!</p>
+
+<p>He went on till the light failed, then, after
+reading an hour or two, he dressed for his
+engagement with the Robinsons.</p>
+
+<p>He found the family had in no wise relaxed
+from the pitch of ceremony to which his first
+acquaintanceship had wrought them up. But
+he reflected that, however indifferent the point
+might be to him, it was just as well they should
+feel it the right thing to meet him on his own
+plane&mdash;as they understood it. Certainly it was
+not without its amusing side&mdash;the spectacle of a
+good honest family stimulated out of their customary
+simplicity merely because a starving
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+artist was to regale himself at their table!
+And fare sumptuously again the artist did
+with a vengeance!</p>
+
+<p>He ate, too, with the satisfied contemplation
+of a good day's work behind him. He had
+somehow earned this provender, and the meal
+had on that account an extra subtle relish.
+Besides, he felt so much more at leisure and at
+ease than on the former occasion. Then, his
+visit had been an uncertain and not over-willing
+experiment; now, he was acclimatised, his
+impression of everything was cooler. The
+greater self-possession of the family, too, made
+the evening distinctly less of an effort for him.
+Miss Robinson had largely got the better of her
+distressing shyness, and her personality was
+more in evidence. In her gentle way she was
+rising to fill her important position as daughter
+of the house.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham's impression of the Robinsons was
+thus definite and final; as much derived from
+their surroundings as from themselves. He
+noticed, for example, that the house itself and
+everything in it was of an extreme solidity.
+Indeed, the substantial walls and solid wood-work
+were so unusual in suburban construction,
+which was associated in Wyndham's mind with
+jerry-building, that he could not help remarking
+thereon when he and Mr. Robinson were left to
+their coffee and cigars. The old man was
+greatly pleased at this piece of discernment
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+and observation. He explained that he had
+had the house built for him twenty years
+before, and this solidity represented his dearest
+philosophy. He hated nothing so much as a
+superficial appearance which affected to be
+superior to the underlying reality. "Soundness
+and sincerity" had been his motto throughout
+his life, and on that principle his prosperity had
+been founded. Wyndham grew infected with
+this unmetaphysical philosophy. The ground
+he had trodden these last years seemed hideously
+unstable to look back upon: there was really a
+wonderful comfort in feeling himself here,
+supported on so sure a flooring, surrounded
+by these strong walls, and seated on this
+thickly-cut mahogany arm-chair that was
+framed to last three generations. The entire
+furniture of the house was of the like soundness&mdash;even
+the crimson couches of the drawing-room
+were of a massive build, and the grand
+piano, like this great dining-room table, had
+the fattest of legs, and was resonant of strength
+and durability.</p>
+
+<p>And in tune with all this solidity was the solid
+prosperity of Mr. Robinson himself: his banking
+account seemed an embodiment of his life-principles,
+supporting all this substantiality on
+its imperturbable back, like the fabled Buddhistic
+tortoise nonchalantly supporting the
+world. Wyndham's own existence seemed feeble
+by contrast, ready to go down before the merest
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+puff of wind. He stretched himself luxuriously,
+half incredulous, as if to assure himself it was
+all no vain imagining; permitted Mr. Robinson
+to recharge his glass with port; and lighted
+another of those fragrant unpurchasable cigars.
+It was so good to savour to the full this sensation
+of prodigious security! Here one might
+repose one's head: might hear the trump of
+doom ring out, and pity the rest of the
+universe.</p>
+
+<p>After all, was there not more than a grain of
+truth in Sadler's gospel? In boyhood you could
+be adventurous; life stretched before you so
+endlessly that you could afford to gamble with
+it. But, when the years were racing by, you
+longed for a little peace, a little happiness. This
+constant uncertainty of outlook, this perpetual
+wear of heart and brain, how it sapped life
+at the very foundation!</p>
+
+<p>To be "safe!" To be solidly established! The
+import and significance of the conception sank
+deep into him. Sadler was an older man, had
+gone through all these phases. "Safety!" No
+wonder his friend would not hesitate to barter
+romance for all that the magic word doubtless
+meant to him.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IX</h2>
+
+<p>It was this keynote of "safety" that sounded
+more in his mind, this appreciation of the stability
+and comfort of the house at the corner
+that grew upon him as his visits to the Robinsons
+continued; for it naturally came to be
+the settled thing that he should dine with the
+Robinsons on most of the evenings that he was
+not engaged elsewhere or otherwise. The argument
+at first had been the same simple one that
+he might as well join them as dine alone, and
+there seemed no reason for refusing their excellent
+fare and their admiring society. On the
+other hand, as his ever-insistent pride demanded
+that they should not suppose he was cut off
+from his own world; and as, too, he felt subtly
+required to live up to the social rôle which he
+fancied they as yet attributed to him, he was
+thus stimulated to pick up again some of the old
+threads of his existence. He called on remote
+aunts in Eaton Square; on retired military
+uncles in South Kensington. And as the winter
+advanced he began to find a pleasure in renewing
+old acquaintanceships, enjoying everybody's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+surprise at his turning up again, smiling
+and prosperous. It almost amounted to a self-vindication,
+and he chuckled in secret, imagining
+to himself their confusion.</p>
+
+<p>And since he <i>was</i> emerging from his retirement,
+there seemed no longer any reason why
+he should not mix again in the art world, and
+Sadler, who had come up to his studio on one or
+two occasions, induced him to show himself at
+some of the clubs. At the same time he began
+to cultivate again some of the smaller coteries
+of which he had once been so popular a light.
+Other men, too, began to look him up, and, best
+of all, an editor one day sent him an unhoped-for
+commission&mdash;half-a-dozen drawings for a
+magazine story by a widely-read author.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole he was well satisfied to get back
+into the world. It raised, or rather confirmed,
+him in his own esteem, and saved him&mdash;as he
+put it&mdash;from attaching too cheap a price to
+himself. He was thus able to meet the
+Robinsons from a real plane of vantage, and to
+purge his mind of that slight consciousness of
+charlatanism which had haunted him at the
+outset.</p>
+
+<p>Were he not taking ultimate success for
+granted, without a renewal of the more bitter
+side of the struggle, he would scarcely have
+resumed all these old relationships. Yet the
+precariousness of the future, summon his coolness
+and confidence as he might, was a thing to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+be actively, even desperately, reckoned with.
+The editor's cheque was a god-send, relieving
+him of immediate anxieties, but he dared not
+relax his efforts. His mornings were entirely
+devoted to the big canvas now, and he rose early
+to avail himself of every minute of light during
+these short wintry days. He worked with a
+passion and a concentration that he had never
+yet known. Every fibre of his body bent to the
+strain; every drop of his blood seemed to drain
+its life into this frenzy to achieve. Withal,
+a delightful sense of emancipation from the old
+tired vision; a splendid consciousness of some
+rich new store that had gathered in him during
+the long period he had lain fallow!</p>
+
+<p>Yet he shuddered and grew sick at the possibility
+that the Academy might still reject him!
+In that case, what had he to build upon beyond
+the coming fee for Miss Robinson's portrait? As
+the weeks went by, something of a panic began
+to overtake him; the future seemed to be
+bearing down on him grim and remorseless.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that the well-garnished atmosphere
+of the house at the corner seemed more
+and more desirable and alluring. The flow
+and abundance, the great glowing fires in this
+raw winter, the naïve burning of incense at
+his altar&mdash;all these things wooed him, wrapped
+him in a certain balm. Ensconced with Mr.
+Robinson, and sipping his after-dinner coffee,
+he felt the load of his anxieties falling away
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+from him, The heavy decanters of cut glass
+glowed richly at him&mdash;the softness of old
+whiskey, the ruby and golden glint of wines,
+the clear light of cunning distillations. The
+great pineapples, the clusters of grapes, the
+baskets of peaches, all the fragrant store of
+Nature's bounty set out on a table that yet,
+by no stretch of imagination, could be conceived
+as "groaning"&mdash;all seemed to shine fatter and
+finer than at the houses of his society friends.
+And here, too, his footing was of an unique,
+admirable character. He had his place at the
+board practically as a matter of right. They
+ranked him as a god; yet felt that the balance
+of debt was heavily against them. Whereas,
+elsewhere, he was one of a crowd, a merely
+casual figure among others not less important
+even where he had been most intimate. He
+knew that his own world, despite its breeding
+and traditions, would yet at bottom despise him
+and his art if he could not earn an excellent
+livelihood by its practice. But the Robinsons
+worshipped him for himself; and money was
+almost a vulgarity sullying the high artistic
+universe in which he moved and breathed and
+had his being.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+<h2>X</h2>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the sittings were progressing in a
+manner to gratify the artist beyond his hopes.
+Miss Robinson seemed to find some mysterious
+inspiration in this decorative scheme, seemed to
+fuse into it, to lend herself to design and
+draughtmanship. Her face, too, took on subtler
+phases, was touched to a measure of nobility!
+Her dark eyes shone softly under their long
+lashes; her expression was full of goodness and
+charity. Wyndham prided himself that he had
+put on the canvas something remote from the
+lines of ordinary portraiture&mdash;a simple soul, a
+gentle Lady Bountiful, yet not less dignified
+in her way than the heroines of the grand
+portraiture.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Robinson did not insist on uninterrupted
+chaperonage of her daughter; the ladies evinced
+little fanaticism on this head. Often they
+brought knitting or needle-work with them,
+which occupied the mother in a peaceful, old-fashioned
+way that Wyndham even found himself
+admiring. Sometimes Mrs. Robinson would
+appear only towards the end of the sitting,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+and sometimes she considerately announced
+that Alice would have to come alone for the
+next occasion as she herself was otherwise
+busy. They both showed a tact and a good
+taste in the matter which he fully recognised,
+and for which in a way he was grateful.</p>
+
+<p>In the natural resulting intimacy between
+artist and sitter, Miss Robinson expanded,
+opened out her mind; at first timidly and tentatively,
+ultimately with freedom and confidence.
+She confessed that her experience of life had
+been nothing at all, since she had always lived
+in quiet shelter. Her unsophisticated simplicity
+was certainly engaging; he could see that she
+was a sheet entirely unwritten upon, that her
+soul was as naïve and trusting as her outward
+being. She was refreshingly a child of nature&mdash;no
+bewildering complexity here&mdash;no shadow of
+affectation. She spoke without reserve of the
+poverty of her childhood, and admitted that she
+had disagreeable qualms of conscience about their
+present riches. Was it right to enjoy so much
+when one thought of the state of the world
+generally? They debated the subject endlessly;
+considering it elaborately from every conceivable
+standpoint: and his personal authority went far
+to allay her disquietude. His theories, backed up
+by high philosophy and poetry, fascinated her
+with their harmony and originality; he had
+such a charming way of arranging the order
+of things into a beautiful artist's scheme, whilst
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+yet his sympathies were deep, true, and universal!</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes he was conscious of his sophistry,
+and felt ashamed of it afterwards. Was he
+playing a comedy of sentiment? he asked himself.
+Well, why not? Men and women made
+a careful toilette for an evening party: why
+not a spiritual toilette for their sentimental
+relations?</p>
+
+<p>The last words of his own thought, startled
+him. Then it <i>was</i> a sentimental relation. "By
+Jove, I must be careful!" he murmured to
+himself. "She's an awfully good soul, and it
+isn't fair to either of us." But the next moment
+he shrugged his shoulders. Why trouble his
+mind at all? Every relation between a man
+and a woman who came into such close personal
+touch was in a way sentimental&mdash;for the time
+being! That was only the game of life, and
+everybody had to play at it: the main thing
+was to bow to the rules. Such temporary
+relations might well be made as pleasant as
+possible; but, when they were at an end, it
+was incumbent on both parties to realise that.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he could not help being increasingly
+conscious of his power over her; it was so
+pathetically visible. Their conversations were
+often amusingly like those of kindly tutor and
+obedient, inquiring child; she hanging on his
+words in entire self-surrender, as he discoursed
+so graciously and brought his points so lightly
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+and simply within the range of her comprehension.
+Sometimes, in following up an explanation,
+he would be carried away by the flow of his
+own ideas and his personal interest in the
+matter, and then he would almost seem to be
+addressing an equal in knowledge and experience.
+But whenever that happened; whenever,
+for example, he had let himself go too far into
+the subtle mysteries of technique, he would find
+himself regretting the unchecked surrender to
+impulse, and remain strangely vexed about it
+long afterwards. It was really soaring right
+outside her limitations! She was not a Lady
+Betty!</p>
+
+<p>Lady Betty was so often in his mind now:
+she seemed to have established herself more
+definitely there than ever before, as if to keep
+him up to the proper pitch in his judgments of
+women. He bowed his head low to Lady Betty,
+recognised her as his full intellectual equal&mdash;in
+some aspects his superior. She was brains and
+beauty. She was stateliness itself. She was
+sunshine and sweetness. What was Miss Robinson
+by the side of her? And as he asked himself
+the question, an impression of Miss Robinson,
+as he had recently come upon her suddenly
+in the streets, blotted out the more dignified
+version on his own canvas. How plain and
+homely she had seemed in her <a name="unobtrusive" id="unobtrusive"></a>unobtrusive walking-costume;
+how insignificant her whole meek
+bearing! Yes, that was the true Miss Robinson;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+caught photographically in the act of being herself,
+and fixed by his vision for always&mdash;extinguishing
+the gorgeously-dressed person of these
+incessant festal evenings no less than his own
+artistic edition of her.</p>
+
+<p>In no respect could she claim to come up to
+his measure. He appreciated all her virtues,
+recognised her exceptional womanhood: by the
+side of Lady Betty she was insipid, <i>bourgeoise</i>,
+monotonously amiable.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he could never arrive at so harsh a verdict
+without relenting at a rebound. "It is curious,"
+was his thought, "that in proportion as I get
+more friendly with her and really like her, I
+yet get harder and harder on her, poor child!
+She's a jolly good sort! What a decent world
+it would be if only there were ever so many
+more women like her!"</p>
+
+<p>And, by way of atonement, his manner at
+their next meeting would warm and soften
+sensibly; and it came upon him always with a
+degree of surprise that, however he might feel
+about Miss Robinson theoretically, her actual
+society was always pleasant and comrade-like.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XI</h2>
+
+<p>By mid-December the portrait needed only
+the finishing touches, and, at his invitation,
+several of his artist-friends came to see it.
+Commendation of the work was general,
+combined with a certain admiration of the
+unknown sitter. Wyndham could not help
+feeling that there was much speculation as
+to her identity, and he gave himself all the
+more credit as an artist for the qualities with
+which he had endowed her, and which alone
+bestowed upon her this interesting individuality.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham, who made it a point never to
+have his work interrupted, had so arranged
+these visits that none of his friends had
+stumbled upon the Robinsons. To the not
+infrequent query of "Who is she?" he usually
+responded, with a half-humorous gleam in his
+eye, "She might be Brown or Jones: as a matter
+of fact she is Robinson&mdash;the daughter of a respectable
+citizen of that ilk." Yet what more,
+in sober truth, could he tell them about her?
+He might have put it differently, but it was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+the information he supposed they wanted.
+Yet one day he was to learn that this conciseness
+had been construed as reserve. Sadler
+lounged in one Sunday afternoon, when, as
+it happened, Wyndham was awaiting his
+sister, whose long-deferred visit had at last
+been arranged for that day. And, in the course
+of conversation, the visitor soon let slip out
+a word that struck Wyndham like a blow.
+Sadler had begun by referring to Miss Robinson
+as "your friend;" but, presently, as he
+still reviewed the painting, out came "your
+<i>fiancée</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"My <i>fiancée</i>! What the devil&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Sadler apologised; a shrewd meaning smile
+clung about his massive jaws. "Of course
+everybody understands that it's a secret, but
+when you've heard of a thing, it's difficult to
+keep it from slipping out, don't y' know."</p>
+
+<p>"This is all too absurd!" Wyndham was
+suddenly impelled to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What's absurd about it? It seems likely
+enough to me; else I shouldn't have believed
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"An artist cannot accept a commission
+without being engaged to his sitter?" urged
+Wyndham indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Things have a way of getting about, you
+know," maintained Sadler.</p>
+
+<p>"They have indeed," said Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what are you so annoyed at?" shouted
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+Sadler. "You make me tired. There's nothing
+discreditable in being engaged by rumour to
+a wealthy and beautiful woman."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham laughed again. Beautiful! he
+thought. If only Sadler had met the everyday
+Miss Robinson shopping with her mother in
+the Finchley Road!</p>
+
+<p>"Seriously, do you consider her beautiful?"
+he asked in a more genial tone, suddenly curious
+to hear Sadler's real impression.</p>
+
+<p>"What is beauty?" demanded Sadler. "The
+moment you can define it, it ceases to be
+beauty. Its essence is elusiveness. A touch,
+a flash&mdash;and you've got it! The lines here
+are not classical, but your Miss Robinson has
+distinct individuality. The eyes are fine. She
+looks the sort that would stick to a man.
+Gee-rusalem! I shouldn't mind having a shot
+at her myself. Look here, old fellow, will
+you introduce me to her? If there's nothing
+in it for you, give me a chance."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodbye," said Wyndham sweetly. "You
+won't think me rude, but I've an engagement
+in a minute or two."</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" said Sadler. "I'll be off. Goodbye,
+Wyndham, old chap. You're a real damned
+old swell. Gee-rusalem! you're just great at
+getting rid of people."</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Wyndham gave way to annoyance
+again. It was a fine thing! Artists themselves
+ought to know better than to indulge in tittle-tattle
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+of that kind. He worked himself up
+into a towering rage. Then Mary rang the
+bell, and he had abruptly to recall his graciousness.</p>
+
+<p>It was her first visit to the studio since the
+new turn of affairs; her multifarious duties
+as worker among the sick and poor after her
+day's teaching leaving her so little freedom.
+They had of course seen each other in the
+interim; for Wyndham had himself looked in at
+the "Buildings" in Kensington whenever his
+engagements had taken him that way, and he
+had been fortunate enough just to catch her
+at home for a few moments on several occasions.
+The poor girl had been overflowing with
+happiness&mdash;had not a window on the skies
+been opened, too, for her? And though both
+had so far delicately avoided all reference
+to that old painful interview, she had yet
+often been impelled to throw herself at his
+feet in contrition. Only she felt that he, in
+his great magnanimity, would be hurt by such
+an abasement.</p>
+
+<p>When he brought the picture well into the light,
+her first exclamation was, "Oh, how beautiful!"
+Then she kissed him impulsively.</p>
+
+<p>The tribute gave him more pleasure than
+all the professional praise that had been
+showered on the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"What a charming girl! I should like to
+know her," were her next words. "She has
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit
+as beautiful as you've painted her."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham's vexation at his rumoured
+engagement seemed to take wing and be off
+into the airs. He even felt a shy pride in Miss
+Robinson. "I'm sure you'll like her," he said.
+"Shall I arrange a tea here one of these days
+before Christmas?"</p>
+
+<p>"That would be lovely." Mary's voice was
+full of enthusiasm. "School breaks up in a
+day or two, and I shall have so much more
+time to myself," she added, still gazing at the
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Any criticism?"</p>
+
+<p>"None," she returned. "You have caught the
+character with rare genius. She is so simple
+and unaffected; one could repose absolute trust
+in her.... You see," she continued, smiling,
+"I feel so strong an interest in her as being the
+beginning of your good fortune. I have a sort
+of conviction&mdash;don't laugh at me, please&mdash;that
+it has come to stay."</p>
+
+<p>When he poured out her tea, she suddenly
+laughed, remembering she had a message for
+him which she had forgotten to deliver in the
+absorption of contemplating Miss Robinson;
+in fact, there was a heap of things she had
+wanted to talk over. The most important, at
+any rate, was the question of his Christmas
+holiday. Aunt Eleanor wanted Mary to spend
+the two or three weeks with her, but she was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+anxious that Wyndham, too, should join their
+little party over the New Year&mdash;since she now
+understood that he had emerged to some extent
+from his austere seclusion. A refusal Aunt
+Eleanor would take to heart&mdash;she naturally
+regarded her own home as his, as the place to
+which his mind should spontaneously turn at
+such a season.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham welcomed the invitation. It was
+more than two years since he had passed any
+time in Hertfordshire, and the visit itself, which
+last Christmas he had sullenly avoided, would
+afford him the greatest satisfaction. Much as
+he appreciated the Robinson housekeeping,
+it was a relief to feel definitely that he was
+not staying the year-end at his studio, with
+no resource save their cordial hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>Mary went off in great elation. "I don't
+know when I have felt so happy as to-day,"
+she declared, as she kissed him. "I leave my
+best love for the work&mdash;and for the lady as
+well," she added, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>It was arranged on the door-step that they
+should travel down to Hertfordshire together,
+and Mary insisted he must leave her to look
+up the trains, and make all the arrangements.</p>
+
+<p>"It is just the sort of task I enjoy,"
+she assured him. "Looking up trains to get
+into the country always sends me into a sort
+of happy excitement; it is part of the joy of
+anticipation."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+    Wyndham was left, somehow, a greater
+admirer of Miss Robinson. He studied her
+again in his own picture, and accepted her as
+a far finer creature than he had realised&mdash;even
+allowing for this idealisation of her in paint.
+"My feeling against her must be purely morbid,
+and it's really too bad when she likes my
+society so much!&mdash;she has no idea how much
+she shows it." Her unsophistication, hitherto a
+deficiency, began to take on a certain charm.
+How refreshing this womanly simplicity in a
+world of showy coquettes and chattering,
+feather-headed females! Even Mary, who was
+so shrewd and fastidious, had been compelled
+to pay her homage. The Robinson family was
+charming! What fine old-world courtesy in the
+father&mdash;many a born aristocrat might well take
+a lesson from him! How unassuming, too, the
+mother, full of quiet virtues and womanly
+excellencies!</p>
+
+<p>And Mary's significant smile remained with
+him. Good gracious! was she, too, taking the
+sort of thing for granted? This power of suggestion
+from every side was annoying: still&mdash;it
+would not be right to let that prejudice him!</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham paced to and fro feverishly. Why
+should he not&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time he was impelled to put
+the question to himself in clear seeking. Obscure
+in his mind these last weeks, it crystallised
+itself brusquely&mdash;surprised him with its swift
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+definiteness: but he broke it off, all unprepared
+to meet it yet. He had a shamefaced remembrance
+of his matrimonial conversation with
+Sadler, of the lofty convictions he had then
+expressed.</p>
+
+<p>Well, he had spoken honestly, he argued, and
+his convictions had changed not a jot. "Only
+now that I am face to face with the actual
+possibility, I see aspects of the case that then
+escaped me. Till now I have always viewed
+marriage as the great central fact to which the
+whole of life has to converge, from which everything
+else takes its significance. Hence it was a
+case of the ideal or nothing&mdash;there seemed no
+other choice. But now I recognise that matrimony
+that is not ideal may yet take its place
+as an accessory to life, may be accepted as a
+good without filling the whole horizon."</p>
+
+<p>He resumed his feverish pacing. Well, why
+should he not seize an opportunity which presented
+itself so favourably? By the loss of his
+money he had become reduced in his own world
+to the rank of a mere "detrimental." Had he
+not already felt that sufficiently? He laughed
+harshly at the memory. No, no, a Lady Betty
+he could not hope to marry. Such wondrous
+beings did not grow on every bush; nor did life
+permit of his setting out in search of one. This
+holding out for the perfect ideal only meant
+humiliation and sadness in the end. The world&mdash;the
+hard world of fact&mdash;was like that, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+you had to take it as you found it. No folly
+could be greater than to forget that life was as
+it was, and not as you thought it ought to be!</p>
+
+<p>Yet he vacillated again. Did he really want
+to marry at all? Had he not decided&mdash;wholly,
+absolutely, irrevocably&mdash;that his business in life
+was work? Though he would never have
+spoken of it to another, he was proud in his
+heart of his sentimental loyalty to Lady Betty,
+and marriage seemed almost an unfaithfulness.
+Better perhaps to bend himself sternly to the
+task before him!</p>
+
+<p>Yes, but this task before him&mdash;unaided, he
+could never accomplish it. Let him confess it
+now, since he was master again of his full sanity.
+He had been beaten, smashed! But for this
+timely piece of good fortune all would have
+been at an end by now. The Robinson support
+once withdrawn, he would not be strong enough
+to stand. He had gauged his powers in the
+great contest, and, in this moment of supreme
+lucidity, he foresaw he must be conquered again.
+One portrait could not suffice for the rebuilding
+of his future; even on the money side his fee
+would be absorbed immediately. And the finishing
+of the great picture meant more outlay. To
+try to "fake" it without proper models would
+be a folly of follies&mdash;far better to abandon it
+altogether. His blind optimism at the turn of
+things had certainly been of benefit to him, had
+stimulated him to his best; but with this first
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+piece of work practically accomplished, the
+moment for estimating and facing the situation
+with mathematical exactitude had certainly
+arrived.</p>
+
+<p>He could not fight the world alone. However
+he might desire nothing in life save self-consecration
+to work, he could not even achieve
+that much without reinforcing his own strength
+by means that were unexceptionable and
+honourable.</p>
+
+<p>He came to an abrupt stop as the words
+swept from his brain. "By Jove, that hits the
+nail pretty square!" he murmured, his lips
+ashen. Naked and ugly, his primary motive
+stood before him as in a mirror. For one clear
+moment he saw himself brutally, and shuddered.
+"I am not in love with her. If she were dowerless,
+I should never have worked myself up to
+this stage of appreciation; I should never have
+dressed up the Robinson menage to make it
+palatable. The portrait would never have
+come out like this. I should have dashed in a
+brutal modern study of a plain woman, full of
+bravura passages. If I am going in for a thing
+of this kind, let me at least be honest with
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>And then he laughed with the irony of it all.
+He, the lover of poesie; he, the fastidious
+gourmet in things of the spirit; who had
+followed the cult of all that was lyrical and
+exquisite; he planned to mate beneath him for
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+the sake of crude money. Faugh! A vulture
+hovering over a heap of carrion!</p>
+
+<p>But the violence of the metaphor brought a
+reaction. "Rubbish!" he murmured, and paced
+again. The pacing grew into a striding. Up
+and down the length of the studio he stamped,
+face and eyes working intensely. "I am
+exaggerating. I am morbid about it all; I am
+rushing to the other extreme. When have I
+ever hidden from myself that the thing would
+be primarily a means to my great impersonal
+end&mdash;I may as well admit it has been in my
+mind all along! What could be a greater
+degradation than my old way of living? Poor
+Mary! Why, I owe it to her as a duty to put
+an end to all this misery. I'd face anything on
+earth now to make up to her for the past!
+Besides, the idea is not at all so inhuman as I am
+trying to make out. In a mildish sort of way,
+of course, I am really fond of Miss Robinson.
+Her virtues <i>are</i> a reality! She is plain, I admit&mdash;very
+plain; but my eye has learnt to see her its
+own way&mdash;the way of the portrait!"</p>
+
+<p>Brusquely he flung his hesitations from him.
+Why should he not marry Miss Robinson? Even
+in the driest aspect of the case, the match was
+not inequitable. The "crude money"&mdash;yes, let
+him use the words deliberately&mdash;the "crude
+money" on her side; on his a full equivalent in
+his personal self, his no doubt brilliant career
+once sordid matters were disposed of, and a sphere
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+of existence that was obviously interesting to her.
+If he brought no immediate fortune himself,
+his future earnings, once he were free to work
+without anxiety, might well be considerable.
+What was there in the idea to wound his pride?
+How absurd his metaphor of the vulture!</p>
+
+<p>And then he turned to dwell again with relief
+at the pleasanter aspects of the case. Even if
+he were not attaining to passionate poetic
+dreams, he would yet be carrying into effect a
+charming domestic ideal of peace and tranquillity.
+And the very poetry of marriage began
+to invest Miss Robinson with something of its
+own glamour. He saw her in a bridal veil
+holding a big bouquet. His enthusiasm
+mounted.</p>
+
+<p>And Mary's voice seemed to echo again in
+the studio: "What a charming girl! She has
+such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit
+as beautiful as you've painted her." He almost
+felt himself blushing in embarrassment; it was
+as if he himself were being commended. "She
+is so simple and unaffected," went on Mary's
+voice with its unmistakable ring of conviction.
+"One could repose absolute trust in her."</p>
+
+<p>How shrewd and true was his sister's reading
+of the character! Moreover, Mary had confessed
+to an almost superstitious thrill at
+gazing on the features of the woman who had
+been the beginning of his good fortune. Could
+he say that he was entirely free from the same
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+sort of superstitious sentiment? Alice Robinson
+had begun his good fortune; why should
+she not complete it? If only that confounded
+set of fools hadn't started their silly tittle-tattle!</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly there was a substratum of truth
+and good sense in the views so stoutly and
+passionately maintained by Sadler; only Sadler
+imagined it was possible to compromise, to step
+down from the ideal and yet find great happiness.
+He himself would give up the dream of
+happiness in the ideal sense: his would be
+frankly a case of convenience, though were it
+not for the many virtues of Miss Robinson, his
+mind would never have become reconciled to it.
+No! not even were she as rich as Croesus. He
+must do that amount of justice to himself. At
+his age he could appreciate the importance of
+the rarer qualities of character in his life's mate&mdash;loyalty,
+modesty, devotion! He would be
+making a wise marriage! not a sordid one. He
+would be choosing the deep calm of life instead
+of the elusive and often mocking flash of superficial
+passion and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>And, on his part, he was prepared to be the
+best and most dutiful of husbands!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XII</h2>
+
+<p>When, that same evening, Wyndham was
+ushered into the Robinsons' drawing-room, he
+was mildly surprised to find a sedate gentleman
+there in familiar conversation with the family.
+The stranger vibrated with neuter lights; yet
+dry, clean lights. Tall spare figure, hair and
+close-trimmed beard, tailed morning coat and
+sharp-creased trousers, brow and visage, air and
+movement&mdash;all a chiaroscuro in grey; accentuated
+curiously, too, against the host's correct
+black and white, and the laces and chiffons and
+shimmering brilliance of the ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend, Mr. Shanner," said Mr. Robinson,
+introducing them; and Wyndham remembered
+at once that the Robinsons had mentioned Mr.
+Shanner occasionally as an intimate of the
+house who was away in the New World for the
+interests of the concern in which he was junior
+partner.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Shanner, though he shook hands
+cordially, yet gave him a swift look up and
+down that had something of antagonism in it.
+And in Wyndham, too, arose some obscure
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+enmity, likewise masked by the conventional
+friendliness of greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"As I was just telling Mr. Robinson," said
+Mr. Shanner, with an obviously forced smile
+that yet illumined the man, broke through and
+flashed away the greyness for an instant, "I
+hadn't the least idea that I was going to
+stumble on an evening party. I feel quite out
+of it." His voice was full of affable vibrations,
+and he smiled again, with a general nod that
+indicated all this ceremonial get-up around him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure we shall do our best to amuse
+you," returned Wyndham, naturally associating
+himself with the family, but feeling hopelessly
+out of sympathy with the new-comer.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Robinson had reddened as the two men
+approached each other, but on her father's
+again mentioning that Mr. Shanner was just
+back from his tour in the New World, she came
+into the conversation bravely, and rose above
+her shade of embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"Have <i>you</i> ever crossed to America, Mr.
+Wyndham?" she asked, smiling at him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he confessed; "though America has
+largely crossed to me."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shanner looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean&mdash;America has crossed to
+you, Mr. Wyndham?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hope I did not seem to suggest that I
+have been a centre of pilgrimage," laughed
+Wyndham. "Only, in past years, when I was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+running a good deal about the Continent, I
+often used to live with New York, Chicago, and
+Boston, for considerable periods."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wyndham has often given us charming
+sketches of the Americans," chimed in Miss
+Robinson.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't pretend to be much of a hand
+at that sort of thing," said Mr. Shanner, with
+pleasant humility. "I can only just give my
+impressions as a plain observer. But then I'm
+a man of affairs, and nothing at all of an artist
+or a literary man." Wyndham observed how
+careful and honeyed his delivery was; it seemed
+to advertise a perpetual self-consciousness of
+being a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Shanner is unduly modest," put in Mr.
+Robinson. "His descriptions are most entertaining."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, I can speak of things within
+my experience, and make myself fairly clear&mdash;in
+my own way, of course. But, from all that you
+people have been telling me, I shouldn't attempt
+to emulate Mr. Wyndham."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shanner gave a strange little laugh, full
+of insincere echoes; which failed in its implication
+of good-fellowship, and only emphasised
+the ill-nature it was meant to cover.
+Wyndham was not a little bewildered; conscious
+of some suppressed excitement in the
+man, some ruffling of the ashen chiaroscuro.
+This impression was deepened when dinner was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+announced, and Mr. Shanner made what was
+perilously like a dart to the side of Miss Robinson
+and offered his arm. Wyndham stepped
+out of their way, bowing as they passed him.</p>
+
+<p>At table Mr. Shanner gave no undue signs
+of modesty or self-distrust, but talked about
+"things within his experience" with the utmost
+unconstraint. An unmistakable note of assurance
+animated the honeyed voice, which
+soared away occasionally, yet sedulously recollected
+itself; drew back within bounds, reverted
+to the lesser pitch and the deliberate
+pace. Mr. Shanner was at pains to let it be
+seen that he was a man of affairs on the grand
+scale, one to be ranked with diplomatists and
+ambassadors. In the course of business he had
+come into contact with exalted personages of
+almost every kingdom, and had corresponded
+voluminously with some of them. He carried
+an assortment of their letters in his pocketbook,
+which lay on the table as a perpetual
+source of illustration. He spoke of some of
+these great ones of the earth with extreme
+familiarity&mdash;he had been closeted with them
+on confidential business, and he flattered himself
+he had counted for something in certain
+important decisions of policy. And, as he
+warmed to the conversation, far from being
+"out of it," he was king of the table, his
+honeyed words emerged endlessly. There was
+a distinct flash of challenge in his occasional
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+glances at Wyndham&mdash;he was not to be overborne
+by the presence of any aristocrat on earth.
+And not content with all this insistent implication
+of his personal importance, he even
+related by way of pleasant interlude how, with
+ear to one private telephone and mouth to
+another, he had smartly seized a sudden opportunity,
+and, buying an incoming cargo through
+the first telephone and selling it through the
+second, had netted twenty thousand pounds for
+his firm. Whereas Wyndham amused himself
+trying to measure the depths of Mr. Shanner's
+contempt should he suspect that the sole resources
+of his vis-à-vis were the guineas to be
+paid him from Mr. Robinson's treasury.</p>
+
+<p>It was evident, too, that Mr. Shanner was
+more familiarly at home in the house than
+Wyndham. He called its master "Robinson";
+most significant of all, Miss Robinson was Alice
+to him. Indeed, his manner, as he sat next to
+her, was almost proprietorial; at any rate it
+had easy, affectionate suggestions about it.
+She, however, had fallen back into a shy constraint;
+though she emerged at moments, lifting
+her deep-glancing eyes to Wyndham and
+flashing him the friendliest of messages.
+Wyndham understood by now; knew also that
+it was clear to Mr. Shanner that they were
+rivals&mdash;that a mutual detestation lurked
+beneath their pleasant amenities. He had
+gathered also that Mr. Shanner meant to show
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+that he did not concern himself one jot about
+the new star that had appeared in the firmament
+during his absence. But Wyndham came
+off easily the victor, displaying for Mr. Shanner
+a charming deference, and pursuing the unruffled
+tenour of his entertaining conversation without
+manifesting in the slightest degree any of the
+emotions that the evening had raised in his
+breast. Such perfect unconsciousness of
+matters intensely present, Mr. Shanner could
+not hope to emulate. It was clear he was uneasily
+alive to the contrast&mdash;that he had the
+growing consciousness of defeat. His note of
+self-emphasis rang louder, though smothered
+continuously.</p>
+
+<p>The war continued after dinner; Mr. Shanner
+eagerly turning the pages of Miss Robinson's
+music, and so entirely appropriating her that
+Wyndham could scarcely contrive to approach
+her during the rest of the evening. However,
+Wyndham smilingly kept his place in the background,
+disdaining to assert himself or to enter
+openly into emulation; though there were opportunities
+he, the socially experienced, might
+have seized adroitly. After all, why annoy this
+admirable, upright gentleman? Even as it was,
+poor Mr. Shanner was fated to receive one or
+two sharp slashes; as when, in the course of describing
+the sittings, Mrs. Robinson let it be
+clearly seen that she was not always present to
+chaperone her daughter in the studio. At that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+moment Mr. Shanner's face was an extraordinary
+face to look upon; although he affected to
+laugh and smile, and packed even more honey
+into his voice. All of which forced sweetness
+notwithstanding, it began to be evident that the
+topic of the picture, and of Wyndham's work
+in general, bored him considerably. At last,
+when Mrs. Robinson innocently suggested that
+Wyndham should ask him to come to see the
+portrait at the studio, he deprecated the idea
+with some degree of vehemence. He really
+was very busy in the daytime now. Besides,
+he added pleasantly, on principle he never cared
+to see an article whilst yet on order; time
+enough to examine it when it was tendered for
+delivery. He smiled meaningly at Wyndham as
+if to accentuate that these commercial metaphors
+were merely by way of pleasantry.</p>
+
+<p>"And then it's so extremely difficult for an
+outsider to get any idea of an unfinished
+picture, and of course I don't profess to be a
+judge of art in any case, though I know what I
+like."</p>
+
+<p>So, if Mr. Wyndham would excuse him, he
+added, he would rather wait till the portrait had
+come home, and had been hung in the house.</p>
+
+<p>It was not without difficulty that Wyndham
+found his opportunity of arranging the little
+tea-party at which the ladies were to meet his
+sister. Miss Robinson was to give him the final
+sitting on the Tuesday; so it was therefore
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+agreed that the tea should take place on that
+day after work was over. The sitter herself
+crimsoned deeply at learning that Mary "had
+admired her immensely," and her eyes glistened
+in a way that showed her pleasure and
+rapturous appreciation.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XIII</h2>
+
+<p>The definite figure of Mr. Shanner with his
+magnificent appropriation of Miss Robinson
+merely impelled Wyndham to smash up this
+rival at once and have done with the business.
+The evening had obscured all the repugnance
+that lay in the depths of him; had stimulated
+roseate conceivings of possible felicity.</p>
+
+<p>On the Tuesday he found his opportunity.
+Miss Robinson came alone, explaining that her
+mother would not appear till the time fixed for
+the tea-party. The weather was rigorously
+wintry now, and a biting wind blew in as the
+door was opened. A new layer of snow had
+fallen during the last hour, and Miss Robinson
+had come across wrapped in a big, heavy cloak.
+He ushered her through the ante-room with a
+charming air of solicitude, to which she vibrated
+like a struck harp, and gave him the softest and
+tenderest intonations of her voice. He helped
+her off with the cloak, and hung it away carefully,
+the whilst she stooped and warmed her
+long hands at the lavishly heaped-up fire. Her
+throat and arms now showed at their best, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+her face had some strange, almost mystic
+undertone of happiness. As she bent down
+there before his eyes, she completely blotted out
+the impression of the insignificant plain woman
+whom he had suddenly come upon in the streets;
+of the everyday Miss Robinson that at one time
+had almost become an obsession. At that
+moment she was well-nigh the idealised figure
+he had painted. Yet there was something even
+subtler in her which he had missed, and knew
+that he had missed. But, studying his own
+work again, he saw that that was just as well;
+for the picture existed as a separate creation, a
+piece of painting first and foremost, in which
+he had exhibited the cleverness of his brush. It
+was paint&mdash;distinguished, intellectual paint&mdash;more
+than it was human portraiture; in spite of
+all the significance with which he had tried to
+invest it. As this new truth dawned upon him,
+he kept glancing from sitter to canvas, and from
+canvas to sitter, with a strange, surprised interest.
+But her hands suddenly arrested his
+attention, and he became aware that, for the
+first time since he had known her, they were
+absolutely bare of rings.</p>
+
+<p>"You have no rings to-day," he remarked, his
+voice showing his surprise. "I might have
+wanted to touch up the hands."</p>
+
+<p>Her colour deepened unaccountably. "I
+thought the hands were finished," she breathed,
+all of a flutter. "Shall I go back for them?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+    "What a goose it is!" he said lightly, and she
+smiled again, as if pleased they were on so
+charmingly intimate a footing.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we not need them?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I think not," he answered, studying the
+hands a little. "You were perfectly right; they
+had best remain as they are."</p>
+
+<p>She took the pose, and for a minute or two he
+worked silently; she maintaining the perfect
+stillness that had at first been her cherished
+ambition. He was still pondering about her
+bare hands and her confusion at his having
+observed them, and light came to him. Was it
+to show him that no man&mdash;not even Mr.
+Shanner&mdash;had any claim on her? After the
+close attentions he had witnessed the other
+evening, was she afraid he might infer that
+some understanding existed between herself
+and Mr. Shanner?&mdash;that one of these rings,
+even if not a formal pledge, might be his and
+worn for his sake? Her neglect of such
+favourite trinkets to-day was then to indicate
+that no one of them had any special sentimental
+interest for her!</p>
+
+<p>"You are sitting perfectly to-day," he
+presently remarked. "It doesn't tire you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What an unkind suggestion! I thought I
+had got beyond the amateur stage long
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. You didn't hear, though, the
+beginning of my remark."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+    "I agreed with that," she answered with a sly
+humour.</p>
+
+<p>"So that it hadn't to be reckoned. Do you
+know all women are like that?"</p>
+
+<p>She considered. His brush made strokes.
+"Like what?" she asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>"If you pay them the greatest of tributes,
+but are incautious enough to hint the tiniest of
+qualifications, the tribute dwindles to nothing,
+and they remain tremendously annoyed at the
+suggestion of imperfection."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were just now."</p>
+
+<p>"I was such a bother and a hindrance to you
+when we started," she explained. "I used to
+get tired every few minutes. And now at
+last, just when I am flattering myself on my
+improvement&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You take me too seriously," he broke in.</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>were</i> serious," she insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Serious&mdash;yes; in so far as I was afraid
+you were tired. I didn't even mean it as a
+qualification of my tribute; it was only genuine
+concern for you."</p>
+
+<p>"How stupid of me!" she exclaimed.
+"I ought to have felt that at once."</p>
+
+<p>There was another spell of silence; he
+intensely absorbed in his brush, she obviously
+considering.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not really like that," she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>He stood away from the canvas, glanced
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+critically at certain points, levelled his mahl-stick
+at her, took up a rag, and wiped a bit
+out. "Like what?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Like women."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are. You see, it is sticking in your
+mind." He smiled wickedly.</p>
+
+<p>"You fight too hard," she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," he said remorsefully. "I shall
+not do it again."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not a bit hurt," she protested.
+"I was only thinking the point over."</p>
+
+<p>"I want to hear what you were thinking."
+His smile and tone were meaningly affectionate,
+as if they would add "little child."</p>
+
+<p>"I meant that I should never really be hurt
+by qualifications. I have never been used to
+having nice things said to me. I certainly do
+not deserve tributes, but I know I deserve all
+possible qualifications."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you please! I'll not allow even
+Miss Robinson to say such slanderous things
+about so valued a friend of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"So I have been slandering a friend of yours!
+I'm so sorry. Forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I must&mdash;though I find it hard&mdash;very
+hard."</p>
+
+<p>"I do believe you are paying me a tribute,"
+she laughed. "Now for the qualifications.
+You shall see how stoical I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Qualifications&mdash;none!" He threw down his
+brushes and palette, as if to emphasise the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+declaration. "I'm tired first," he sang out gaily.
+"Let us rest."</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she exclaimed. "What a triumph
+for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you say it so gently that it is a pleasure
+to concede you the victory. You are an ideal foe."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you please, I don't want to be a foe.
+... How cold it is!" She stooped and held her
+hands again to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"No, child," he said gently, "of course we
+aren't foes. We are very good friends indeed,
+aren't we?" He held out his hand, as if to
+clench the understanding, so clearly and warmly
+acknowledged.</p>
+
+<p>She was all a-flutter again, though, as was her
+habit, she covered it up with a smile. "Very
+good friends!" she returned, with conviction,
+and she put her hand in his, and let it linger
+there. "I have always lived reserved and to
+myself," she added thoughtfully. "You may
+think it strange, but I have never had a friend
+before&mdash;not even a woman friend."</p>
+
+<p>"I can well understand your shrinking away
+from people. No doubt most people would jar
+on you."</p>
+
+<p>"It would hurt me if I thought that. I should
+not like to despise anybody. I should have
+loved to have friends: only I have never had the
+gift of making them. Sometimes I am thankful
+that I am not brilliant&mdash;I might so easily have
+become unendurable and full of self-conceit."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+    "Ah, you are something better than brilliant,"
+he exclaimed. "It needs an exceptional spirit
+to appreciate you. You are so much out of the
+ordinary in every way, in looks&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she interrupted in protest. "I have
+no looks. I have no illusions about that."</p>
+
+<p>"Look at your own portrait," he insisted.
+"I say it is the kind of beauty it needs a gift
+to appreciate. In beauty&mdash;as in everything
+else&mdash;the crowd runs after the obvious and the
+commonplace."</p>
+
+<p>"You are the first that ever thought I
+possessed good looks. You have given them
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not even done you justice. I have
+omitted more than I have suggested. My sister
+thinks you are beautiful; all my artist friends
+who have seen the picture share her opinion."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, almost distressed; she could
+not meet his gaze, but turned her eyes away.</p>
+
+<p>"It gave me pleasure to hear you appreciated,"
+he continued. "You are above conventional
+compliments. I withdraw what I said before.
+You are <i>not</i> like other women."</p>
+
+<p>Her breath came and went as she listened,
+but she smiled bravely.</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate I am not like <i>some</i> women.
+I never could take any of the deeper aspects
+of life in a merely frivolous spirit. With me
+it is a loyal, deep friendship, or nothing."</p>
+
+<p>He took her hand again. "Believe me, dear
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+child, the friendship on my part is equally
+loyal and deep. It is for life."</p>
+
+<p>"For life," she murmured, suddenly grown
+pale.</p>
+
+<p>He dashed in, determined to strike home.</p>
+
+<p>"I prize you at your full worth, since I am
+one of those who can measure it. I have the
+deepest affection for you. I believe I could
+make you happy. Don't you understand? I
+offer you my whole life&mdash;that is, if you think
+me worthy."</p>
+
+<p>"Worthy!" she echoed, in dazed distress.
+"How can you think me worthy of you!
+I have lived in narrow retirement. I am
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>He seized both her hands now. "No more
+of this. I ask for your promise."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you with all my heart and soul.
+But I am not good enough for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought we agreed you were not like
+other women, and yet there is this stiff-necked
+obstinacy." He drew her nearer to him, and
+kissed her on the lips. "It is settled&mdash;you are
+to be my wife."</p>
+
+<p>His domination seemed to hypnotise her.
+"Yes, I will do my best to make you a perfect
+wife, dear," she murmured, as if bowing to his
+irresistible will.</p>
+
+<p>He held her hands tighter, and looked into
+her face as if proudly. She met his look with
+glistening eyes: she was deathly pale now, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+her lips, too, were colourless. Then abruptly
+she drew her hands from him, and, as if impelled
+on some tide of womanhood that rose
+in high music above all hesitations, above
+the fluttering timidity of her whole life, she
+threw her arms round his neck, and kissed his
+lips with a long abandonment.</p>
+
+<p>"I am now almost afraid of your sister," she
+whispered presently. "I shall feel on my trial."</p>
+
+<p>"But she has fallen in love with you already,"
+he reassured her again. "And Mary is the
+sweetest and gentlest soul in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"I know I shall love her," she said. Her
+head hung down a moment in meditation.
+"But let us continue the work now, dear.
+I know you wish to have it finished to-day."</p>
+
+<p>But he had little now to add to it, and he
+had made his last stroke before the dusk of
+the afternoon overtook him.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XIV</h2>
+
+<p>Wyndham's career as an engaged man began
+amid a radiance of enthusiasm. When his
+prospective mother-in-law arrived for the tea-party,
+she was enchanted at the news, declaring,
+after the first joyous surprise, that it was the
+wish that lay nearest to the hearts of herself
+and her husband. And, presently, when Mary
+appeared, and was introduced not only to "the
+original of the portrait she had so admired,"
+but also to "a very sweet Alice" who was to
+be her sister, "I guessed it," she broke out,
+kissing Miss Robinson impulsively. "I am so
+delighted."</p>
+
+<p>Heigh, presto! In a trice the three women
+were chatting away like a group of old
+neighbours! Wyndham became discreetly busy
+with tea-things.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the Robinsons insisted on Mary's
+dining with them, and so there was a happy
+little reunion in the evening. Mr. Robinson
+thrilled visibly with the honour of having Mary
+at his board, and he congratulated Wyndham
+with pathetic cordiality, his voice husky with
+emotion, his eyes streaming with tears.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+    Such was the auspicious beginning. But the
+universe seemed to vibrate to white heat as
+a wider population entered into the jubilation.
+Mary was the first to spread the news, her
+letters reaching the Hertfordshire circle express.
+In the twinkling of an eye, as it appeared to
+Wyndham, a flood of letters poured through the
+slit in his door. He had done that which makes
+every man a hero for the moment, and dim
+figures with whom he had been out of touch
+for endless years started up again on the horizon,
+palpitatingly actual, athrob with goodwill. In
+the Bohemian world, too, confirmation of the
+former rumour was not slow to be noised
+abroad, and Sadler hastened to Hampstead
+and burst in upon him, the massive head enthusiastically
+aglow; declaring that he had never
+for a moment taken Wyndham's denial seriously,
+and roaring out his congratulations and envy
+with an exuberance of virile expletive.</p>
+
+<p>At Aunt Eleanor's the Christmas festivities
+were struck in a gayer key in his honour. Odes
+of welcome and triumph were in the air. And
+he was glad enough to be among his own world
+again; living in the way that meant civilisation
+to him, and breathing homage and consideration&mdash;lionised
+by his equals! It was as though the
+fatted calf had been killed for him, after his
+prodigal riot of penury. He expanded in this
+atmosphere of adulation, amid all these manifestations
+in honour of the brilliant artist and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+the Prince Charming who loved and was loved
+idyllically. His engagement seemed to him
+now most admirable&mdash;the world's sanction had
+invested it with warm and pleasant lights.
+Certainly nobody deprecated or criticised the
+projected alliance; though it was known to be
+with middle-class people who were not in
+Society, but merely quiet folk of wealth and
+respectability. Mary's enthusiasm had gone
+a long way in anticipating any possible caste
+objections, and the word of approval went round
+from one to another in the usual parrot-like
+way in which public opinion has formed itself
+since creation. There seemed in fact to be a
+very conspiracy of approbation. Wyndham had
+done wisely; and voices dropped impressively
+to dwell on the Robinson millions&mdash;with the
+obvious implication that that is what wealthy
+middle-class people are for&mdash;to have the most
+promising of their kind promoted into the upper
+classes.</p>
+
+<p>But the Robinson fortune, though not inconsiderable,
+was not the romantic one of rumour.
+Mr. Robinson had already performed his duty
+of writing to Wyndham on the financial aspect
+of the alliance, and in so charming a way that
+Wyndham had at once paid him the tribute
+of "jolly decent." Since they had not had
+the opportunity of disposing of the subject
+<i>viva voce</i>, had said the old man, he conceived it
+perhaps to be an obligation on his part to do
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+so without delaying further; after which these
+matters would of course pass entirely into the
+realm of Wyndham's private affairs, where he
+was well content to leave them. Alice's fortune,
+such as it was, had been placed under her own
+control absolutely when she had attained the
+age of twenty-five, and probably now, with
+certain accumulations, amounted to some thirty
+thousand pounds. She was a wise and prudent
+child, well capable of controlling those money
+matters that were naturally distasteful to so
+gifted an artist, and in that way he would no
+doubt find her a most useful companion. However,
+he now left it to him and Alice to plan
+out their future together, and wished them
+all good luck. At the same time, if Wyndham
+had no objection, he would like to give them
+as a wedding-present any house they might
+fancy, and his wife desired to furnish it or
+give them a cheque for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was in reality deeply moved by so
+much considerate kindness and rare delicacy.
+He wrote Mr. Robinson a charming note of
+acknowledgment; though he touched just briefly
+on the main theme, diverging into a chatty
+account of his visit, and letting his pen run
+on and on till he had covered several sheets.</p>
+
+<p>Each morning during his visit a letter from
+Alice awaited him on the breakfast-table. For
+a week or two the chant was timorous, uncertain;
+of a pitch to soothe his self-complacency,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+to stir no ruffle in his holiday mood.
+But towards the end of his time she found
+herself&mdash;she tuned up, and adventured. And
+then followed Wyndham's awakening; taking
+him with the force of cataclysm, and dashing
+him out of his drowsy mood of contentment.
+Evidently the poor child was not living in this
+world. If her feet touched earth, her head at
+any rate was in a heaven of its own. She poured
+herself out with a lyric fervour that was like
+the song of a lark for rapture. All the years
+of her life she had saved herself for this, not
+frittered her emotions away in flirtations or
+frivolous love-affairs&mdash;as the soberer Wyndham
+now reflected. Her ideals were as unsullied as
+in her childhood. Her spirit soared up with a
+tremulous eager joy&mdash;without doubts, without
+cynicism, with a simple sure faith in love's
+paradise. Reserved, shrinking away from men,
+her heart yet held rich store of treasure, and
+she poured all out at his feet. Timorousness
+had vanished; the soul that had woven its
+own music in solitude had been translated to a
+higher universe. There were no barriers now,
+nothing but this joyous, confident life into which
+her womanhood had passed at that moment
+when, swept onward by the flood, she had
+thrown her arms around him.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest," she wrote, "my whole past life
+seems like a half-slumber from which I have
+awakened into a world almost too dazzling with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+light and joy. Yet who am I that this joy should
+have come to me? When I think of the years
+when I lived alone with my own thoughts, it
+seems wonderful that your love should have
+been granted to me. The world is full of pale
+ghosts that come and go, not knowing what
+life is, and it amuses me to wonder if any of
+them will ever turn into real people.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear love, you are so far, far off.
+I want you here, here again with me, happy
+that you love me, happy that I love you, wanting
+no other life than this with your arms
+round me and your heart beating close to me.
+And yet I like to think that you are happy amid
+your own family, in the place where your
+childhood was spent. I love, dear, to dwell on
+the thought of your childhood, and fancy I see
+you now, a beautiful child in velvet, with a
+feather in your hat and a toy sword. And
+I see myself a child again, playing with this
+fairy little prince in the meadows. How beautiful
+if we were children like that! Impossible
+does it seem? Yet is anything impossible in
+this enchanted world?</p>
+
+<p>"Think of me, dearest, with the deepest and
+truest love of your heart, as I am thinking of
+you every moment of this wonderful life."</p>
+
+<p>And another time: "It is strange to feel how
+everything is transformed since you came into
+my life and made me understand what this
+great happiness is. I laugh gaily at nothing;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+yet tears come into my eyes quickly at unhappiness
+or suffering. It seems as if I were born
+to love you with a yearning and a passion that
+sometimes frighten me, yet which I would
+rather die than live without. When I first
+loved you, I did not know that this would come,
+that I should not be able to imagine it to be
+otherwise. The thought is frightful; indeed,
+if anything were to happen to change the
+present, I think my heart would give one great,
+great throb, and all would be over. I draw my
+breath hard at the thought; there is a deep
+pain at my breast; my teeth are set. But how
+morbid I am to-day! how ungrateful for this
+splendid gift of your love that has been
+bestowed upon me! But somehow I feel
+frightened; I don't believe that anybody will be
+allowed to keep such happiness on this earth.
+So come to me quickly, dearest; you seem so
+far, far away from me. I kiss your dear letters,
+I wear them near my heart, at night they are
+under my pillow. I love you, I love you."</p>
+
+<p>And this heart-cry broke down all the strong
+fibre of the man. Poor Alice! He must take
+care of such a child; he must cherish her life and
+make it perfect! Not in the least detail must
+he fail in his duty. Never for a moment must
+she think that this was&mdash;he flinched now before
+the words&mdash;an engagement of convenience!</p>
+
+<p>An engagement of convenience! He slipped
+away to his room&mdash;away from the rest of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+world!&mdash;and sat staring into the dusk. He knew
+now that he was face to face with the actuality
+that lay before him in all its horror. An engagement
+of convenience! He would have given the
+world to recall it. His eyes saw clear again&mdash;the
+enthusiasm that swirled and whirled around
+him had thus far sustained him: vibrations of
+romance had arisen within him, had resounded
+with a certain music. But these letters of Alice,
+this crescendo series, each soaring beyond the
+other, had illumined the horrible poverty of his
+own emotion. The freshness of her note was a
+revelation and yet an agony to him. If only he
+could have piped with half the thrill!</p>
+
+<p>He could see at last that in his specious
+reasonings he had somehow assumed a largely
+passive attitude on her part. Indeed, egotistically
+preoccupied with his own side of the case,
+he had scarcely bestowed a thought on hers.
+This reality&mdash;immense&mdash;overpowering&mdash;of the
+romance in her heart terrified him. He had
+given her empty words, and she had given him&mdash;love!
+And what else, indeed, but empty words
+had he to offer her now?&mdash;had he to offer her
+in the whole long vista of their future? At
+the best a studied kindness, an acceptance of
+duty. He had entered on a rôle of mockery, and
+he knew now he was utterly unfitted to play it.
+His whole nature rose and cried aloud in revolt.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XV</h2>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the New Year Wyndham
+hastened back to town, and was soon at his post
+striving to adapt himself to the outlook of his
+life. He had tried to steel himself to confess the
+miserable truth to Alice, to lay it before her
+with a fidelity as unswerving as Nature, merciless
+both to him and to her. But her letters
+continued to shake him, and he had not the
+strength to face the inevitable wreckage. To
+break was to punish her: to continue was only
+to punish himself. His course was obvious: he
+must play the game <i>à outrance</i>. Yet he sought
+temporarily to escape the actuality by immersing
+himself desperately in routine.</p>
+
+<p>So, for the present, his days were mapped out
+simply enough. He was up early, for the
+winter hours of light were precious. Braced for
+a great effort, he found himself drawing on
+unexpected stores of vitality; he flung himself
+on his masterpiece like a Viking into the mêlée
+of battle, and had the reward of splendid
+conquest. This sense of power, this subjugation
+of his material, made his old foiled strivings and
+strivings incomprehensible, incredible!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+    Meanwhile the domesticity of the house at
+the corner invaded his studio, and surrounded
+him with comforts and attentions that but threw
+up the more vividly the issues he sought to preclude.
+But he kept stifling down his rebellion;
+struggling to accept the position unreservedly,
+though sick with the sense of hypocrisy. He
+laughingly surrendered to Alice a duplicate key
+of the studio in token of their good-fellowship,
+and she and her mother devoted themselves to
+the loving task of smoothing his path, letting
+no point that might ruffle his inspiration elude
+their vigilance. Their whole life and activities
+seemed to converge to the studio. Mrs. Robinson
+kept discreetly in the background, though
+her brain planned and her tongue discussed, and
+she often went joyfully a-purchasing. Shortly
+before one o'clock Alice would march across,
+attended by a servant carrying his lunch, of
+temptations compact, imprisoned in shining
+caskets; and by the time Wyndham was ready
+to sit down, his table would be nicely set out,
+and the temptations spread to his view.</p>
+
+<p>Many precious minutes were thus saved for
+him, and his train of ideas was luxuriously unbroken.
+This tact and thoughtfulness was
+characteristic of all the devotion that was
+cherished on him. Wyndham deeply appreciated
+its quality, and despite the pressure&mdash;with
+sending-in day looming barely three months
+ahead&mdash;gratitude no less than conscience drove
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+him to acknowledgement, to contrive that the
+artist should not entirely swallow up Miss
+Robinson's future husband; though her expectations
+were considerately of the slightest. Thus
+his negative policy was answering effectively.
+With the passage of the days, he found himself
+sliding into a lethargy of acquiescence in the
+position. The mere physical fatigues of his
+labours dulled the unrest within him, and his
+brain fermented incessantly with the problems
+of masses and values which his great canvas
+still pressed upon him. He was glad he found
+it possible at last to be accepting all outer things
+so calmly. He told himself repeatedly: "Your
+revolt is over. You have decided there can be
+no break. So be as decent and affectionate as
+you can."</p>
+
+<p>Thus his attentions seemed to her gallant
+and charming, to hold their touch of poetry.
+Flowers and bonbons, a book of verses or a
+novel were frequent tributes: after his work
+was done they went into town occasionally to
+a concert or a theatre, and if his conversation
+was of the theme with which his mind was most
+saturated, she did not regard that as otherwise
+than a compliment.</p>
+
+<p>And so these winter days sped, and January
+was running its course. And out of this not unsuccessful
+routine there came to him the sense
+that his life was very full and singularly
+complete. Of perturbation or unforeseen excitement
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+there was never a thrill. The only
+moment that held a flutter for him was when
+Mr. Shanner descended on the Robinsons, grey,
+decorous, and austere; congratulated the pair
+with an ashen smile, in the honeyed accents that
+had charmed so many diplomatists; and bestowed
+solemn formal attentions on the engaged
+lady throughout the evening.</p>
+
+<p>The whole plot of his drama had in verity
+been revealed, was Wyndham's frequent reflection;
+and with that final comedy-scene the
+curtain had seemed to fall, and he knew all
+that there was to know.</p>
+
+<p>But his own wretched money affairs were
+soon to give him food for pondering. Alice's
+portrait had gone home in a splendid frame
+to find a temporary resting-place before being
+tossed to the Academy; and Mr. Robinson,
+though seeing him face to face almost daily,
+delicately sent his cheque by post. Wyndham
+grasped it with relief: but it proved merely the
+illumination that accentuated the darkness. For
+overdue rent and many other calls made it melt
+away with terrifying swiftness; and Wyndham
+had indebted himself to the family jeweller for
+presents to Miss Robinson. Impecuniosity approached
+him again with no vague menace;
+kicked him brutally out of his ostrich-like attitude.
+Nevertheless he shrank in terror from
+the definite thought of pressing forward the
+marriage; though, in the clear light of these
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+latter self-communings, money was the sole
+reason why he had sought it. Not only did he
+fear that life of simulation with a sickness
+immeasurable: but he foresaw endless money
+humiliations at the very outset.</p>
+
+<p>He would fulfil his promise honourably, whatever
+the spiritual cost of it! But he could not
+face money humiliations in the eyes of his inferiors!
+A thousand times "no"! He must
+trust, despite all, to his own strength and performance!&mdash;he
+would do brilliantly with his
+pictures in the spring!&mdash;he would follow up the
+success and conquer London! He waved aside
+all his past disasters: he saw his good star in
+the ascendant, shining&mdash;he fixed his eyes on it
+fanatically. It was an irony of ironies that,
+after his great surrender, his pride should still
+flame up unconquered. Before the moral tragedy
+of love yoked to mockery, he might bow his
+head in resignation; but Miss Robinson's fortune
+loomed up as a ridiculous and contemptible complication
+in a situation already nigh impossible.</p>
+
+<p>The metaphor of the vulture was often back
+in his mind now! The heap of carrion!&mdash;he
+had stooped for the sake of it, and it was
+now even more loathsome than his former
+morbid perception of it. His poverty seemed
+suddenly unbearable. In the past he had
+endured it. Now, for the first time, he was
+ashamed of it.</p>
+
+<p>So he spoke to the Robinsons of a six months'
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+engagement or thereabouts&mdash;which, to their
+ideas, was reputable and in order; and then
+felt he had time before him to fling down the
+gauntlet to fortune again.</p>
+
+<p>But in estimating his resources he had counted
+without his new allies. Alice whispered into
+her father's ears her conviction that he might
+easily influence commissions for her <i>fiancé</i>; and,
+after thinking about it, Mr. Robinson felt he
+would like to have a try.</p>
+
+<p>A rich, powerful Insurance Corporation had
+voted a portrait of its retiring president for the
+adornment of its board-room. Mr. Robinson
+set to work astutely, and the commission came
+to Wyndham. Item, three hundred guineas.
+But, before this new portrait had progressed
+very far, Wyndham had fascinated his subject&mdash;a
+tall, white-bearded merchant prince who
+sat to him with mysterious insignia, and resplendent
+chains and emblems. "A marvellous young
+fellow," he confided to Mr. Robinson. "I must
+really congratulate you on him&mdash;it's a treat to
+be in his society. And gifted! That great picture
+of Hyde Park Corner is worthy of Raphael."
+And for the pleasure of his company, and out
+of admiration for his talent, this bluff, good-natured
+president had at once arranged for
+paintings of himself and his wife for his own
+dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>He generously and spontaneously made the
+fee seven hundred guineas. "There are two of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+us this time, and why should I get off cheaper
+than the Insurance Company?" he asked
+genially; in a spirit rare enough in the
+twentieth century, but nothing out of the way
+in the days of the grand patrons. "Besides,
+you're worth it," he roared out bluffly. "And
+the privilege of going down to posterity in your
+society can hardly be appraised at all."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham relished the compliment, though
+wincing inwardly at the thought that the wind
+that blew him good came always from the same
+quarter: yet in view of other important sitters
+he began to think of a more accessible studio.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not a house with the studio?" suggested
+the Robinsons. "You could move in
+now, and furnish the rooms at your leisure,
+so as to have them ready for the marriage."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham fell in with the idea. He thought
+the locality had better be Chelsea, somewhere
+near the Embankment; a long distance from
+Hampstead, it was true, but an ideal situation
+for an artist. Somehow the sense of the distance,
+as he lingered on it, was not unacceptable.
+Alice flinched. "We could still look after you,"
+she murmured bravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, I could easily cut to and fro in a
+hansom," put in Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>So off the old pair started at once on the
+quest, drawing some renewal of zestful youth
+from its absorbing interest. One day they
+reported a stroke of fortune; they had come
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+upon the ideal thing. The rent was not impossible,
+and the tenant could have the option
+of purchasing the freehold. The next evening
+they took Wyndham to see it&mdash;a charming
+artist's house in Tite Street, with a broad
+frontage and a luxurious and unconventional
+interior. On the entrance floor&mdash;an unusual
+hall and three fine rooms. Above&mdash;a great
+studio and another excellent room. Below were
+the domestic regions with many household
+refinements, and bedrooms for the servants.
+Wyndham and Alice were enchanted.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robinson was anxious to purchase this
+property outright as his promised wedding-gift;
+but Wyndham, again shrinking inwardly, diplomatically
+deferred the project. So the lease
+was signed, and the removal at once effected.
+Wyndham's belongings were swiftly installed
+on the upper floor of the house, at the loss of
+only a single day to him; and, leaving him to
+his labours, the others, in the enjoyment of their
+unlimited leisure, saw that the hall and stairway
+were made presentable for callers.</p>
+
+<p>But at this point Wyndham came to a dead
+stop with his labour-canvas, to which he had
+of late devoted his mornings entirely, keeping
+the afternoons for his sitters. He saw that it
+was imperative he should now make some fresh
+sketches on the spot. But to regain his exact
+vision he must have access to the old window in
+Grosvenor Place. Yet the very thought of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+house and the memory of those former visits
+had a strange shattering effect on him. And
+some warning voice rose sternly, bade him not
+renew these old associations.</p>
+
+<p>He reasoned the matter out, and hesitation
+seemed absurd. For the sake of his picture, it
+was essential he should occupy a certain point
+of view. Though he had let the acquaintanceship
+lapse entirely ever since Lady Betty's
+marriage, access to that point of view was no
+doubt a simple matter. A mere letter of request,
+and the old earl would readily give his permission.
+This time he would probably come
+and go without seeing anybody at all.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham sat down to write the letter, the
+interest of the composition ousting for the time
+his irrational misgivings. He recalled himself
+to the earl's recollection, explained that the
+picture for which he had made the former
+sketches had unavoidably been put aside; but
+now that he was at last able to take it up
+again he desired to make some fresh sketches,
+and begged the use of his old post of vantage for
+a few mornings. He concluded with the hope
+that the earl was in the best of health, and sent
+his respects and remembrances to his daughter,
+should the earl be seeing her just then.</p>
+
+<p>It was the merest courtesy on his part to show
+he had not forgotten Lady Betty! After all,
+their lives were so entirely alien now!</p>
+
+<p>He addressed and stamped the letter; then his
+strong instinct against the whole proceeding
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+reasserted itself. He rose and paced about.
+The warning voice said, "Keep away from
+Grosvenor Place. No good will come of it."
+"But it's absurd," he said aloud. "The thing's
+an absolute necessity&mdash;I can't throw over the
+picture at this stage. My whole artistic future
+depends upon it. What harm can possibly arise
+from my going there? Lady Betty? Why,
+she's a matron by now! And probably not even
+in England. And if she were, what is she to me
+now? And at any rate I am certainly nothing to
+her. If I stumbled up against her the very first
+morning I went there, we should still be far as
+the poles asunder. She was certainly a wonderful
+girl, and I of course fell headlong in love
+with her. Put any impressionable fellow with
+poetic ideals in the way of a lovely, clever girl
+and I suppose he's bound to feel cut up when
+somebody else marries her. But it's all as dead
+as King John now. I'll go there and do my
+work and wind up with a letter of thanks."</p>
+
+<p>He put on his hat and coat, and took up the
+letter. "Don't go there," repeated the voice.
+"No good will come of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish!" he said. "I can't chuck up the
+picture. It's all right."</p>
+
+<p>He went downstairs and out into Tite Street,
+a little confused by all this current of doubt
+and reasoning, and by no means absolutely
+sure of himself. But, annoyed at realising this,
+he began to go forward sturdily, and flung the
+letter into the first pillar-box he encountered.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XVI</h2>
+
+<p>As Wyndham read the reply to his letter, it
+seemed as if the kind, bluff voice of the old
+earl were itself speaking. "A few mornings!
+Come along and make your nice little sketches
+for the next half-century. We have often
+thought of you, and wondered what you were
+up to. I think we may say with truth that
+we've missed you. This is a dull house now,
+and I suppose I'm getting old and dull myself.
+At any rate I've many a twinge in the joints,
+and am inclined to shut myself up in my library,
+though I'm never much of a reader." Then
+there was a PS. "Somebody or other tells
+me that you are contemplating matrimony.
+Well, you're a brave young fellow, and I like
+you for it. I congratulate you, and wish you
+luck."</p>
+
+<p>As the next morning turned out fairly clear,
+Wyndham took his materials with him into
+a hansom, and rang the bell at Grosvenor Place
+at about ten o'clock. Not only had he decided
+that his misgivings were entirely morbid, but
+as a matter of course he had been quite open
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+with the Robinsons about the arrangement.
+He had indeed explained to Alice some considerable
+time ago that he should in all likelihood
+find it necessary to make these fresh
+sketches on the very scene of the picture. It did
+not seem anything out of the way to her; she
+regarded it as a pure matter of work. It was
+sufficient that she understood his disappearance
+from the studio in the midst of these busy times.
+And as he had made it a point that she should
+possess a key of the new house just as she
+had had one of the old studio, she and her
+mother could come and go as they pleased in
+his absence, and proceed with their engrossing
+business of embellishing his hall and stairway.</p>
+
+<p>But as he set foot in the house at Grosvenor
+Place after this long interval of years,
+Wyndham could not maintain his reasoned
+conviction of the simplicity and insignificance
+of the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>He had the very real thrill of embarking on
+some extraordinary adventure; even of stepping
+outside his own existence&mdash;that theatre where
+he had been the spectator of his own fate,
+whose curtain&mdash;fire-proof&mdash;had already fallen
+on a played-out drama. But here was a strange
+theatre, with a curtain to rise, fascinating with
+promise of other drama to be revealed; yet
+the stillness and the dim light cast some spell
+of awe upon him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+    A hand seemed to clutch at him and pull
+him back out of the house at the last moment.
+He was penetrating here against the warning
+of his deeper self; his heart beat fast not merely
+with the consciousness of imprudence, but of
+downright disloyalty to the settled destiny
+before which he had bowed his head so profoundly.
+The warning voice, too, was stern;
+but the sense of daring, of courting and facing
+some unknown delicious danger, lured him
+forward.</p>
+
+<p>His lordship had already gone across to his
+club, the butler informed him; but he had
+half-expected Wyndham and had left orders
+in case he should present himself. As he followed
+the man up to the room he had used
+of old, he felt, despite the lofty well of the
+staircase, that the air hung heavy in the great
+house, muffled and silent with gigantic hangings,
+and thick carpets underfoot. Wyndham
+stood at the well-known window a leisurely
+moment, then arranged a chair or two, and
+unpacked his materials. The butler helped him
+to open the casement at the side of the bay
+and to rearrange the curtain, then asked if
+there was anything more he could do for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, would you get my hat again?" returned
+Wyndham, as a current of wintry air flowed
+in. He laughed; having forgotten he could not
+work uncovered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+    When finally the man had complied with his
+request, and left him again, Wyndham looked
+out on the scene before him, his eye lingering
+for a moment on the royal gardens, then trying
+to catch the exact view he had painted. But
+as yet his mind was in too great a turmoil
+to concentrate itself sternly on the business
+in hand. "I shall be acclimatised in a minute
+or two," he reassured himself. "The atmosphere
+of this house is so oppressive&mdash;it upset me the
+first moment." He stood gratefully inhaling
+the fresher draught that streamed against his
+face; and when he had calmed down he took
+a turn or two about the room, observing it with
+interest. He had scarcely received any impression
+of it yet, but now he perceived that
+it was greatly changed in some respects. A
+new fireplace, and a mantel of a dainty cabinet-like
+design, replaced the former streaked framework
+of marble that had enshrined a great
+rococo grate. The double leaf door that led
+to some adjoining room had had its hanging
+stripped away, and the beauty of panelling
+showed naked and unashamed. The former
+carpet had gone; there were now soft Eastern
+rugs on the floor lying closely side by side, and
+covering it entirely. But though the Chippendale
+bookcases and the rest of the furniture had been
+left untouched, there was somehow a more
+intimate personal note about the room; accentuated
+perhaps by the trifles and photographs
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+clustered about the mantelshelf. And then
+Wyndham came to an abrupt stop as if some
+sheet of flame had flashed by and seared him.
+There in the centre of the mantel, next to a tiny
+clock shaped like a Gothic arch, stood the silver
+easel bearing the framed photograph of his old
+Academy picture&mdash;his wedding present to Lady
+Betty!</p>
+
+<p>Why was it here in this house? he asked
+himself, trembling. Had she left it behind
+because she esteemed it so lightly? Or was
+there perhaps some special significance in the
+fact; something his thought groped for wildly
+and blindly as if in panic?</p>
+
+<p>He staggered back to the window, astonished
+to find how overcome he had been. The air
+revived him, and then a new and sterner spirit
+came upon him. Was he going to waste his
+whole morning by yielding himself to these idle
+and futile emotions? Resolutely he prepared
+his palette, and bent his mind by force to his
+task. He was pleased presently to find how
+exactly his eye recovered his scene; he felt he
+could almost lay the one he had painted over
+this one, and that it would fit like a transfer.
+Slowly and carefully he let the view sink into
+him, estimating the tones, the masses, the
+spaces; peopling it in his mind with all the
+figures and accessories that went to build up
+his great symbolic representation. Then he set
+one of the smaller canvasses on his knee, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+started his note-making. Soon he was absorbed
+in the work, glad that he had forced himself to
+begin, and that the little wheels of his mind were
+turning so smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven the butler appeared with wine and
+sandwiches, moved a little table over near
+Wyndham, and set down the tray within reach
+of his hand. Wyndham was glad of this
+refreshment; he had been in too uncertain a
+mood to do more than gulp down his coffee
+at breakfast, and the raw air had roused a
+craving for some sort of sustenance&mdash;a desire
+for stimulation rather than a keen hunger. He
+swallowed a glass of the wine, then began to
+nibble a sandwich slowly; but his mind was
+still in his work. He half-knew that the great
+folding door at the bottom of the room had
+opened, that somebody had entered. But it was
+as in a dream, and he did not look up. He
+considered his results, then poured more wine,
+and was in the act of raising it to his lips. God!
+what was this gracious, willowy figure, with the
+wonderful sheen on the fresh hair, and the
+girlish rounded cheeks! She was smiling at
+him, her eyes strangely alight under their long,
+soft lashes, her lips half parted; she was
+advancing towards him with outstretched
+hand. He put back the glass on the table and
+rose hastily, holding his sketch suspended from
+one hand; but his wits left him and he stared as
+at a ghost.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+    "Lady Betty!" he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not an apparition," she reassured him;
+"but only a simple flesh-and-blood creature.
+Won't you put down your picture?" She smiled
+again at his embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, and stood the sketch on a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Your presence certainly startled me," he confessed.
+"I had an idea you were thousands
+of miles away." They took hands&mdash;a good,
+comrade-like clasp. "Fortunately the idea was
+erroneous."</p>
+
+<p>"Fortunately," she echoed, laughingly capping
+his gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but how stupid I am! Forgive me!" He
+almost swept the hat from his head. "You see
+how I was scared; how ill prepared to cope with
+apparitions."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again. "You are to keep your
+hat on," she commanded. "My presence is
+easily accounted for; out of sheer restlessness of
+spirit I thought I should like to try London
+again&mdash;I had shunned it like the plague for ever
+so long. As all the nice little hotels were full,
+I descended on my father here, and practically
+appropriated this room."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear I'm an intruder," he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"You had my permission; it was obtained in
+due form. Only I insisted my name was to be
+held back. I wanted to play the apparition, and
+my father entered into the whim of the thing.
+It seems like old times again."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+    Wyndham tried to transport himself back along
+the years. "I wonder whether there's anything
+better in life than to repeat the best moments of
+the past," he said pensively; "that is, if we can
+catch them with all the original magic in them."
+He saw her head drop a little; her expression
+was full of musing, half-sad and tender. Then
+he remembered that things had indeed changed
+since those old days, that Lady Betty had a
+husband! It was strange, but the apparition,
+besides the rest of the mischief, had momentarily
+driven the fact from the store of his knowledge.
+He had had absolutely the delusion that this was
+the brilliant Lady Betty, still unwed, to whom no
+suitor might aspire save with yachts and palaces.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been calling you Lady Betty!" he
+exclaimed. "The delusion of old times was very
+strong."</p>
+
+<p>"Please to keep on with the Lady Betty&mdash;I
+come back to it so easily. It quite pleased me
+when it slipped from your lips. You have
+stepped out of the long ago; I step back to
+meet you. You must still think of me as
+Lady Betty."</p>
+
+<p>"And Lord Lakeden?" he murmured, though
+he felt the inquiry was rather a belated courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him, her cheeks white, her eyes
+growing unnaturally large.</p>
+
+<p>"Your husband&mdash;I hope he is well," he explained,
+bewildered by this new expression that
+seemed to hold mingled amazement and horror.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+    "My husband!" She laughed&mdash;a weird peal
+that filled him with a fear as of blinding flashes
+to come. "Did you not know? I thought the
+whole world knew. I have no husband!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her. "I don't understand," he
+stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"I really believe you don't," she said, her face
+still blanched. "My married life was a short
+one. Lord Lakeden met with an accident on the
+Alps&mdash;the summer before last. He went out
+without a guide. The details were in all the
+papers. It was one of the sensations of the silly
+season." Again a nervous laugh, but more than
+ever it was full of unnatural echoes.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Wyndham took off his hat again,
+and stood with his head bowed. "I am sorry.
+My condolences are late, but they are sincere."</p>
+
+<p>"I somehow expected you would write to me
+at the time. Hosts and hosts wrote to me&mdash;till
+my head went dizzy; but never a word from
+you." She was speaking with greater command
+of herself now, but he felt in her words a world
+of reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"I was living as a hermit at the time. I saw
+nobody for&mdash;shall I say it seemed to me a lifetime&mdash;save
+the poor old woman who came to
+turn out my studio once in every three months
+perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you were unhappy!" Her face softened,
+telling of a swift, spontaneous sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"I was nigh starving. I never saw a newspaper
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+unless by chance; my pennies were too
+precious."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor friend!" Her eyes gleamed as if
+tears were about to come.</p>
+
+<p>"I played the game up to a certain point with
+all my strength, but everything went against me
+from every quarter. I know there are men that
+would have risen triumphant above all these
+evils and difficulties. But I was not one of those
+men. I was beaten&mdash;smashed&mdash;utterly and hopelessly.
+I had not the smallest reserve of power
+to carry on the fight. I lived cut off from the
+world like a man in a tomb. I am ashamed to
+think that I kept myself alive&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she interrupted, shivering. "I can't
+bear it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am ashamed that I did not die," he persisted.
+"It is the truth. It is the first time I
+say it either to myself or to another. In order
+to live I stepped below myself."</p>
+
+<p>She covered her face with her hands. "I
+know you are misjudging. You are harsh with
+yourself. I hold to my faith in you."</p>
+
+<p>"I lived on the earnings of my sister, who
+stinted herself in food and went shabbily clad
+that she might foster my work. Yet, for terrible
+months and months, I deceived her. I did no
+work. My will was dead. As a man I seemed
+to collapse physically and morally."</p>
+
+<p>"You were not responsible. There is a limit to
+human endurance. You needed a delicious rest
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+in some blue sunny place, in one of those earthly
+paradises where the orange-trees are golden in
+the sun. Your sister's love consecrated her
+sacrifice. She saved you for a great future. Her
+reward is yet to come."</p>
+
+<p>"You see everything in so sweet a light; I
+can only hope that the issue will be as you say.
+It is on my future work that I have staked
+the redemption of my manhood in my own eyes.
+My work! That is where my real heart lies.
+Outside of that my life will be a mere appearance."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have somebody else in your life
+now," she broke in, pale as death. "We heard
+a rumour that you were about to marry. Is it
+not true?"</p>
+
+<p>He gasped at the bitter reminder. He hung
+his head. "It is true," he breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have given your affections: you
+are happy?"</p>
+
+<p>He wavered for a deep instant, the whilst
+her eyes rested on him gravely. "I have given
+my affections&mdash;I am happy." To himself he
+added: "I must be loyal to Alice, if indeed I
+have not gone too far already. But Lady Betty
+has made me see the truth. I understand now
+what I felt only obscurely&mdash;I bartered my life
+to the Robinsons, kind as they are, that I might
+repair the hurt and wrong to Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you from my heart." She
+held out her hand again with a wan smile. He
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+took it limply; feeling he held it on false
+pretences, that the sudden check he had put on
+his impulsive outpouring had raised a barrier
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>"But forgive me for my stupid egotism.
+Here am I, a great strapping fellow, pitying
+myself because of a very ordinary sort of dismal
+failure; more than commonplace by the side
+of the great sorrow that came to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Great sorrow!" Again that wild peal of
+laughter. "It was a great joy, the greatest joy
+I have ever known. When they brought me
+the news, I went out into the garden of our
+chalet, and, sure that no eyes were upon me, I
+danced on the green in the sunlight&mdash;with the
+blood pulsing so deliciously through my veins.
+I was free&mdash;I was free! The world seemed so
+beautiful! the sky and the mountains so exquisite!
+Life was such a gift! I was free&mdash;free!"</p>
+
+<p>She stood up straight, all her muscles tense,
+her limbs quivering. The pallor had gone; her
+face glowed with an exultation that was almost
+of triumph. He stood spellbound at her revelation,
+unable to find a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you don't understand what it is to be
+free again! Degradation! I tasted it to its
+depths. Yours was no degradation! You
+know nothing of it. I was tied to a brute&mdash;no,
+the brutes are decent and lovable. He was
+lower&mdash;he was lower."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice broke in a sob, though no tears
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+came. Wyndham was still silent; he would
+not seek to penetrate her last reserve. "Don't
+think me too horrible," she pleaded. "You are
+the only living being to whom I have bared my
+soul. You were the one to whom my mind flew
+as my friend&mdash;I have waited for this moment.
+You must not set me down as a monster."</p>
+
+<p>"A monster!" he exclaimed. He was thrown
+off his irksome guard, and the instant was fatal!
+"Oh, no, no! I shall always hold you for what
+you are, for what you have always been to me&mdash;a
+rare princess!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have always been to you&mdash;" she echoed,
+then broke off, her bosom heaving, her eyes
+flashing out with the full comprehension of his
+almost unwitting avowal. Then she went pale
+to the lips again. "You never spoke," she
+breathed, "and I did not guess."</p>
+
+<p>He realised, half in a daze, that his secret
+had escaped him; yet&mdash;with swift change of
+mood&mdash;he was recklessly glad that she understood
+at last: even as, standing before her, he,
+too, understood at last&mdash;reading her distress,
+treasuring her implied reproach for its clear
+significance, though it put him on his defence.</p>
+
+<p>"I was not even on the footing of a guest in
+this house. The very bread that kept me alive
+was not my own. It is the law of the world."</p>
+
+<p>"You were wrong. There is no law."</p>
+
+<p>"There is the law of pride," he argued. "We
+men do not stoop to happiness, we stoop only
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+to degradation.... And then I feared to break
+the spell," he went on, seeking a lighter strain.
+"The wonderful princess would disappear, and
+I should be left rubbing my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"But it was you who disappeared. The
+princess thought you shunned her, and she
+was left&mdash;to weep&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He hung his head like a broken reed. He had
+no longer anything to hide; he had already
+sufficiently disclosed to her that his marriage
+was to be a loveless one. She would understand
+and respect his first desire to keep his true relation
+to Alice sacred from her gaze. But Lady
+Betty's revelation of tragic experience had swept
+him off his feet. He had responded to her
+great emotion; had confessed his allegiance to
+her through all and despite all. His life seemed
+linked to hers with a mystic, enduring passion.
+And yet were they not hopelessly sundered?</p>
+
+<p>"'Men must work and women must weep,'"
+she quoted. "Ah, well! we never can win our
+ideals; life is always a compromise. Perhaps
+it's a blessing to see our clear obligations."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;if one has the strength to turn one's
+eyes aside from the dreams; but saddening
+otherwise."</p>
+
+<p>"Saddening otherwise," she echoed pensively.
+"But I thank you that I am still the wonderful
+princess, even after my terrible confession."</p>
+
+<p>He took a step forward, and seized her hand
+impulsively.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+    "Never believe otherwise, no matter what
+you may hear of me. Whether this be the last
+time I see you or not, whether I fail and be
+broken again, my last breath shall proclaim my
+allegiance to&mdash;the wonderful princess! Listen,
+the woman I am marrying is more than goodness
+itself. I cannot pretend to match her;
+my manhood falls below her womanhood. But
+into the inner chamber of my life she can
+never enter. Out of loyalty to her I gave you
+to understand that I had given my affections.
+That is true, but not in the sense I led you to
+believe. There is no reason why I should not
+be open now; it would be a poor compliment
+to you after all this mutual confidence if I could
+not bare to you the absolute truth. And the
+absolute truth is&mdash;I have sold myself for safety,
+for the sake of my art, and for the sake of my
+sister. It would be unendurable were there not
+the mitigation of the esteem I have for the
+woman I am marrying, and for the many
+qualities of kindness and goodness in that
+whole household. But she is not my true mate.
+Unlimited as is her virtue in a hundred ways,
+she herself is yet limited. My work must find
+inspiration entirely apart from her. May I
+think of you, princess, as my inspiration?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is a good woman. You must be loyal
+to her."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be no disloyalty; I should be
+cherishing the ideal."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+    She was smiling and radiant again. "I can
+scarcely stop you&mdash;I see it would certainly be
+rash to try. Well, goodbye now; I have a
+thousand little neglected things crying to me.
+And your moments, too, are precious. You will
+be here again one of these mornings?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," he said. "For the present, we
+may be friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Till the tide sweeps us apart."</p>
+
+<p>"The cruel tide!" he murmured. "But you
+will always be the wonderful princess," he insisted
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall try to be worthy of the title."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a charming curtsey, flitted
+away down the room, threw him yet a smile,
+and disappeared behind the panelled door
+through which she had come.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XVII</h2>
+
+<p>For some time Wyndham stood with his head
+still bowed as Lady Betty's voice lingered in his
+ear. Her figure was still there before him, her
+lovely girl's face radiant with the smile with
+which she had vanished, her slender form in
+all its upright grace; a nymph of whom Botticelli
+had caught a glimpse on a spring morn
+when the world was rediscovering beauty.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to recall the scene that had just been
+enacted, and dizzily held it all in a flash. He
+and Lady Betty were in love with each other!
+The fact that he had always cherished the
+thought of her held a deeper significance than
+he had known! Throughout all his sufferings&mdash;throughout
+all her sufferings&mdash;an ideal friendship
+for each other had subsisted in their
+minds. He had supposed her as indifferent as
+she was unattainable; that his love was one
+of those secret, mocking dramas that sometimes
+play themselves out in the souls of men and
+women. Yet it was to him that her deepest
+thought had turned! She had enshrined him
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+in her heart! And he lying the whilst in
+darkness and misery!</p>
+
+<p>It was precious now&mdash;this new sweetness that
+had come to him. Sweetness! His thought
+broke off at the word. Rather was it a bitter
+irony! Lady Betty and he had been cheated
+by life. Could he be even sure his eyes would
+behold her again? Was she not the soul of
+honour and rectitude! For a deep instant they
+had been swept towards each other; but at once
+her attitude towards his marriage had been
+clear and pronounced, and she might even now
+be bitterly regretting their meeting.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down at last, and took up his work
+again; but his mind was utterly unfitted for
+concentration on any task. Better to get back
+again to his own studio, he told himself. So he
+stowed away his materials in a corner, and
+presently slipped downstairs; telling the butler,
+whom he met in the hall, that he would be there
+again at ten the following day.</p>
+
+<p>At Tite Street men were tacking down a thick
+green length of Turkey carpet on his staircase,
+and Alice was superintending the operation.
+Here was his comfortable future in active
+preparation! And already he felt the atmosphere
+swallowing him up, claiming him body
+and soul.</p>
+
+<p>He stayed a moment on the landing, affecting
+an interest in the proceedings. When he turned
+into the studio Alice came after him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+    "You hardly seem well, dear," she said, observing
+him anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"You surprise me," he returned. "I am not
+conscious of any aches or pains," he added, with
+an implication of gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>She did not seem convinced. "This malarial
+air must have affected you," she insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't say I find it pleasant." He seized
+the poker, as if glad to make a diversion, and
+stirred the fire energetically. "I'm a little bit
+disgusted, too; the day wasn't as clear as I
+hoped&mdash;there was a good deal of mist about."</p>
+
+<p>"Better luck to-morrow!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He struck hard at a knob of coal, making a
+dreadful clatter. "I hope so, indeed," he answered,
+thinking it curious that Alice should
+now be expecting him to go to Grosvenor Place
+as a matter of course. "At any rate," he added,
+as it struck him Alice might reasonably be
+hoping for some account of his morning's visit,
+"they were kind to me&mdash;just as of old. Lady
+Lakeden sent me refreshments, and afterwards
+came herself to see how things were progressing."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose Lady Lakeden is a sister of the
+earl," she conjectured.</p>
+
+<p>"No, his daughter&mdash;a mere girl," he explained,
+with the flicker of a laugh. "It was a great
+surprise. It is only a few years back that I was
+asked to her wedding. After that, I got out of
+touch with them, and I did not know she had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+lost her husband very soon after the marriage.
+He met with an accident on the Alps."</p>
+
+<p>Alice was blanched. "How terrible!" she
+whispered.</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. Wyndham held his
+hands to the flame he had been at such pains
+to create. He hoped he had satisfied her
+interest sufficiently; for, of course, the whole
+scene between himself and Lady Betty must be
+kept from her inviolate. Was it not for Alice's
+own sake and happiness?</p>
+
+<p>"It makes me afraid!" said Alice, breaking
+the silence. "Perhaps nobody is allowed to
+keep too great a happiness."</p>
+
+<p>He winced. "She was always kind to me,"
+he said, evading the train of her reflection. "I
+spent many hours at my post in those ancient
+times, and there were always unobtrusive
+attentions that made my work the easier."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to know and love her," said
+Alice pensively.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was silent. Her words startled
+and embarrassed him, since he had been taking
+it for granted that she and Lady Betty would
+never come into contact. Besides, in a way,
+Alice had given utterance to more of a thought
+than a wish, so that a response hardly seemed
+necessary. They lunched together, and Alice
+went off soon after, leaving him to receive his
+sitters&mdash;the president and his wife, who were
+both to arrive that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+    "Of course, you won't expect me at Hampstead,"
+he reminded her. "You remember I put
+my name down for a club dinner to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I remember," she said. "But I
+shall write you a letter instead. Please look for
+it when you come home to-night."</p>
+
+<p>But Wyndham did not dine at the club after
+all; at the last moment he decided to spend the
+evening alone at his studio. It seemed a long
+time since he had had a few quiet hours all to
+himself. Moreover, it was strangely a boon to
+hear no other voices for once, and he lay back
+pleasantly in his chair, though conscious of an
+uncommon degree of weariness. And, in the
+calm and solitude of the studio, intensified by
+the echoing of his occasional movements
+through the empty rooms beneath him, the
+Robinsons seemed indeed a long way off up at
+Hampstead there, and for the first time it
+seemed a positive bondage to him, this constant
+duty of journeying across town to dine with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The nine o'clock post brought the promised
+letter from Alice, but from amid the little heap
+in the box he picked out another eagerly. The
+writing was Lady Betty's. He had never seen
+very much of it in the old days, yet he recognised
+it at once.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered just then a shrewd dictum of
+Schopenhauer&mdash;that, if we wished to learn our
+real attitude towards any person, we should
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+watch and estimate our exact emotion at
+catching sight of the well-known handwriting
+on a letter we are just receiving. He certainly
+could not help observing the contrasting emotions
+with which he welcomed these two letters.
+Alice's, at his first glimpse of it, had given him
+a deepened sense of the irrevocable. Yet there
+went with this a kind, affectionate thought in
+which was a world of appreciation. But he
+knew pretty nearly what the letter would
+contain; it could well be read at leisure.</p>
+
+<p>He tore open Lady Betty's at once, and read
+it feverishly as he stood there in the hall. "MY
+DEAR FRIEND," it ran&mdash;"My father was so disappointed
+when he got home at hearing that
+you had been, and had already flown. He
+suggests that you should stay to-morrow and
+join us at luncheon, and he asks me to bend
+your mind well in advance to the contemplation
+of such an ordeal&mdash;as he seriously considers it.
+The present cook doesn't meet with his approval,
+but be reassured! It was only a new sauce sent
+up one day with pride; but that unfortunate
+sauce has since flavoured everything. My father
+has naturally imagination; at his age he has
+prejudices. Could even a Vatel face the combination?</p>
+
+<p>"And now that I have performed my filial
+duty, I will add a few lines for my own pleasure.
+I humbly proffer a request. An idea has come
+to me that seems most charming&mdash;before we
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+part again! Since you are working here, won't
+you make a small sketch of me?&mdash;a tiny, typical
+thing, hit off all in a dash&mdash;and give it to me
+as a souvenir of your work? Nothing that
+would steal much of your time. I understand
+that every moment is precious just now, with
+the exhibitions so near, and I wish you not to
+do it if you are very pressed. In return I shall
+have a souvenir to give you&mdash;a strange, strange
+thought of mine. Please feel very curious about
+what it is to be, for you are certainly not going
+to be told till the time comes. <i>Au revoir.</i> Your
+friend, BETTY."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham mounted the stairs again slowly,
+and in the studio he re-read these precious lines,
+lingering on each individual word, and setting
+a marvellous price on it. He was happy yet
+terrified at this flash from fairyland into his
+strenuous existence.</p>
+
+<p>But her words, "before we part again," rang
+in his mind, lurid, persistent. Yes, Lady Betty
+would vanish out of his life soon enough; even
+though her letter confirmed the respite which
+she had indeed seemed to grant that morning,
+but which nevertheless&mdash;anticipating regret&mdash;he
+had scarcely ventured to dream of! There could
+clearly be no question as to her attitude towards
+his marriage; he told himself that even
+the crime (flashing splendidly through his brain)
+of cutting himself free from the Robinsons
+with one heroic stroke in order to throw his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+whole life into this wonderful romance would
+be futile. Would Lady Betty ever consent to
+happiness purchased at such a price?&mdash;woo her
+as he might!</p>
+
+<p>But this sweet, dainty dream of her brief
+companionship&mdash;was he called upon to turn
+away from it? Surely, no; else she had been
+the last to dazzle him with it. Her lead could
+be trusted to be beyond reproach. And, however
+she regarded it in her heart, would there
+not be for him a little of strangely deep happiness;
+something to remember always, to leave
+a smile on his face at the moment of death?</p>
+
+<p>The charm of the thought won him almost
+irresistibly. Lady Betty was his inspiration for
+ever; nay, that ideal elusive face would have
+been his inspiration even if he had never encountered
+her again. The harm&mdash;if harm there
+was in their meeting again&mdash;had been done
+irreparably in the past!</p>
+
+<p>All would be over soon enough! What could
+emphasise it more than this very letter of hers
+he held in his hand? Was it not Lady Betty's
+underlying thought in this desire for an exchange
+of souvenirs?</p>
+
+<p>All would be over soon enough! Life would
+bear them apart, but the touch of sweetness
+would remain as an illumination. He could
+never be cheated out of that.</p>
+
+<p>What was this souvenir she intended for him&mdash;this
+"strange, strange thought" of hers?
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+She had in truth piqued his curiosity, and he
+foresaw her delight at his admitting it. What,
+indeed, could it be? And, occupied now with
+this fascinating speculation, he languidly took
+up his other letters, his fingers turning them
+over with an extreme indifference. Presently,
+with a sudden decision, he broke Alice's envelope,
+and began to read her note. Three of the sides
+out of four were exactly as he had anticipated,
+but towards the end he lighted on a passage
+that unnerved him abruptly. "I have been
+thinking of your friends in Grosvenor Place.
+My heart goes out to Lady Lakeden. How hers
+must lie broken and bleeding! To lose a
+husband after only a few months of wedded
+life! I shut my eyes and try to think that such
+a thing cannot happen! And she and her father
+have always been so kind to you. My love
+for you is so great that I love everybody that
+spares one little thought specially for you."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham threw the letter down. That was
+enough; he must sacrifice all to the duties he
+had undertaken. He and Lady Betty must not
+see each other again. Could he not hear her
+dear voice saying, "Life is always a compromise.
+Perhaps it's a blessing to see our clear obligations."
+Well, he at any rate saw his clear
+obligations. He would reply to Lady Betty;
+he would enter into the situation in all sincerity.
+He would paint her some little thing for the
+souvenir, and send it to her, and perhaps she
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+might care to send him hers in return. His
+meeting her to-day and this loving exchange
+of gifts would remain in his thought as the
+most poetic episode of his life; but an episode
+that must speedily be closed.</p>
+
+<p>She would understand and approve. Was
+she not the very spirit of chivalry, of honour
+and goodness? Since fate had given its decree,
+let them both bow to it!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XVIII</h2>
+
+<p>But the next morning he dressed with care,
+choosing with fastidiousness among his flowing
+silk ties, and went off to Grosvenor Place,
+stopping only on the way to get a new canvas
+for Lady Betty's portrait. It was as if some
+great arm had encircled him irresistibly, and
+hurried him out of his studio, and jerked him
+into a hansom.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing that caught his eye as he
+entered the usual room was a travelling easel
+opened out at its full length, brass-jointed,
+proudly agleam; and he marked his appreciation
+of the significance of its presence in equally
+significant fashion&mdash;by standing the newly-acquired
+canvas upon it. Then he installed
+himself at his window, and after a little preliminary
+fumbling he found himself well under
+weigh. At last he had struck the clear, even
+light he wanted, and he worked rapidly with
+his note-taking till the time the butler appeared
+with refreshments.</p>
+
+<p>He sipped his wine, with one eye on the
+folding-door and the other maintaining some
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+interest in the sketches before him. But the
+more vigilant eye of the two soon found its
+reward. Lady Betty appeared on the very
+stroke of noon, and came to him all fresh and
+smiling, in sunny contrast to his sense of the
+dull wintry universe.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem a trifle thoughtful," she observed.</p>
+
+<p>"I was speculating about the mysterious gift
+you promise."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed merrily. "I observe, then, it is
+a bargain." She nodded towards the easel.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had a charming idea as well," he said.
+"Could you give me two hours a day till the
+end of the month?"</p>
+
+<p>"By all means."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to send you to the Salon."</p>
+
+<p>"That is indeed a charming idea. But you
+must not risk your big work," she reminded
+him. "That, too, has to be ready in a few
+weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have the whole of March for it
+exclusively. I am finishing my portraits this
+month."</p>
+
+<p>"Your sketches are satisfactory?"</p>
+
+<p>"One or two mornings more, and I shall have
+as much as I need. My difficulty with the
+picture all these years has been that I have
+had to build it up largely out of my own mind.
+My actual scene has of course never really
+existed in nature&mdash;though once or twice I
+managed to catch something of the kind here
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+on the spot. But that was quite tumultuous
+and indiscriminate, whereas I wanted to catch
+the essence of the thing."</p>
+
+<p>"You frighten the poor little amateur out of
+her wits."</p>
+
+<p>They both laughed. "I had to snatch bits
+as best I could. Whilst striving to suggest the
+tumult and movement, I yet picked my material
+so as to give contrast and symbolism. Then
+I had to get my workmen and all the other kinds
+of folk to pose separately in the studio. Fortunately
+my old studio opened at the back into
+a little glass-house, and so I was able to pose the
+model as in the open. Naturally with the work
+on so huge a scale, I was wrestling with almost
+every drawback that could be conceived. It
+was no doubt a great mistake to have planned
+it at all, but I have learnt lessons I shall never
+forget."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have conquered at last."</p>
+
+<p>"Honestly, no. But it will succeed. My first
+idea was that the whole scene should be bathed
+in sunlight. But this, by throwing a vibration
+and glow over everything, would have submerged
+the social contrast of Fashion and
+Labour&mdash;would have made the whole thing
+primarily a piece of pure technique, and
+weakened its human significance. I did not
+want the sunshine to be the motive of the
+picture; I wanted the human side to stand out
+first, and speak with its full force. I therefore
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+chose a dull light, so that the smartness of
+Fashion glows in relief against the drab tones of
+Labour. I am afraid though I am exaggerating
+the contrast more than I really like. That,
+however, will help it with the great public."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I approve of such sentiments.
+I want you to strive for the highest."</p>
+
+<p>"That is the future. But here it was a
+question of extricating myself from wreckage.
+As art it is far from perfect. But its success
+will help me to higher things."</p>
+
+<p>"On that ground only we must pass it this
+time. But I have been wondering how you will
+use these last sketches you have been making."
+She examined them attentively awhile. "To me
+they are not very intelligible, though I have a
+vague idea of their purpose."</p>
+
+<p>"They are mere notes," he explained. "If you
+will come here by the window and get the point
+of view, I think I can make them perfectly
+intelligible."</p>
+
+<p>She came and stood by his side, and one by
+one he took up the little canvasses, explaining
+his tones and masses and relative values. As he
+spoke his words seemed to evoke a strange life
+from the blurs and brush marks. A splash of
+colour changed before her eyes into an omnibus;
+a darker blob into a brougham; vistas and
+spaces, buildings and foliage stood revealed
+out of chaos. She listened with a pretty
+interest, her lips daintily parted, her breath
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+coming lightly, yet her features composed into
+a characteristic stateliness&mdash;of which catching a
+sudden glimpse as she brushed close to him, he
+mentally registered the judgment "surpassingly
+fine!" He was glad he had caught that
+aspect; it summed her up in a way so perfectly.
+There was his Salon picture!</p>
+
+<p>"And while you have been listening I have
+been studying you," he confessed, as he placed
+the sketches aside.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have thought you knew me by
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not so definite and limited. Beauty
+is always flashing surprises on the eye that
+can see."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I like that," she said gaily. "I must
+bear it in mind.... It's only a toy easel," she
+flew off as he drew it forward. "In spite of
+its excellent preservation, it is a relic of my
+childhood: in the family I was supposed to have
+talent, so an aunt gave it to me for a birthday
+present, pegs and all, to take into the country
+and sketch all sorts of pretty bits. There was
+a little stool that went with it."</p>
+
+<p>"It will serve admirably&mdash;without the stool,"
+he added, with a smile. "I should like you to
+stand with the folding-door as a background.
+I think we're lucky to have such an interesting
+stretch of panelling in the room. We must get
+all the light on it we can."</p>
+
+<p>She tripped down the room gaily, and stood as
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+he indicated. Then he manipulated the blinds
+and the curtain till a clear, soft light, melting
+gradually into the surrounding greyer tones,
+fell on the wood-work, and Lady Betty stood
+illuminated with a suggestion of airy phantasm.</p>
+
+<p>"The face a shade more to the left," he
+commanded. "There! Now I have caught you
+again."</p>
+
+<p>He worked with an appearance of rapidity.
+"A very dream of elusiveness!" he exclaimed
+presently. "I must seize it whilst I'm in
+form."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I was just thinking it over," she said
+gravely. "I am not sure that I am really
+so pleased at being 'elusive.' If my features
+are not to be seized, how are they to be
+remembered? Definite women have the best
+of it&mdash;they are less easily forgotten, I
+should say."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be true if one had any desire
+to remember them," he returned. "But no,"
+he corrected himself; "it is not true in any
+case. Where there is only one definite set of
+features to forget, it is forgotten wholly and
+absolutely, once that point is reached. But the
+woman with the elusive features has so many
+sides that it would take a long time to forget
+them all. And then a man is always so
+entrancingly occupied calling up her picture.
+You let all the fleeting phases float around
+you. What more engrossing than to choose
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+among these rival gleams of loveliness, yet
+find them all enchanting and precious?"</p>
+
+<p>"You convince me of the absolute unforgetableness
+of the elusive woman," she laughed.
+Then, abruptly, she grew grave again.</p>
+
+<p>When he stopped work for that morning,
+they both inspected the canvas critically.
+"I think I have made the right
+beginning&mdash;you
+see the spirit of the idea is all there."</p>
+
+<p>"With the help of the lesson you gave me
+before," she ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"If I continue equally well, we shall find oceans
+of time before the end of the month. Wouldn't
+it be splendid if the Salon received it!"</p>
+
+<p>She was full of joyous delight at the prospect,
+but, glancing at the clock, gave an exclamation
+of horror. "We are forgetting lunch!"</p>
+
+<p>A minute or two later Wyndham was shaking
+hands with the old earl, who was gazing into his
+face with apparently affectionate interest.</p>
+
+<p>"This is very pleasant," said the earl. "Why,
+bless my soul, I haven't caught a glimpse of you
+for&mdash;let me see&mdash;three or four years is it?
+What has been amiss? Genius starving in a
+garret?&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty good guess," said Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"You look fat enough, and sleek enough,"
+laughed the earl. "On the face of things, I
+should have taken it that you've done very
+much better than I have. Now, if you had had
+to put up with my scoundrel of a cook&mdash; &mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+    "There was only one sauce on one occasion,
+father."</p>
+
+<p>"So you insist, so you insist. Well, you seem
+pretty straight on your feet again, my boy; so
+all's well that ends well."</p>
+
+<p>They sat down to table.</p>
+
+<p>"Making lots of nice little pictures?&mdash;eh?"
+recommenced the earl genially.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the one I am making sketches for here is
+rather tremendous&mdash;the size of a wall!"</p>
+
+<p>"The size of a wall!" echoed the earl. "My
+gracious!"</p>
+
+<p>"And now Mr. Wyndham has started a tiny
+one of me," put in Lady Betty. "I'm going to
+stand to him an hour or two every morning,
+and we'll send it to the Salon next month."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless my soul! That'll be a very pretty
+little thing."</p>
+
+<p>"It's only one side of me. Mr. Wyndham
+thinks I've so many sides, and he selected just
+one of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wyndham's a genius, but, with all
+deference to him, I don't see that you've any
+more sides to you than I have or Mr. Wyndham
+has. We have each two sides and no more."
+He raised his tumbler of egg-and-milk and
+whiskey, and drank deeply. The others laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Wyndham thinks I'm so many
+persons rolled into one," explained Lady Betty,
+"and that you can take your choice."</p>
+
+<p>"Many persons rolled into one! You are!"
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+said the earl emphatically, setting down his
+glass. "Only I never <i>can</i> take my choice.
+If Mr. Wyndham has succeeded in doing so,
+I offer him my congratulations. Oh, by the
+way, talking of congratulations, it is true, I
+suppose, that you are going to be married!"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Betty looked down and manipulated
+her fish.</p>
+
+<p>"One of these days," said Wyndham lightly.
+"There is no date fixed yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said the earl. "How is your <i>fiancée</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly well," said Wyndham. "First-rate."</p>
+
+<p>"A Miss&mdash;er&mdash;Llewellyn&mdash;wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Robinson," corrected Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ah&mdash;Miss Robinson! Yes, yes, that was
+the name&mdash;perfectly!" said the earl. "Mind
+you give her my compliments and respects....
+By the way, Betty, did I tell you I'm sick of
+the climate? We shall have thrown out the
+Embankment Bill by the end of the week, and
+then I can turn my back on the House. It'll
+be Egypt or a voyage to Japan&mdash;why, I might
+meet Mr. Wyndham on his
+honeymoon!&mdash;eh?&mdash;what?
+I'll go across to Cockspur Street this
+afternoon, and see what's sailing."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I come with you, father, and help
+you to make up your mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll be so kind," said the earl. "It was
+my intention to suggest that you should
+accompany me a great deal further than that,
+but I changed my mind just now."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+    "That is very considerate of you, father."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, not at all." The earl made a
+movement of deprecation. "You couldn't come
+till the end of the month, so I simply make a
+virtue of necessity."</p>
+
+<p>"You horrify me, father. You are making
+Mr. Wyndham think you are sorry I am
+standing to him."</p>
+
+<p>"It's only my fun, little girl. You don't
+really suppose I want my own daughter
+trotting behind my tail, and keeping her
+watchful, charming eye on all my doings.
+No, no, no! I had it in mind to suggest your
+joining me as a matter of form. You might
+have liked it, and I wanted to do the proper
+thing. But I'm only too glad of the opportunity
+of having you off my hands. Mr.
+Wyndham was really providential. Meanwhile
+I shall be proud to think of the nice little
+picture of you&mdash;I beg your pardon, of one side
+of you&mdash;hanging in the Salon."</p>
+
+<p>"If you take one of the long voyages, I
+presume you'll be away some months," ventured
+Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably till the autumn. I assure you my
+daughter long since washed her hands of me.
+She carries off her maid and disappears for
+years at the time. When I think she's in Paris,
+somebody says, 'I saw your daughter last week
+at Baden-Baden. How well she's looking!'
+When I imagine she's in Baden-Baden, somebody
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+says, 'I met your daughter at Florence
+last week. How well she's looking!' Nowadays
+I never speculate as to her whereabouts. I give
+her absolutely <i>carte blanche</i>. I'm prepared to
+hear and believe anything of her, and what's
+more! to approve of it and give her my blessing.
+On one point, you will observe, the testimony is
+unanimous: 'How well she's looking!' That's
+the one settled thing about her&mdash;and the sides
+of her. For I suppose no two people ever do
+see the same side of her." He scrutinised her
+beamingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, father. It shall be goodbye till
+the autumn. We shall part friends."</p>
+
+<p>"So far as I see at present. We've to get
+through the week yet. You'll lunch with us
+these days, Mr. Wyndham?"</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham murmured his acceptance, enchanted
+at being so cordially recognised as a
+friend of the house.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XIX</h2>
+
+<p>Wyndham told Alice of the happy chance that
+had presented itself of a dash at Lady Lakeden's
+portrait, and held out the possibility of the
+Salon's finding a corner for it.</p>
+
+<p>"How delightful!" she exclaimed. "Wouldn't
+it be brilliant to be in the Salon as well as
+in the Academy?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's just a dainty little study, and of course
+I'm doing it for the pure pleasure of the thing.
+But the committee may not consider it important
+enough for serious consideration, though
+that depends on what I make of it. In any
+case I'll present it to her afterwards in acknowledgment
+of all their past kindness."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the nicest acknowledgment you could
+possibly make them. I am so glad you thought
+of it." Her approval of the idea was generous
+and eager. And she was excitedly interested in
+the Grosvenor Place household. She plied him
+with questions. Was it an old peerage? Was
+there a great country house? Had Lady
+Lakeden a brother? Then who was the heir
+to the title?&mdash;would it pass to a collateral line?
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+He enlightened her on all these matters, sketching
+out for her the grooves which the lives of
+such people generally occupied. And he threw
+out the reflection that it was lucky indeed the
+renewal of his relations with Grosvenor Place
+had not been delayed any further. He had gone
+back there in the very nick of time, for the
+house was going to be shut up; the earl leaving
+in a week or so to take a long sea voyage,
+whilst Lady Lakeden meditated departure as
+soon as the portrait was done. Alice remarked
+that they seemed to be fond of roaming about a
+great deal, and Wyndham pointed out that
+Lady Lakeden and her father were exceptionally
+placed, were to a great extent emancipated
+from the "swim." The earl had practically
+retired from society, and his daughter, as a
+young widow, naturally sought distraction in
+her own way, though of course she could float
+brilliantly back into the world whenever the
+mood took her.</p>
+
+<p>Since the portrait was going to the Salon, he
+was naturally compelled to tell Alice about it.
+But the intense way in which she seemed to be
+fixing her eyes on the Grosvenor Place household
+disconcerted him beyond measure. This fresh
+interest of his had become her interest too; she
+had fastened on it out of all proportion to its
+visible importance. At uneasy moments he
+asked himself if she suspected that something
+lay behind this apparently simple and innocent
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+acquaintanceship; for her insistent and almost
+morbid return to the subject on the following
+days indicated its amazing hold of her.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, obviously, it was impossible that she
+should be cherishing any ideas of that kind.
+He flattered himself that his demeanour towards
+her, in this trying and difficult period, was
+perfect; that he was as tender in all their
+relations as if his heart were truly hers. Nay,
+he was devoting even more of his leisure to her
+than ever before. And for the very reason that
+the evening journeys to Hampstead had become
+distasteful, he was the more careful that there
+should be no falling off in his attendance there.
+In no wise could he have betrayed himself to his
+affianced wife. No, she could not possibly have
+any suspicion of the truth: he was satisfied that
+her preoccupation with the Grosvenor Place
+household all arose out of womanly sympathy
+on her part; that Lady Lakeden's tragic widowhood
+had touched the depths of her imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Alice! How simple and trusting her
+surface reading of the facts! How ignorant
+of the brutal complications, as grotesque as
+incredible, in which Nature often wrapped up
+human unhappiness!</p>
+
+<p>What a terrible tangle it was for them all!
+Were he free now, how gladly would his
+princess have placed her hand in his! In the
+old days the possible marriage of the brilliant
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+girl had been hedged around with extraordinary
+limitations&mdash;to which he too had bowed as to
+something in the order of nature. But, as a
+widow, she would naturally be expected to
+please herself when matrimonially inclined. By
+common social understanding, even the noblest
+and richest of widows may permit herself a
+considerable latitude of choice, and no word
+of criticism can lie against her unless she
+has travelled rather far out of the conventional
+grooves. A marriage between him and
+Lady Betty now might raise a flicker of
+interest beyond what was usual&mdash;considering
+his notorious poverty&mdash;but it could call down
+nobody's censure.</p>
+
+<p>But all this, alas! was but an idle speculation
+now. The time sped; the earl bade him goodbye;
+and he realised that the end was fast
+approaching. The few days that remained to
+him of Lady Betty's companionship became
+trebly precious, to be counted with despair!
+Though only an hour or two out of the twenty-four
+was spent in her society, his whole heart
+and mind, his whole life, were concentrated there.
+Each day he brought her a bunch of lilies of the
+valley, which she fixed in her bosom and insisted
+he must include in the picture. And during the
+enchanted time they were together, they talked
+freely and in perfect trust. It was more than a
+friendship&mdash;more than an exchange of confidences;
+it was more than the intimacy of a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+soul with itself&mdash;for that is not always honest
+even at its most courageous moments. In this
+free, splendid realm of communion with her, he
+stood up in all his manhood: rising to that
+simple truth which is yet of the heavens and
+the spaces; measuring himself against great
+standards; seeing and regretting his egotisms,
+vanities, self-deceptions; valuing himself humbly.
+The depths of Lady Betty's sympathy were
+indeed profound. She could enter into his life,
+appreciate motives barely realised by himself,
+and, with charming broad humanity, understand
+and forgive his actions even when he felt
+ashamed of them as unworthy and discreditable.
+No comedy of sentiment here&mdash;no playing of the
+saint on either side; but a noble simplicity, a
+serene good faith, a spontaneous self-revelation!</p>
+
+<p>He recounted to her, as naturally as everything
+else, the whole history of his acquaintanceship
+with the Robinsons. He spared himself
+not a detail: how he had first dallied with
+temptation, his moment of panic, his specious
+reasoning, his ignoble surrender! He laid
+himself bare as with a scalpel. Yet of Alice
+he spoke always with reverence and loyalty,
+dwelling on her devotion, on the little she
+needed from him to give her happiness. And
+Lady Betty caught his appreciation of her. "I
+seem to know and understand her well," she
+said. "She is a delicate, untarnished soul. She
+seems more real to me than people who have
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+lived near me all my life. And so her heart
+has gone out to me! I feel I could never bear
+to meet her&mdash;the moment would be too terrible!
+Ah, why did you not speak in the old days?"</p>
+
+<p>"I repeat I had not the right. And then I did
+not dream I was worth one single thought of
+yours."</p>
+
+<p>"I gave you all my thoughts. You were so
+serious. You sat with knitted brow, sternly in
+your work, and I hardly dared to come near
+you. You seemed remote from women; grimly
+devoted to your purpose&mdash;to triumph or to die!
+At poor me you scarcely deigned to look. And
+then you disappeared, and I knew you would
+not return."</p>
+
+<p>"I disappeared. I left happiness behind me,
+and retired into my living tomb."</p>
+
+<p>"My heart bleeds for you." There was a
+pause. Her eyes were full of pain. But presently
+she broke the silence, as if discovering
+some crumb of comfort. "This time at least
+you will not be going to privation."</p>
+
+<p>"In my heart of hearts privation is preferable."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, no. Remember it is the call of duty. It
+is the sacrifice we must make for Alice's sake.
+She is a good woman. Her life must not be
+broken."</p>
+
+<p>"I promise I shall try to make her happy&mdash;whatever
+the cost. But think how happy we
+should have been together, you and I, darling."</p>
+
+<p>"We should have been happy together," she
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+said in a low voice. "It would have been a
+perfect union. But I say again that life is a
+compromise. Our demands are great; we have
+to accept the little that is granted."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet the door still stands open," he mused.
+"We may yet take our fate into our own hands."</p>
+
+<p>"The door stands open, but we turn our backs
+upon it."</p>
+
+<p>"We are too strong," he groaned. "I am
+tempted to pray for weakness."</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself up, her face alight with a
+noble radiance. "Let us both be proud of our
+strength. We have set right above everything."</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose we are mistaken&mdash;" he urged
+tensely.</p>
+
+<p>"We cannot strike her down! No, no, we
+must not take away her great happiness&mdash;you
+have given it to her! I depute you, if you love
+me, to guard her welfare&mdash;on my behalf and
+on your own. Remember, too, she is happy
+with so little!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be a loyal husband. But, in the
+realms that lie outside her penetration, you
+have promised that I may cherish the thought
+of you as an inspiration."</p>
+
+<p>"To speak to you with my own voice&mdash;to help
+you to the strength that cannot falter!"</p>
+
+<p>But the end was close upon them. He could
+not linger over the picture, even had he wished.
+As the last days slipped by his face saddened
+visibly. Lady Betty begged him to bear up.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+He was so changed in aspect that Alice could
+not fail to notice it.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no danger," he returned. "She has
+already spoken of it, and I have put it down to
+fatigue. She has seen how desperately I have
+been working for months on end, and she is
+satisfied I need rest."</p>
+
+<p>One day, he ventured to question Lady Betty
+about her plans, but she replied that they were
+vague. She only knew that she would travel
+for the present; she would not make up her
+mind as to details till the last moment.</p>
+
+<p>"But even then I should not tell you," she
+added, with a wan smile. "Our parting must
+be decisive. I shall read of your career, and my
+mind shall be always with you in your work;
+but I shall not cross your path again. There is
+one last thing I suggest. When you have
+finished the picture, let us spend the whole of
+our last day together."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall set it apart. We shall consecrate it
+with our farewell."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall give you the souvenir I promised. I
+shall keep it till the end; and then it will be
+goodbye."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodbye?" he breathed. "Oh, it is cruel!"</p>
+
+<p>He was shaken again. Some wild rebellion
+was rising in him, and vainly Lady Betty tried
+to calm him with pleading&mdash;even with tears.
+But she revealed only the more her own
+anguish.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+    At last she had command of herself again, and
+put a stern inflection into her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"For Alice's sake you must conquer yourself.
+No, let it be for my sake. I put it as the test of
+your love for me. Otherwise I shall believe
+that your love is selfish."</p>
+
+<p>"I promise I shall conquer myself, but I must
+have time."</p>
+
+<p>"You make me terribly afraid&mdash;you may
+wound her by a chance word."</p>
+
+<p>"That is impossible. Her mind is serene&mdash;no
+word of mine shall disturb it."</p>
+
+<p>But Lady Betty's fears were by no means
+allayed. She wrote him long letters, imploring
+him to keep command of himself, else she would
+regret bitterly that they had ever met again.
+They had both fought this terrible battle: they
+were neither of them emerging unscathed, but
+their wounds and hurt were the price of
+honourable victory. She was sure of herself;
+but was he&mdash;the man!&mdash;to shrink back when
+the supreme moment came? The thought of
+loyal duty accomplished would bring equanimity
+hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, if all were only a dream!" he exclaimed
+sadly, as he lay thinking of nights.
+And then he would try to believe that he had
+not met Lady Betty again, had never even
+heard of her since her wedding-day. He had
+never made the acquaintance of the Robinsons,
+had never set foot in their great ugly house at
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+the corner. Were not all these things the
+fancies of a disordered imagination, and was
+he not still here in Hampstead, in his narrow
+iron bed up on the gallery? To-morrow he
+would jump up and make his miserable breakfast
+as usual, would think of working without
+being able to raise a hand, and would potter
+away the hours. And at six in the evening he
+would see his prosperous neighbour from the
+City go past with noiseless, gentle step, bearing
+a plaited rush-bag with a skewer thrust through
+it. Yet what a relief to throw off the illusions
+of these latter days, and find himself again as
+of old, free of all the tangle; even though the
+problem of bread still faced him, and the vista
+of hopeless days stretched away endlessly!</p>
+
+<p>Alas! the morning light, filling his panelled
+bedroom and revealing to his eyes the many
+luxuries of these prosperous days, testified only
+too convincingly to the reality of recent developments.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, as he turned up the well-known
+Hampstead street of an evening on his way to
+the Robinsons, he would still struggle again
+to recover the illusion that the old days were
+yet. Approaching the house as it loomed in
+the near distance through the wintry mist,
+he would imagine himself supremely unconcerned
+with it. And then he would stop outside
+his own former door, and fumble in his
+pocket a moment as if to find the key. Like
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+lessons learnt after the mind is set, all these
+later accretions to his existence were ready to
+drop away, to have a shadowy relation to him.
+It made him realise with astonishment how
+easily he might cut the Robinsons out of
+his life, and proceed as if he had never known
+them. His bond of obligation was more real
+to him than the people to whom he was
+bound!</p>
+
+<p>He was shrewd enough to see that in his
+heart of hearts he was sullenly and perpetually
+angry that so much had come to him from so
+extraneous a source. Where his own strength
+and gifts had failed, these people from a world
+that was not his world, either in thought or
+mode, had come in and brought him prosperity.
+This galling sense of absolute dependence on
+the Robinsons seemed the deepest humiliation
+he had known. They had given him food when
+he was nigh starvation; they had given work
+when the prospect of work had vanished&mdash;had
+showered on him benefits and kindnesses innumerable.
+They had restored him to society
+and to the world of art and letters. He owed
+them the confidence of his bearing before the
+world, the manly swing of his step, the pride
+of his glance.</p>
+
+<p>That this should be his destiny was horrible!
+He rebelled and cried out with all his might.
+Oh! to wield the sceptre of destiny himself!&mdash;to
+shape the evolution of a brilliant career and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+merit the crown of a great love by his own
+power and performance!</p>
+
+<p>And yet at the back of his troubled mind
+there lay in terrible calm the stern determination
+to stand by his obligations. His promise
+to Lady Betty was in no danger. All this
+feverish agitation was but as the surf beating
+on a granite shore. He knew that he would
+bow his head in resignation; that, after the
+parting with Lady Betty, he would settle down
+as the most attentive of husbands; acquiescent
+of an atmosphere of physical well-being, yet
+paradoxically living from hand to mouth, so far
+as his deeper life was concerned; thankful for
+any morsel of good each day might bring him,
+and looking not beyond its horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Alice should have her happiness, never guessing
+what turmoil and torture two souls had
+voluntarily undergone for her.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XX</h2>
+
+<p>In the silence and privacy of her room Alice
+was sobbing her life away. Like an opium
+eater, she had sought magnificent dreams, had
+surrendered herself to beautiful illusions, had
+duped herself supremely. But the awakening
+was fraught with fever and suffering.</p>
+
+<p>On that memorable afternoon when her father
+had brought home the wonderful announcement
+that Wyndham was to follow him, Alice had
+looked at herself in the glass, and though her
+favourite dress lay ready for her, she knew
+he would not of his own impulse bestow a
+second glance upon her.</p>
+
+<p>The evening had come and passed. As by
+some enchantment Wyndham had appeared,
+was seated at the same table with herself,
+engaged in intimate conversation with the
+family, left alone to wine and cigars with her
+father; rejoining them in the drawing-room,
+listening to her playing, singing to her accompaniment!
+Then, lo, he was gone; and she was
+left to ponder on the swift,surprising turn of
+events. After all these years of emotion, the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+acquaintanceship was an accomplished fact.
+She was to penetrate within his door at last,
+to become, for the time being, part of the very
+business of his life!</p>
+
+<p>She retired that night still with the sense of
+miracle; yet infinitely grateful to her father
+for his charming concession to her whim.
+And her first subtle move had been crowned
+with success! At least there was work where
+work was needed so sorely; work, too, that
+brought her so near to him, annihilating a
+distance she had reconciled herself to think of
+as impassable, and opening up potentialities of
+service which her fertile wits would not be slow
+to seize upon. Would it not be a joy to help
+him to a firm footing again, to raise this gifted
+life of which she had watched the long slow
+sinking! It was miraculous that this privilege
+should fall to her! But everything must appear
+to flow naturally to him of itself; he should
+never suspect that the unseen hand at work
+was hers, any more than he should ever know
+that this was what she, who loved him, had for
+years worked out in fancy.</p>
+
+<p>And she!&mdash;she should have no thought but
+the unselfish desire of serving him! What
+matter if she carried in her heart the cold
+conviction that he could never love her&mdash;since
+all she had dared aspire to had fallen to her lot!
+For who was she to cherish vain hopes? She
+had not the commonest touch of beauty; she
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+was hopelessly out of his sphere. She felt
+herself appallingly ignorant and inexperienced.
+In her easy shelter the years had slipped by in
+monotonous quiet. In the world outside there
+beat a life that was strenuous, entrancing,
+dramatic&mdash;the struggle of the realm of affairs,
+the pomp and colour of courts and society, the
+important events of politics, the field of view
+that opened in the novels, or lay spread behind
+the footlights of the theatres. Wyndham belonged
+to all this brilliant universe, had walked
+with firm tread amid it all, breathing its airs
+with an assurance born of right and nature. No
+poverty could destroy his inalienable privileges,
+could render him less by a hair's breadth;
+indeed, save for the manifest inconveniences of
+the former, poverty or riches seemed irrelevant
+on that plane of high humanity; where differences
+of fortune were obscured by the highness
+of the humanity, however fertile in distinctions
+these differences might be in a lower world.</p>
+
+<p>But as the acquaintance ripened, as she tasted
+of the gracious intimacy of the long sittings, his
+perfect kindness, his chivalry, his constant
+solicitude began to undermine the attitude
+with which she had embarked on the adventure.
+They had become such good friends, and she
+could not blind herself to the fact that he was
+pressing his personality on her beyond what
+mere courtesy and friendliness demanded. But
+she still fought to stand firm, and her humility
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+was her strength. It was even more than her
+strength&mdash;it read for her his doubts and hesitations.</p>
+
+<p>Not that she crudely supposed that, in his
+conduct to her, he was swayed by ulterior
+considerations. She saw that he had genuinely
+an affection for her, more kind and brotherly
+than a lover's affection; she knew that he was
+trying to like her better, to raise her in his
+estimation far higher than the truth. And
+she conceded that his hesitation was natural,
+that she was no mate for him, that his world
+would openly despise her. No, he must not
+marry her for the safety her fortune would
+bring him. She would marry only for love,
+and, as that she could never win, she would
+consequently never marry.</p>
+
+<p>She dreaded now lest the situation should
+take a more definite turn, lest he should begin
+to woo her in earnest. She wished to be left in
+contentment with her deep secret happiness
+which could never be effaced from her life. She
+had had her way. It was she who had brought
+him the succour he needed; she&mdash;of whose
+existence he had never dreamed, whom he had
+often met face to face yet never glanced at. It
+was she who had rescued for the world's benefit
+this splendid genius that the world had rejected.
+This was joy enough. To anything else the end
+must be disillusion.</p>
+
+<p>For awhile she lived in terror lest he might
+speak. But as the work progressed, and he
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+became more and more enthusiastic over her
+portrait, she could not but fall a victim to
+the subtle implication, and begin to believe that
+he must really think more of her than she had
+ever dared to imagine. It was then that her
+stern control of herself began to slip away.
+Wilfully she shut her eyes to all that she understood
+only too well, and surrendered herself to
+the spell and wonder of the vista that opened
+before her. It was the best thing that life had
+brought her, she told herself, and in an impulse
+of pagan desire she was impelled to wring from
+it the last drop of passionate happiness it could
+afford her. Her love for him reached out into
+new depths; the dull, despairing, impossible love
+of before became a fever, a frenzy, a great yearning
+passion that must pour itself out or kill her.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the supreme moment in which she
+let the belief that he loved her seize entire
+possession of her. Must he not have for his
+mate a woman who would love him and make
+him a perfect wife? He was a being apart from
+his own world, devoted to serener and higher
+ambitions. Had she not seen the glow with
+which he expounded his ideas and purposes,
+forgetting she was a humble, uninstructed
+listener, and surrounding her soul with the
+sweet unction of the implied perfect equality?
+Perhaps it had dawned upon him at last that
+devotion greater than hers the world could not
+hold. In his consecration to his high calling he
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+did not need a wife to figure brilliantly amid
+social pleasures and functions, but a helpmeet
+whom perhaps he could not so easily find in
+those exalted spheres; one who needed no
+pleasures for herself, no triumphs; who had no
+purposes of her own, no desires, save the
+supreme end of self-sacrifice on the altar of
+his happiness and achievement. Only a woman
+absolutely capable of such self-effacement could
+understand the perfect bliss of it. If every man
+could find such faithfulness at his own hearth,
+how the world would thrive and grow blessed!
+And she thanked Heaven for the little fortune
+she could bring him, for this precious money to
+establish his life on a safe and sure footing.</p>
+
+<p>And when he had spoken at last, she, casting
+away the last doubt, had thrown herself headlong
+into the dream. With her arms round
+him, and her lips to his, she felt that she had
+always been destined for this high bliss, that
+rendered by contrast the quiet stream of her life
+a mockery of life.</p>
+
+<p>The joyous period of intoxication was all too
+short. With the sobering of the world to its
+work again in the new year, she, too, sobered a
+little, and the old questioning revived in her.
+Was it really the truth that he loved her?
+Where was the note of passion she herself had
+poured out so recklessly? His personal magnetism,
+his urbane, affectionate friendliness, the
+caressing vibrations of his voice, his delicate and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+considerate dealing with the gaps of ignorance
+she daily revealed&mdash;all this held her in an
+invincible spell. But the deep, irresistible conviction
+for which her heart yearned was unmistakably
+absent in his whole relation to her.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps some terrible struggle was going on
+within him. Was he recoiling in terror sometimes
+from the thought of the mate he had
+chosen? Surely at times he was arguing
+himself into acceptance and contentment. What
+meant the strange, furtive glances he sometimes
+directed at her?&mdash;not the soft glances of love, but
+glances bewildering, baffling! She watched him
+with a supernaturally sensitive insight, appraising
+his every expression, following the imagined
+see-saw of his doubts and reassurances.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when he had told her of his meeting with
+Lady Lakeden again, and of the new portrait
+he had engaged upon, no shade of jealousy had
+arisen in her. Her sense of the calamity that
+had befallen Lady Lakeden was so infinitely
+distressing that she could have fallen upon her
+knees and prayed. To lose a dear husband after
+only a few months of wedded happiness!&mdash;what
+more crushing grief could a woman's destiny
+hold? She shut her eyes and shuddered, as
+she tried to realise the depths of its meaning.
+It seemed to her that no wife with the least
+spark of womanhood could recover from such a
+blow; that sorrow and weeping must be her
+portion for the rest of her days.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+    She redoubled her devotion to Wyndham,
+suddenly full of fear lest she should have been
+betrayed into injustice to him out of mere
+morbidity. And her mind lingered gently on
+the figure of this other woman whom she had
+never seen, but to whom her heart went out in
+an impulsive flood of love and pity. If only
+she could know her, and let her understand how
+deeply she realised her grief! But Wyndham
+had made no response to her first involuntary
+expression of this desire, and she was too diffident
+to recur to the point again. Perhaps if
+she waited patiently he might suggest such
+a meeting of his own accord. But the days
+went, and Wyndham was silent.</p>
+
+<p>And not only silent, but changed. "Yes, yes.
+He is changed in a hundred ways," she cried,
+"though he does not know he has shown it."</p>
+
+<p>If, for a moment, she had been willing to take
+refuge in the belief that over-sensitiveness and
+diffidence had been leading her into distrust of
+the situation, her eyes were suddenly too wide
+open to allow of any further indulgence in
+comfort of that kind. There was no mistaking
+this unprecedented self-abstraction, the curious,
+far-away expression that was almost stereotyped
+on his features, the continued inattentiveness
+to her words that often required her
+to repeat her remarks and not unfrequently
+ignored them, so that she was continually
+shrinking into herself, too wounded to insist
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+again. By the side of this, his former attitude,
+little as it had satisfied her, seemed impulsive
+and passionate!</p>
+
+<p>His face was grave and sad for the most part,
+but sometimes it shone with a rapture which
+she knew had not been inspired by her! He
+was not himself in any way; his smile and
+laugh had not the old spontaneous charm.
+Every note of his affection rang false. And
+yet, in form, his solicitude and loving care for
+her remained the same as always. But this
+could not blind her; she knew he was trying
+his best, but his heart and mind were not with
+her. Ah, well, if he cared for anybody, it was
+certainly not for her!</p>
+
+<p>"Who has drawn him away from me? Who
+has robbed me?&mdash;who has robbed me?"</p>
+
+<p>For days she had pondered and pondered, her
+mind faltering, her lips dreading to whisper the
+name. Wyndham was painting Lady Lakeden.
+She was young; she must be interesting and
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>"He is in love with Lady Lakeden!" It
+escaped from her lips at last, and then she
+remained ashen&mdash;trembling.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, surely he had loved Lady Lakeden in
+the old days&mdash;loved her secretly and despairingly,
+seeing her often, but too poor to woo
+her! Moreover, Lady Lakeden had then loved
+another. "Yes, yes, that is the truth&mdash;the
+truth!" she cried; "And now he has been
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+seeing her again daily, and the old love has
+been reborn!"</p>
+
+<p>A pall descended over Alice's spirit. What a
+cruel situation! Here was Wyndham pledged
+to a woman he could not care for, yet in love
+with another whose whole heart was with the
+dear husband that had been taken from her.
+"He is struggling bravely to be true to me&mdash;I
+see it all now&mdash;he is breaking his heart. It is
+my duty to release him from his word&mdash;ah! no,
+no!" She shuddered and covered her face,
+shaken and shaken. "Even if I gave him his
+freedom," she argued presently, clinging on to
+the wreck with might and main, "it would only
+be freedom to find despair. Lady Lakeden
+loved her husband. I know she is great and
+true. She knows he is mine. I trust her&mdash;I
+must trust her&mdash;I will pray for strength to trust
+her. Heaven help me!&mdash;Heaven help me!"</p>
+
+<p>A terrible pang of jealousy smote her. Detesting
+herself for it, she tried hard to repress
+the flood of bitter hatred she felt rising in her
+against Lady Lakeden. Poor Lady Lakeden!
+She had suffered enough and was blameless.
+She could not help it if Wyndham loved her.</p>
+
+<p>An overwhelming curiosity to know what
+manner of woman Lady Lakeden was, took
+possession of her. Of course, she was young
+and beautiful. But what colour were her eyes?
+Were they large and deep and brilliant? What
+expression had she habitually? What colour
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+was her hair? And was it abundant? And
+how arranged? Was she slim and tall? How
+did she dress? And in what costume was
+Wyndham painting her? Were not these the
+questions that had been a thousand times on
+her lips, and yet remained unuttered?</p>
+
+<p>And why had she not asked of him these
+questions as clearly and boldly as she had
+thought them? Had there been some obscure
+suspicion in her mind all along, and she had
+feared to embarrass her affianced husband?</p>
+
+<p>Poor Wyndham! She told herself she had
+the most perfect understanding of his mind.
+She held him in honour as a noble gentleman,
+and knew surely that he would fret his heart
+away rather than wound her by word or deed.
+She would have put her hand in the fire for the
+certainty that he would never withdraw from
+the compact; that he would go through with
+the marriage, and die rather than relax the
+effort to simulate perfect happiness in their
+after life.</p>
+
+<p>Could she accept such a sacrifice? Could she
+spoil his life for him, when she had only meant
+to set it straight, and had asked for no greater
+privilege? Would that she had been able, by
+some miracle, to help him from across the old
+impassable distance without coming into his
+life at all! It was for her to choose&mdash;to keep
+him and all that the future with him might
+hold, or to tell him frankly that she thought it
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+best to set him free and return to the simple
+paths of her old existence.</p>
+
+<p>But, ah, no, she could not give him up&mdash;she
+could not give him up! She had possessed his
+lips, she had possessed his thought and solicitude.
+The echoes of his voice caressed her.
+Break with him! She shut her eyes and
+shuddered again; her whole soul grew sick,
+and she writhed in agony.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXI</h2>
+
+<p>Calling one day and finding her alone in the
+drawing-room, Mr. Shanner, after some moments
+of unruffled demeanour and honeyed conversation,
+abruptly launched into a piteous outbreak.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, Alice, you've made a fine mistake
+with that swell of yours," he exclaimed, his eyes
+flashing with resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Alice stared at him in deep distress. Ever
+since the engagement Mr. Shanner had been all
+decorousness and deference. As he broke now
+through his ashen shell of propriety, his sedate
+person seemed to relapse, to stand limp, a trifle
+greyer, a trifle less well trimmed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she gasped at last, "you are under some
+misapprehension."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Alice," he said; "don't you
+suppose I've two eyes&mdash;and wide-open ones,
+too?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't really understand what you're alluding
+to, Mr. Shanner," she returned as coldly as
+she could find it in her.</p>
+
+<p>"I am alluding to your engagement, of
+course," he insisted. His tone showed he was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+determined to force the subject on her. "What
+do you suppose the fellow is going to marry you
+for? Men of his class do not come out of their
+way to look for a wife amongst people of our
+class. You mustn't mind my not mincing words,
+but it's clear to me he doesn't care a fig about
+you, and that your money is the attraction.
+There, that's plain!"</p>
+
+<p>Alice felt herself turn scarlet. Mr. Shanner
+suddenly stood revealed to her&mdash;of roughness
+and coarseness unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand you," she exclaimed,
+feeling she was floundering, and with an acute
+sense of her lack of social skill to meet the
+contingency and cut short the interview.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes you do, Alice. Only you are too
+proud to say so."</p>
+
+<p>"You are mistaken. My intended husband
+and I are on the best of terms. I am very much
+surprised to hear this from you."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that for a snubbing, no doubt.
+Well, I suppose I brought it on myself." He
+smiled uneasily and bit his lip. "Only I did
+think that, being so old a friend of the family,
+I had the right to give you a word of advice
+when the happiness of your life is at stake."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! please, Mr. Shanner&mdash;I'm very sorry,"
+she breathed, all gasps and palpitations. "But
+really, truly, you're mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>"I have used my eyes and head. I am not
+mistaken. Everything's all wrong, and you
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+know it, Alice. I have been reading it in your
+face of late&mdash;I tell you you show it. Give up
+the swell before things go to the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Mr. Shanner," she said, with all
+the kindness in her tone that she could muster,
+"but if you will get these extraordinary ideas
+into your head, I certainly am not going to
+fight them."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled wanly, droopingly. "Another snubbing,
+I suppose. But you needn't take it in such
+ill part. I don't profess to belong to the aristocracy:
+I do profess to be a friend, one of the
+sort that's to be trusted. And I think you'll
+come to recognise that in the long run. Whatever
+happens, John Shanner's your friend, and
+when the time comes, you'll find him ready to
+hand. But I earnestly advise you not to delay.
+Throw up all this business before there's
+mischief."</p>
+
+<p>Alice smiled bravely. "I repeat that Mr.
+Wyndham and myself are on the happiest of
+terms, though I am sure you mean your advice
+for the kindest."</p>
+
+<p>She took up her stand behind this simple
+assertion, so that he could not beat down her
+refusal to be drawn into a deeper discussion.
+By degrees he pulled together his decorum,
+recovered his frigidity, and ultimately retired
+with the dignified utterance, "Well, I hope
+you are not going to be disillusionised, my
+child, but I have my doubts. At any rate, as
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+I say, I stand by you in any case. Only promise
+me one thing, that if ever you find my warning
+was not mistaken, you will do me the justice
+to admit it."</p>
+
+<p>She thanked him gravely, and assured him
+that she fully appreciated his kindness, and
+willingly made the promise. She was glad
+indeed of the chance of winding up the
+interview thus amicably. Yet, when he had
+gone, she felt panic-stricken at this revelation
+of how openly she had been wearing her heart&mdash;as
+if veritably on her sleeve. How fortunate
+her parents had observed nothing yet! But
+they, of course, were taking the perfection of
+everything so entirely for granted, and were
+so happy themselves over the beautiful romance
+which had transformed their household and their
+lives, that it was difficult for any suspicion to
+enter their heads. Certainly they had never
+read any expression in her face save that of
+rapture and contentment.</p>
+
+<p>She must try to control herself. If only, like
+other women, she were more practised in
+assuming a surface self that won acceptance,
+that none could penetrate!</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Shanner was so absolutely in the
+right. Was it really worth while going on as at
+present? Could anything be more unhappy
+than all this uncertainty and perplexity?
+Something must be done. Things must come
+soon to a crisis.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+    And then, one morning, some two or three
+days before the end of the month she received
+a letter from Wyndham, who had dined with
+them the evening before, announcing that he
+would be absent from the studio the whole day
+practically, as he had made club engagements
+for the entire afternoon and evening. As, too,
+he would be lunching out, it would not be worth
+her while to come to the studio at all on that
+day. He was sorry he had forgotten to mention
+all this when saying goodbye, but he was
+scribbling the note immediately on entry, and
+in a hurry to catch the post.</p>
+
+<p>This letter gave Alice food for reflection. She
+did not attach any significance to the alleged
+club engagements; she had never grudged him
+the occasional evenings he spent in that way,
+since it kept him in touch with the art-world.
+But in this present instance there was certainly
+a suggestion of anxiety on his part that she
+should keep away from the studio over the day.
+"Ah&mdash;I understand!" she flashed, clenching her
+fingers; "Lady Lakeden's portrait is to be
+brought there to-day, and he does not wish me
+to see it! She is beautiful&mdash;beautiful!&mdash;he fears
+her beauty will sting me to jealousy."</p>
+
+<p>He had never wished her to see the portrait!
+Had he not always turned the conversation
+whenever she had mentioned it? And only
+last night, as if in anticipation of so natural
+a desire on her part, he had had to confess
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+that it was finished, but had added that it was
+going straight to Paris, as he preferred to feel
+it was safe there in the hands of his agent.
+He had thus led her to conclude that the
+picture would not be passing through the
+studio at all; but, with his letter now before
+her, she felt certain that his aim was to get
+the portrait framed, to touch it up, and then
+send it off without showing it to her.</p>
+
+<p>But she had the right to see it, if she so
+desired, she told herself bitterly. If the Salon
+accepted it, nothing could prevent her going
+to Paris with her mother; though so enterprising
+an adventure was quite outside the
+habits of their life&mdash;a consideration on which
+he was counting, perhaps. But the Salon
+might not accept it, and in any case two or
+three months might elapse before such a
+possible visit, and in that time who could say
+how things might turn?</p>
+
+<p>Entrance to the studio was a privilege that
+had been freely bestowed upon her. He had
+not forbidden her to come; he had merely
+tried to stop her by suggestion and diplomacy.
+But she would not be denied.</p>
+
+<p>She would meet strategy with strategy: she
+would take care to arrive late in the evening,
+so as to be alone there. In the afternoon, or
+earlier in the evening, there was the danger
+of just catching him between his engagements,
+since he would no doubt come home to change.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+    She would see the portrait at her leisure;
+she would at last study the features of the
+woman&mdash;the beautiful, brilliant woman&mdash;who
+had unwittingly robbed her.</p>
+
+<p>"And I have no beauty," she sobbed; "I am
+plain and insignificant. I have no cleverness,
+no experience; not one little weapon to fight
+with, to win him back to me!"</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXII</h2>
+
+<p>Wyndham had finished Lady Betty's portrait
+on the previous morning, and had taken it
+back with him to his studio. To-day the
+frame, a copy of a fine old Venetian model,
+came early in the morning, and Wyndham
+had soon fixed the canvas within it. He was
+enchanted with the effect. If the Salon had
+only a corner to spare for it, he was certain
+they would not turn it away. And&mdash;entrancing
+idea!&mdash;why should not Lady Betty deign to
+come here on this last day, and snatch a glimpse
+of herself in this charming setting which he
+had selected with such loving interest. There
+was a long day before them, and he might
+well seize the mood and the auspicious
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>He lingered before his picture, then brusquely
+tore himself away from it, and sat down and
+wrote instructions to the frame-maker, who
+was to come and fetch it away on the morrow,
+and despatch it to Paris immediately.</p>
+
+<p>For this was his great day; that was to leave
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+with him for ever the memory of gracious
+companionship and irrevocable farewell! The
+day on which he would live for Lady Betty
+and forget all else! Then she would pass out
+of his life. He strove to face the stern decree.
+But only a blank met his vision. He turned
+his eyes away; his thoughts should be of the
+day only.</p>
+
+<p>He had hardly considered what their programme
+should be. But now, on his way, he
+began to ponder it lazily, dwelling fancifully on
+possibilities rather than arriving at anything
+rigid or definite. They would roam about at
+random, like two sweethearts of the people;
+their evening they would spend at a theatre,
+no doubt something out of the way, and they
+would find their meals as the bizarre occasion
+might offer itself. They would invest this
+everyday London with the romantic light of
+their own spirit; they would wander as through
+a strange capital, and observe humanity with
+a new eye. And then, of course, he must keep
+before him the possibility of the visit to his
+own studio, in which Lady Betty had never
+as yet set foot.</p>
+
+<p>At midday he rang the bell at Grosvenor
+Place, and was shown up into the great drawing-room.
+In a minute or two Lady Betty came
+tripping in. A glance showed she was ready
+to go out at once; her simple coat and skirt
+formed a costume unobtrusive enough for any
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+expedition, and her hat and veil matched the
+occasion to a nicety.</p>
+
+<p>She was radiant with an unaffected gaiety;
+he could hardly conceive the weight of sadness
+that must lie at the bottom of her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have a happy day," she said,
+smiling at the thought of it; "something to
+remember always."</p>
+
+<p>He was quick to grasp her spirit. They were
+to have this happiness as if the day were one
+of many days, some past, more to come. They
+were to give themselves up to the joy of each
+other's companionship in simple acceptance of
+the passing hour; not dilating on the occasion
+as a parting; not letting it be overshadowed
+by the sense of what they had so tragically
+missed in life. Parting there would be; and
+then sadness would descend swiftly enough.
+Till that bitter moment&mdash;sparkle and enjoyment!
+He had come prepared to talk much of themselves;
+but he saw she was wiser than he, and
+at once fell in with her mood. There would be
+all the rest of his life to lament in.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you thought of any plan?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"None," she replied. "To tell the truth, I
+rather shrank from anything definite. 'The
+wind bloweth as it listeth.' Let us go on
+without end or purpose. That seems to me the
+ideal way."</p>
+
+<p>"But we are bound to make a beginning.
+After that the game may play itself."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+    "Let us get away from the London we know;
+let us go to a romantic, wonderful London that
+we have never seen." She was almost echoing
+his thought. "We shall glide discreetly among
+the crowds as if we belonged to them."</p>
+
+<p>"Then away!" he laughed. "To horse&mdash;or
+rather, to omnibus! Or is it to be hansom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything in turn, and nothing long."</p>
+
+<p>It was a cold day, yet though the sky was
+lightly clouded, the air was free from mist.
+As they stepped into the street a few patches
+of blue were visible, and a wintry sunshine
+filtered down with a pleasant sense of promise.
+The neighbouring houses were for the most
+part shuttered and silent, but the outlook on
+the great triangular space before them was
+cheerfully busy.</p>
+
+<p>"How unlike the scene of your painting!" she
+exclaimed. "There is no suggestion of drama
+here, but just the average feeling of the London
+thoroughfare&mdash;busy people going their way,
+and a procession of omnibuses mixed up with
+carts and hansoms."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet my own scene swims before my eyes&mdash;I
+have lived with it so long."</p>
+
+<p>"You have still to live with it," she reminded
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"If I do not die of it," he answered pleasantly.
+"Seriously, I came near to doing so."</p>
+
+<p>"This omnibus is marked 'Aldgate,'" she flew
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+off. "Now that makes me think of Aldgate
+Pump. I wonder if it goes near the Pump?"</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham jumped on the foot-board, and
+put the question to the conductor.</p>
+
+<p>"We pass within a yard of it," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said Wyndham. The omnibus drew
+up, and Lady Betty mounted the stairway, and
+they seated themselves on the roof.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" he exclaimed. "The clouds are
+suddenly breaking; it will be all blue and
+sunshine soon."</p>
+
+<p>"A grey ghostly blue, a cold, charming sunshine."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet the promise is splendid after all this
+winter."</p>
+
+<p>"The promise is splendid," she echoed; "and
+we are so happy to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"We are so happy," he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>He let himself lapse into a dreamy mood; he
+was enchanted to have her so near him, to
+feel the afternoon and evening stretching
+endlessly before them&mdash;a veritable lifetime of
+golden moments. Lady Betty's manner offered
+a marked contrast. Hers was a frank exhilaration,
+an excited gaiety, of which he had the
+full impression; though she kept it in a low
+key, like love's whisper intended for his ear
+alone. Soon, as he had predicted, the sky grew
+bluer, the sunshine warmer; the traffic and the
+bustle of the streets were cheerfully pleasant to
+the eye and the ear in the fresh day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+    "Even the London we know seems delightful,"
+he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"London, though sometimes impelling to
+revolt, is always wonderful&mdash;it has always the
+fascination of the unknown."</p>
+
+<p>"And is as supremely problematic as the
+unknowable of the philosophers."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is solid and real, comes to us through
+all the five senses. Look at that strange old
+man with the tiger-lilies. I wonder how he
+comes by them at this time of year."</p>
+
+<p>"That is one of the wonders of London," said
+Wyndham. "One sees the flowers of all seasons
+at every season."</p>
+
+<p>"And sometimes the weather of all seasons
+at every season. Has Aldgate Pump a
+history?"</p>
+
+<p>He confessed to ignorance, though he had
+an idea that he had read much about it in his
+boyhood, an epoch when he had been fascinated
+by all the odd monuments of the town. He
+recalled, however, after a time, that there was
+a legend connected with it, not unlike that of
+the wandering Jew.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it actually a pump?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's a real pump," he assured her.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I had a suspicion just now; it struck
+me it might be a sort of old coaching-inn or
+something of the kind. I've often been deceived
+like that, have gone off to see strange things,
+and have found a coaching-inn."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+    "At least there is the consolation of refreshment
+at the inn."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bad idea," she conceded. "It would
+be a thing to boast about for the rest of one's
+life&mdash;to have refreshed one's self at the Aldgate
+Pump."</p>
+
+<p>Both laughed. The omnibus pursued its way
+with a steady rumble. They had turned out of
+Piccadilly and passed through Waterloo Place,
+and soon after through Trafalgar Square into
+the Strand, where the scene proved much busier.
+The pavements were thronged; people were
+pressing forward with an appearance of being
+very much in earnest. A sprinkling of tourists,
+clearly self-proclaimed by their holiday air and
+the style of their attire and grooming, paraded
+at leisure or gazed into the shop-windows. Here
+and there a young girl, in a picture frock and
+a big hat, tripped along daintily, holding her
+skirt with a touch that suggested Paris, and
+swinging her little bag from her free hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Actresses going to rehearsal?" hazarded
+Wyndham, in response to his companion's interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"How charming they are!" she exclaimed.
+"And they are most of them frightfully poor.
+They struggle for years, and then drop out
+gradually. Fortunately we women have the
+gift of living intensely for the day. A few
+weeks' engagement, the guinea or two assured
+for the time being, and see how we bloom."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+    "Ah, yes," said Wyndham reflectively; "life
+for them, as for many others, is pretty much of
+a game of roulette. They stake their all on
+the table, fortune fluctuates during a few turns
+of the wheel, and then&mdash;everything is swept
+away."</p>
+
+<p>"Away, please, with these sad reflections!
+Why look too searchingly at things? The
+world is pleasant; why spoil it by examining
+it? Why turn one's eyes willingly away from
+the good to see the evil?"</p>
+
+<p>"And at any rate the good is as real as the
+evil," he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"We must make things contribute to our
+happiness while we may. All these crowds of
+people have no idea that they are there for our
+entertainment; they do not know, poor things,
+that we have willed they should be masquerading
+to please us. They have the delusion
+they are going about their own affairs, and they
+see only an ordinary omnibus, full on the roof&mdash;that
+is, if they cared to look at us. To them
+what more commonplace than a journey on an
+omnibus from Hyde Park Corner to Aldgate
+Pump? Yet, to us, what a whimsical universe
+it is!"</p>
+
+<p>The omnibus rattled along with a not unpleasing
+vibration. They passed through the
+heart of the City, swept alongside St. Paul's,
+and then the humour of country cousins took
+possession of them. They pretended to be
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+roused to excitement by all these guide-book
+regions and monuments, affected to be seeing
+them for the first time and to be recognising
+them from the engravings. Down Leadenhall
+Street they clattered at last, and presently to
+their surprise the conductor's head appeared
+above the stairway with the announcement of
+"Aldgate Pump, sir."</p>
+
+<p>They descended. The omnibus passed on, and
+they stood hesitating, a little lost, but greatly
+amused.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is!" she exclaimed. "And a street
+arab in the very act of pumping! Why, it's
+real water."</p>
+
+<p>They contemplated it for a moment or two.
+"Well, what do you think of it?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Thrilling," she admitted. "All pumps are
+interesting&mdash;in these days of universal taps.
+But look at those warehouses opposite, beyond
+the hoarding. Aren't they fascinating?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe the river lies beyond." Probably
+no existence had been less intertwined with
+the City of London than his, but he remembered
+the immediate neighbourhood pretty well from
+ancient wanderings, and he told her as an
+interesting fact that Mark Lane and Mincing
+Lane lay thereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I have heard of them." Her face
+lighted with the pleasure of recognition. "Indeed,
+I'm sure I've seen them mentioned in the
+newspapers."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+    He tried to plumb her knowledge, but found
+no deeps. She knitted her brows prettily, or
+at least he imagined she did, under her veil.
+"A sort of Latin Quarter&mdash;an artist's colony?"
+she hazarded. "No, wait a bit, there was a
+wealthy, humdrum sort of man I once met,
+and everybody whispered he came out of
+Mincing Lane. He was not artistic. I give
+it up."</p>
+
+<p>"He imported tea?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's not unlikely," she agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what Mincing Lane is for. And Mark
+Lane is for corn and produce."</p>
+
+<p>"How useful! What a good world it is! I
+think I like this part."</p>
+
+<p>"Beyond is Eastcheap, famous for groceries,
+and beyond that again the water-side where all
+these things are landed."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us come to Eastcheap." She was eager
+to see all the places he had enumerated, so he
+took her through the famous side-streets.</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly do like this part of the world,"
+she repeated emphatically. "And do you know,
+your talk of tea, and corn, and produce, and
+warehouses has made me very hungry. If we
+stumble up against a charming place, we shall
+lunch."</p>
+
+<p>And, a minute or two later, as they strolled
+down Eastcheap, at the corner of a narrow
+winding lane, they came upon a sort of café,
+which nice-looking merchants were entering,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+besides a goodly sprinkling of brisk young
+women. Lady Betty peered in through the
+door. The place seemed pretty full, but a stairway
+led to regions below. In a box, at the head
+of the stairway, and busily taking the cash,
+was a charming old man of mildest aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Betty declared it all fascinating, especially
+the part below stairs, which had the
+attraction of the as yet unseen.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham hesitated. "There is smoking below.
+You may not like it."</p>
+
+<p>"There are other women going down," she
+insisted. "I can't resist the temptation."</p>
+
+<p>It was an average type of City lunching place,
+but Lady Betty had never before tried the sort
+of thing, so Wyndham fell in with her whim.
+Down the stairs they went into a spacious
+cellar, lighted with jets of gas, though the sun
+was still shining outside. Wreaths and clouds
+of smoke floated in the atmosphere, and a clatter
+of dominoes and crockery dominated the buzz of
+voices that rose from the chaos of people at the
+marble tables. The central tables seemed given
+up to chess-play, each game surrounded by onlookers,
+all with patient cups of coffee beside
+them. And here and there an exceptional table,
+laid with a napkin, and in possession of vigorous
+eaters, gave the note of the restaurant.
+Wyndham and Lady Betty found a snug place
+on one side from which they could survey the
+room; and a neat little waitress, scarcely more
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+than a child, came briskly forward to serve
+them, handing them with a sweet professional
+smile a long slip headed "Bill of Fare." They
+were glad to note that their entrance had
+attracted no attention. Lady Betty studied the
+bill excitedly. They made their decision, and
+Wyndham imparted it to the waitress.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," she said; "And what'll you
+have to drink, please?"</p>
+
+<p>Again an eager colloquy, with the prosaic
+result of "two ginger-beers." "A true old
+English beverage," declared Lady Betty, and her
+approval seemed to flash the æsthetic quality
+into it, to invest it with rank and nobility.
+"Small or large?" persisted the waitress, her
+tone and demeanour of the gravest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, large," said Lady Betty, and the girl's
+face brightened at the definiteness of the information.</p>
+
+<p>"Two large ginger-beers&mdash;thank you, ma'am,"
+she said, and went off sharply, leaving them to
+their amusement.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst waiting, they surveyed the place at
+their leisure. "I like it here," exclaimed Lady
+Betty again. "Look at the old chess player
+there, with the bald pate and the eagle's nose.
+Watch him considering his move, with his hand
+hovering in the air, hesitating, yet ready to
+swoop down to capture a piece."</p>
+
+<p>But the hand did not capture the piece.
+Instead, the shoulders shrugged, an expression
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+of disgust overclouded the face, and the hand
+descended, dashing all the pieces from the board
+with one sweep. A roar of delight broke from
+the onlookers, and mingling with it from
+another part of the room came a sudden fresh
+clatter of dominoes, rapidly shuffled.</p>
+
+<p>"What fresh, frank enjoyment! So this is
+the strenuous commercial life of London&mdash;gingerbeer
+and dominoes!"</p>
+
+<p>"A strange set of people!" commented Wyndham.
+"Study these faces&mdash;from each shines a
+different life. I almost want to put my enormous
+accumulation of art theories on the fire,
+and to paint only human faces for the rest of
+my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful! There seem at least fifty
+different races here&mdash;to judge from the shapes
+of the skulls and the varying types of
+features."</p>
+
+<p>"The thought often strikes me as I watch
+people in the streets or in omnibuses," said
+Wyndham. "No matter how dull or repulsive
+a human face at first sight, I believe it can
+always be painted so as to be interesting, and
+that without departing from truth."</p>
+
+<p>The waitress reappeared with their lunch
+which had been simply chosen so as to admit
+of no possible failure, and in their present mood
+they were charmed with it. Lady Betty was
+enraptured by the experience, and chatted in an
+undertone, every now and then breaking into a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+spontaneous "I am so happy to-day," and flashing
+him a glance of light and radiance.</p>
+
+<p>They wound up with black coffee, and then
+the little waitress made out the account, which,
+after leaving her demurely astonished with her
+big silver tip, Wyndham paid to the nice old
+man in the box at the top of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"The sun is still shining&mdash;look!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham stepped after her into the air
+gratefully. "It is fresh and almost summery.
+Heaven smiles at us. Shall we stroll down this
+winding lane? I fancy it must lead to the
+water-side."</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah for the winding lane!" she said, and
+stepped out merrily. At the bottom they
+entered a street full of black brick warehouses
+with cranes at work, and huge carts with
+ponderous horses. "An antediluvian breed!"
+whispered Lady Betty. They strolled along,
+peering into dim doorways at vast interiors
+where a strange universe of life flourished in
+the glooms amid prodigious collections of barrels
+and boxes.</p>
+
+<p>"We are almost on Tower Hill," he said
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"An unexpected fantasy!" she exclaimed, as
+the Tower of London itself came into view at
+the end of the narrow street, the grey far-stretching
+ramparts looming up ghost-like and
+romantic. "A mediæval mirage amid all this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+grimy commerce. I wonder if it will vanish
+presently! But let us try the opposite direction
+now&mdash;are we not vowed to-day to the unfamiliar
+and unknown?"</p>
+
+<p>They retraced their steps, and, ere long,
+lighted on an iron gate that led visibly to the
+water-side.</p>
+
+<p>"The gate is inviting," she said. "I hope it
+isn't forbidden."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, here is a notice. I see we shall not be
+trespassers."</p>
+
+<p>They entered, and, passing through the preliminary
+alley, found themselves on a broad,
+open gravelled space beyond which flowed the
+water. Save for a couple of pigeons wandering
+about, they had the place all to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a discovery," declared Lady Betty.
+"It is as interesting here in its way as the
+Rialto at Venice."</p>
+
+<p>And indeed they had reason to admire. To
+the right lay the Bridge of Bridges, whose endlessly
+rolling traffic was at this distance softened
+to an artistic suggestion that by no means
+disturbed their sense of solitude. At the adjoining
+wharf on the left a Dutch boat was
+being unladen, actively, yet with a strange
+sense of stillness and calm. And over all the
+river and shipping hung a faint grey-blue mist,
+muffling and enveloping all things out of proportion
+to its density, and absorbing the sunlight
+into a haze that already seemed to foretell
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+the chills of the coming twilight of the winter's
+day. They saw the sun, a large red ball, hanging
+extraordinarily low in the sky over a long
+squat warehouse with symmetrical rows of
+windows. And across the river, under the
+shadow of the opposite structures, lay strange
+families of craft and barges, moored in the
+water, or high on the mud; rusty and silent,
+some half-broken up, some swinging lazily,
+touched with the mellow decay of the
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Betty thought it would be ideal to stay
+here awhile, so they settled down on one of the
+garden-seats, and sat in quiet happiness, unheeding
+of the sharp touch of the afternoon air.
+More pigeons flew down from neighbouring
+roofs and walked tamely around them. And
+from all the mighty activity of surrounding
+London, that beat strenuous, feverish, far-reaching,
+there flowed to them only a serenity, an
+almost phantasmal calm: they were alone,
+supremely alone&mdash;far from their world of everyday
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>The time slipped by deliciously. Their enjoyment
+was as spontaneous as of two children
+at play. And children they were in the perfect
+simplicity of their happiness. They watched
+the afternoon deepen, the haze of sunshine
+weaken and yield to greyer moods; they rose,
+too, and moved along the edge of the waters,
+and examined the shipping and barges. They
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+spoke to the pigeons, gave them names, endowed
+them with romances; they spoke to each
+other endearingly, yet still as the two children
+who had played together always, who had
+wandered into this strange world, and were
+as enchanted with it as with each other.</p>
+
+<p>At last they realised the light was already
+fading; the mist on all things was ghostlier,
+and damp in the throat and nostrils. Now and
+again a spasmodic wind caught up dry leaves
+and swirled them around playfully. Lady Betty
+gave a little shiver.</p>
+
+<p>"Night will soon be on us," she said. "A
+million points of light will be springing up as
+by magic. It would be enchanting to stay and
+watch the darkness deepen and the river-fog
+steal down; to sit here through the mysterious
+hours, and study the shadows and silhouettes,
+and listen to all the strange sounds of the night,
+and watch all those lights glimmer on and on,
+till at last they show yellow in the pale dawn,
+and life again is swarming over the bridges.
+Must we go back, dear?&mdash;we have left our world
+ever so far away&mdash;and years ago, was it not,
+dear?"</p>
+
+<p>A sadness had descended on them both. With
+the approach of evening, they could not but feel
+the precious time was fleeting; they could no
+longer immerse themselves with such wholeheartedness
+in the simple appreciation of the
+moment. The terror of the parting to come
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+rose in the hearts of both. Yet they made a
+brave resistance.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, darling," she said at last; "the hours
+still belong to us. We have indulged our day-mood.
+Let us search for something fresh now;
+our good star shall watch over us and send us
+happy adventures."</p>
+
+<p>So they passed again into the street, and,
+absorbed in their talk, were scarcely aware
+whither they were turning. They knew they
+were in a network of by-ways, flanked by
+warehouses and offices, and sometimes they
+stumbled on terraces of decrepit old dwelling-houses.
+They were vaguely conscious that they
+were leaving the river far behind, and that they
+must have crossed Eastcheap again at some
+narrower part without recognising it. After
+some leisurely wandering they came into a
+more important thoroughfare with pretentious
+edifices, yet with archaic touches here and there,
+the relics of another epoch, worn and decaying,
+yet more suggestive of coming stone buildings
+to supplant them than of the glory of their own
+century.</p>
+
+<p>At a street-corner, under the light of a lamp
+that was still pale in the gathering dusk, a
+shivering flower-seller with a red shawl over
+her shoulders stood with a basket of deliciously
+fresh violets, and Wyndham stopped to get
+a big bunch of them put together for his companion.
+Lady Betty was immensely gratified;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+she breathed in the odour of the violets with
+rapture, then fastened them in her bosom. She
+was herself again now, overflowing with good
+fellowship, and amused at every trifle. He
+caught her exhilaration. "We shall fill our
+evening with a whirl of gaiety!" he cried.
+"Rockets and fireworks; I wonder if the good
+star you spoke of will be kind enough to set
+down in our path some unheard-of theatre."</p>
+
+<p>She suggested they should study the hoardings
+as they went along, and both undertook to
+keep a look-out. But they were absorbed again
+in each other, having only a vague pleasurable
+sense of the crowded roads into which their
+steps now took them. Eventually they were
+in a main thoroughfare, with bustling shops
+brilliantly alight, and endless lines of stalls
+a-blazing; the roadway full of traffic and tram-cars
+and amazingly gigantic hay-carts, the
+pavements thick with a working population
+pressing forward and forward in multitudes.
+It was night now, absolutely; but it had stolen
+on them so gradually, they were astonished it
+was so definitely manifest. The hours of light
+were fresh and vivid in their minds, they could
+almost hear and feel the unending clatter of the
+omnibus that had carried them across the town,
+and the riverside picture was still before them.
+The change that had come over the world, this
+transition to absolute darkness illumined by
+street-lamps and flaring naphtha, seemed mystic
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+and amazing. And a subtle warmth from all
+this illumination and from all this press and
+bustle, from all these close-packed moving
+vans and cars and hay-carts, pervaded the
+wintry air; a sense of exhilaration, too; a sense
+of life in all its unrefined, joyous reality, intense
+and vigorous, accepting itself unquestioningly,
+too sure of the worth of the gift ever to doubt
+it&mdash;even as the hungry ploughboy does not
+speculate metaphysically about the fat pork on
+his plate, but simply falls thereon and devours it.</p>
+
+<p>"Book-stalls!" cried Lady Betty, "and piled
+up ever and ever so high. And look, rusty
+Wellington boots on the one hand, and rusty
+tools and bits of iron on the other."</p>
+
+<p>They stayed a few minutes, and turned over
+some of the books, as interesting and varied
+as those in any more pretentious bookman's
+paradise. They both grew selfishly absorbed,
+each striking out an individual path, though
+remembering the other's existence at moments
+of extraordinary interest. In the end each
+became the possessor of a volume. Wyndham's
+was a facsimile of the first edition of the
+"Pilgrim's Progress," a fattish octavo with the
+loveliest of wide margins, and the exact reproduction
+of the original engravings. Lady
+Betty's treasure was an old copy of the Dramatic
+Poems of Browning. Each paid the same one-and-sixpence,
+and as they bore away their
+prizes they discovered that each had been
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+inspired by the same motive&mdash;of giving the
+other a memento of this wonderful day.
+Laughingly they exchanged their volumes, and
+the presentations thus formally carried out,
+Wyndham took possession of the Bunyan again
+in the mere capacity of carrier.</p>
+
+<p>At last a hoarding with a great glare of light
+on it.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham let his eye roam over the posters.
+"The very thing," he cried. "A fine old-fashioned
+melodrama!"</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid!" echoed Lady Betty, gazing at
+the many-coloured scenes that promised a
+generous measure of thrills and emotions.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have a box to ourselves," said
+Wyndham. "As you see, it is not so very
+extravagant. Only there is the problem of
+dining."</p>
+
+<p>"What healthy little children we are!" she
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we must dine," he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"I have faith," she declared. "Our good star
+has served us till now, it is not going to desert
+us. We shall light upon some quaint place
+presently."</p>
+
+<p>The confident prediction justified itself, for,
+later on, they stopped before a Jewish restaurant
+that proudly announced itself as "kosher."
+And it proved immediately irresistible to the
+wanderers, who entered straightway, and found
+themselves in a simple sort of room with freshly
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+papered walls, full of neatly laid tables, the
+very antithesis of the familiar formal restaurant
+of ornate intention. The place was empty of
+diners as yet&mdash;no doubt it was early for the
+usual clients; but the proprietor, a grave bearded
+personage in spotless broad-cloth and with the
+air of an ambassador, come forward bowing
+profoundly, and escorted them to a choice corner.
+Through a half-open door at the back they
+had a glimpse of a neat, comely Jewish woman
+busy amid pots and pans, whilst a boy and
+a girl, who both looked good and intelligent,
+were industriously doing their lessons at a
+side-table. The host waited on the adventurers
+in person, taking the dishes from a younger and
+shyer assistant who brought them from behind
+the scenes.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the magnificent gravity of his presence,
+their host turned out to be an unaffected human
+being, whom they encouraged to talk of his own
+affairs, and who was pleased at their manifest
+interest in his homely establishment and in his
+little family. His wife and he worked together,
+and it was her cooking on which they were now
+being regaled. Their favourable verdict gave
+him an almost naïve gratification; a radiance
+and an illumination broke brilliantly across his
+features. He told them the Jewish names
+of the various dishes, but though they repeated
+them sedulously, the strange, charming words
+would not remain in their heads a moment.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+Meanwhile the kitchen was being stimulated
+to a display of delicate skill and finesse; the
+fish was as good, declared Lady Betty, as
+anything she had tasted at the Maison d'Or.
+A few other clients began to appear&mdash;a long-bearded
+Russian, carefully dressed, accompanied
+by a simple, buxom daughter of rosy complexion
+and deep, serious, aspiring eyes; then a middle-aged
+man, with a leonine mane that was dashed
+with grey and suggested the poor composer
+of genius; and finally a spectacled German
+in a threadbare cut-away coat, carefully brushed,
+who suggested unrequited scholarship. But
+all these, after the first distinguished bow
+and salutation on the part of the host, were
+left to the attentions of the assistant; the host
+himself being magnetised by the unaccustomed
+guests with whom he was deep in conversation.
+But, though he waited on them perfectly, there
+was yet conveyed in his bearing such a touch
+of distinction and courteous affability that they
+were sensible as of an honour that was being
+bestowed upon them. And that he was no
+mere small-souled tradesman was abundantly
+evident when he brought them a bottle of claret
+with the romantic recommendation that it had
+been grown on Palestine soil, and that, in its
+passage from the wine-press to their table here,
+it had never left the hands of his compatriots.
+He handled the bottle with pride and certainly
+emotion, and begged them to accept of it, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+to allow him to fill their glasses. They were
+touched by the invitation, though they were
+naturally unwilling to accept such a gift from
+a poor man, but he understood their doubts
+and laughingly explained that, as he did not
+possess a wine licence, he could not possibly
+accept payment; a piece of reasoning which
+drew them into the laugh and disposed of their
+hesitations.</p>
+
+<p>They made him join them, however, and they
+drank to the prosperity of the Palestine colonies,
+irrelevantly but charmingly coupling the toast
+with that of their host and hostess, the children
+and the restaurant. The other visitors smiled
+quietly, and, with conspicuous good breeding,
+scarcely turned their eyes towards this convivial
+table, the Russian conversing in an undertone
+with his daughter, and the musician with the
+scholar.</p>
+
+<p>And at the end the host did not give himself
+any false airs, but made out their modest
+reckoning and handed Wyndham the change,
+all with the same courtesy and with a distinction
+of manner which seemed to lift trade to a
+higher plane than it occupies in Occidental
+prejudice. And as the wife appeared hovering
+with a shy smile in the kitchen doorway, she
+was invited to join the group, and warmly
+complimented on her culinary skill. Then Lady
+Betty asked for the children, and presently
+their bright faces were illumining the room
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+with a warmer and sweeter light. Wyndham
+and Lady Betty spoke to them a little,
+then Lady Betty slipped a fragile ring with
+a single small fine pearl off her finger, and put
+it on the girl's. The little thing blushed and
+hung down her head. But the jewel became
+the tiny hand immensely. Meanwhile the boy's
+eyes were glued on the books.</p>
+
+<p>"I can see you like books, little man," said
+Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said the child, "better than
+anything else."</p>
+
+<p>"His ambition is to become a scholar," put in
+his father proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"He is to have the Browning as a memento,"
+said Lady Betty. She handed it to the child.
+"Keep this volume carefully. When you are
+older, I am sure you will love and treasure it."
+Then she unfastened her big bunch of violets
+and pressed the flowers on his mother, who took
+them shyly but coloured with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>When they were in the street again they
+walked on silently for a while. Wyndham saw
+that Lady Betty had been deeply touched; that
+something wonderful had been revealed to her
+of which, perhaps, she had never caught a
+glimpse in her whole existence. Presently
+she turned to Wyndham with a quiet smile
+that was the natural reflection of her
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"You do forgive me, dear," she asked, "for
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+my arbitrary disposal of your Browning, my
+own present to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You sacrificed my gift of violets, so we are
+quits."</p>
+
+<p>"After this we shall scarcely need any
+memento of the day&mdash;who could ever forget?"
+Then with a little thrill of joy: "But I've my
+Pilgrim all the same." She touched the book
+lovingly as he held it, and he was aware of
+her movement as of a caress. It was his gift
+to her, and what a world of affection in this
+implication of the value she set on it!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXIII</h2>
+
+<p>They found the theatre easily, and, from their
+snug box, enjoyed a most lurid melodrama,
+which amply redeemed the promise of the
+hoarding, and was played by a vigorous company
+who seemed in no wise dismayed by
+yawning spaces and a thin scattering of audience.
+Nay, the thrills were even more than the
+adventurers had reckoned on, for pistol shots
+suddenly rang out in the third act, and Lady
+Betty clutched hard at the curtain of the box.
+She presently realised, however, that the iniquitous
+foreign nobleman with the fur overcoat
+and large moustachios, whose veiled hand had
+directed the remorseless persecution of the good
+and righteous, had at last paid for his misdeeds,
+and with this passing of the villain Lady Betty
+found that her sense of poetic justice was abundantly
+satisfied; though the luckless heroine,
+appearing on the scene just then, and incautiously
+picking up the fallen pistol, was at
+once arrested as the manifest murderess. Then
+the curtain went down, and Lady Betty rose.</p>
+
+<p>"We must not stay to the end. Our day is
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+over, and I want to give you the promised
+souvenir of our brief friendship."</p>
+
+<p>There was a catch in her voice, and he understood
+that the sob had been suppressed with
+difficulty. He felt it was for him now to be
+strong; to set the note of stoic resignation, even
+as she had led off their adventures with a mood
+that had made this day the most wonderful of
+all his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, your strange, strange souvenir!" he
+laughed. "You must admit I have waited
+patiently."</p>
+
+<p>"It was very wicked of me," she admitted.
+"But I shall keep you tortured with curiosity
+till the moment I give it to you. I have it at
+home. We had better drive back all the way,
+if we can find a vehicle."</p>
+
+<p>They slipped out of the box and along the
+corridor and into the open road. It was a keen
+night, but very clear. The perspective of street
+lamps stretched endlessly on either hand. There
+was a plentiful sprinkling of people about, and
+the tram-cars were still passing. At the kerb
+were a few cabs, waiting for possible clients, so
+they selected the smartest of the vehicles; and
+the driver, who had been standing flinging his
+arms about for warmth, climbed into his seat,
+stolidly indifferent that "fares" from the theatre
+should wish to go so far afield into the regions
+of the elect.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt the horse was glad to be off, for
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+they started at an astonishingly brisk pace.
+Outside lay the endless road and all the shuttered
+world of streets and houses, over which still
+hung the romance of their splendid day. Quietly
+they had their last glimpses, as if fearing to
+speak, and yet thrillingly conscious of their
+proximity to each other. Lady Betty was sunk
+in sadness; as if she recognised now that any
+affectation of cheerfulness was utterly vain.
+And Wyndham was thinking of the definite
+moment of parting. He had resigned himself
+to saying "goodbye" at the door of her home;
+not daring to suggest now that she should visit
+his studio, even for the first time and last&mdash;since
+the chance had not naturally arisen in the course
+of the day's wanderings, and she had not even
+expressed the desire for it. Indeed, in all these
+weeks she had thrown out no hint of such a
+wish, and he had felt that she considered the
+ground as within Alice's absolute sphere, and
+would not intrude on it. No doubt many
+mingled shades of feeling went to create this
+attitude of hers. Still, Wyndham, having
+dreamed of her coming there on this last day,
+was to that extent unsatisfied. Time and again
+the suggestion mounted to his lips even at this
+eleventh hour, but he had not the confidence to
+let the words fall.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps they had both fallen into reverie,
+for Wyndham found himself saying suddenly,
+"Why, here is the Bank of England!" And
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+Lady Betty started, too, astonished at the stillness
+and the solitude here in the heart of the
+City.</p>
+
+<p>"The night seems darker now, and how
+ghostly and silent the lights are!" she said.
+"The sky has clouded. Goodbye, dreamland,"
+she added in meditation. "I shall never dare
+revisit the ground we have covered. I don't
+want to see it again; I couldn't bear it. But
+I shall always think and dream of it."</p>
+
+<p>He dared not answer. The least false note,
+and she would be unnerved. Since the parting
+had to be, let them grip hands silently for the
+last time, almost without realising it; let them
+go off as if they were to meet again on the
+morrow&mdash;as in so many partings that life itself
+brings about.</p>
+
+<p>And as they were borne westwards, signs of
+life began to appear again; as they approached
+the Strand they came full upon the torrents of
+population pouring out from their amusements.
+At Trafalgar Square the town was alive with
+masses of hansoms in motion that broke into
+jets and streams flashing and darting into all
+the avenues. They seemed to have returned
+into this familiar, dazzling London of the night
+as from a long journey. They were giddy with
+the impression of it all, and winced as if they
+had long grown disaccustomed to it. But,
+definitely, they were at home again; soon the
+houses of Grosvenor Place would loom up before
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+them, though somehow their everyday universe
+had taken on some subtle quality of unreality
+since the morning.</p>
+
+<p>And yet how small the distance they had
+gone afield, how soon annihilated! Up St.
+James's Street went the cab, alongside the
+Green Park, and in a few minutes it had pulled
+up in Grosvenor Place. Wyndham sprang out
+with a forced alertness, and helped his companion
+to descend. The house was quite dark.
+Lady Betty led the way to the door-step and
+produced a latch key from her purse. Wyndham
+stood by, strained and nervous.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come in to receive your souvenir,"
+she said. "You have well deserved it," she
+added with a brave smile.</p>
+
+<p>He followed her in as she pushed the door
+open; then she switched on the light. "You
+had best wait in the dining-room, I shall join
+you again presently."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham stood alone in the spacious room,
+with a sense of chill and desolation. The
+thought of his marriage and life to come flashed
+on him with a stroke of terror. Suddenly he
+shivered. Ah, it was bleak here in this deadly,
+all-pervading stillness. The very lights seemed
+to flood the room mournfully. How tired he
+was! Everything seemed to swim before him.</p>
+
+<p>And then he was aware she was in the room
+again, smiling at him and exhibiting a package.
+Her presence seemed to revive him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+    "At last I am to be enlightened," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you are doomed to be disappointed,"
+she said, as she came and stood by his
+side at the table. "I have made such a mystery
+of it, whereas, no doubt, you will find it trivial."</p>
+
+<p>"You said it was a weird idea. I am sure it
+is a charming one. Whatever it is, you know
+what it will be to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, darling," she said, suddenly grave
+again.</p>
+
+<p>She bade him cut the string and open the
+package. At last, as he was removing the many
+wrappings, "It is an old door-knocker," she said;
+"the figure of a lovely grotesque old wizard,
+wrought in bronze. I came across it on the
+door of a fifteenth-century house in Delft a
+year or two ago, and it so fascinated me that I
+bargained for it with the owner. It has ever
+since remained one of my pet possessions, and I
+at once thought of it for you. Tell me truly
+what you think of it!"</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham held up the strange bronze man,
+slim and long, with fantastic bearded head, and
+grasping in one hand a rod that merged into a
+huge serpent that lay coiled round the body.
+The two legs were welded at the bottom into
+one big foot, the heel of which formed the
+hammer. It was a piece of grotesqueness
+worthy of the East, finely and subtly modelled,
+and quaint rather than grim in its suggestiveness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+    "A masterpiece!" he said at last. "I have
+never seen anything of the kind to match it."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say it is by an artist of at any
+rate the early renaissance," she ventured, her
+face agleam, for she had awaited his verdict
+with anxiety. "The modelling is so careful
+and scientific."</p>
+
+<p>"Those were the days when artists still
+thought only of their work, and so much forgot
+their own existence that they took no pains to
+proclaim themselves to the world. The work of
+the so-called dark ages remains, the artists lie
+unknown and unheard of, if indeed they were
+known to the world at any time."</p>
+
+<p>"You will set up my wizard on the door of
+your house. Every time you hear it you will
+think of me as floating there like a spirit. Isn't
+that weird? I have the idea that if an enemy
+should touch it, you would somehow know at
+once, and be on your guard. Oh, yes, I was
+convinced it was a magic knocker the moment
+I saw it."</p>
+
+<p>He was still staring at it gravely, as if he, too,
+felt some eerie quality in it. She looked at him,
+then broke into laughter. "Aren't we a charming
+pair of children, taking our own make-believe
+so seriously?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, too, though uneasily. "It is good
+to be children again."</p>
+
+<p>"Like all good things, it is cut short so soon,"
+she responded meditatively.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+    He replaced the old wizard in its wrappings.
+"It is true," he murmured, pale and haggard.
+"Time is flying."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well," she said with a catch in her
+breath.</p>
+
+<p>They were looking at each other brokenly.
+The air echoed and echoed with the "goodbye"
+that was not spoken.</p>
+
+<p>He took her hand in his. "Princess," he
+whispered huskily, "I had dreamed of your
+seeing my studio ere we said goodbye. It
+would be for the first time and last, remember.
+Won't you come with me now, dear?&mdash;the
+merest glimpse&mdash;if only to see where your
+magic knocker is to hang&mdash;You understand,
+dear?"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes glistened. "Yes, I understand,
+dear. I will come with you."</p>
+
+<p>"This is one of the kindest things that even
+your life will hold!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>So again they were in the street, and the
+door swung to behind them. Wyndham was
+carrying his package, unexpectedly heavy, all
+concentrated weight, like a dumb-bell. The
+point caught her attention, and in a flash she
+changed again, was once more the amused
+laughing comrade, even though the sky was
+clouded now and tiny specks of rain flew in
+their faces.</p>
+
+<p>"A midnight expedition!" she cried. "Let
+it be a hansom this time."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+    At the corner of Knightsbridge they found
+one, and they were off again at a trot; a fact
+so astonishing that they could hardly grasp
+it. And then, instead of feeling broken with
+fatigue at the end of a long day, they found
+themselves fresh and spirited, as at the
+beginning of a new adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Soon they were cutting down Sloane Street,
+and then Wyndham suggested they should
+go the more interesting way round, so as to
+take in the Embankment, and drive into the
+Tite Street at the river end. It would leave a
+pleasanter impression with her, he argued, and
+Lady Betty readily assented. He gave the man
+the word, but straightway again the pair were
+deep in conversation, and lost all sense of the
+outer world.</p>
+
+<p>Some minutes passed. Suddenly their driver
+gave a shout, the hansom jerked violently, and
+Lady Betty, clutching at Wyndham's hand, saw
+a woman just step back in time from under
+the horse's head. The driver cracked his whip
+and shouted something angrily, and then the
+hansom moved on again. Wyndham stared
+out into the night. He saw the line of lights
+gleaming along the parapet of the river, and
+recognised they were within a short distance
+of Tite Street. But the woman was already
+lost in the gloom.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXIV</h2>
+
+<p>At the table that evening, Alice Robinson
+announced that she was going to meet Wyndham
+immediately after dinner. Had her parents
+not been accustomed to her departure at such
+summary notice, they might have observed the
+touch of embarrassment that accompanied it.
+For, although the expedition had been planned
+and considered for twenty-four hours on end,
+Alice found the initial falsehood singularly
+agitating. Painfully conscious of this lack of
+sangfroid, and fearful of betraying herself,
+she felt she must escape from the house as
+soon as was plausible. So, a little later, she
+rose in feverish haste from the dinner-table,
+and went to her room to put on her wrappings.
+No one was to wait up for her, in case she might
+be late, she said; she was taking a latch-key as
+usual. Then she slipped out of the house, and
+went down the street rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>Some little time had elapsed before she had
+control of her wits and began to reflect. She
+had been impelled to start far earlier than she
+had calculated, and thus she undoubtedly ran
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+the danger of finding Wyndham there, if she
+went straight to the studio. It was half-past
+eight; by taking various omnibuses she could
+fill out the time and be there by half-past nine.
+But even that seemed too early&mdash;he might be
+only just on the point of going out to his club
+engagement. No, to be absolutely safe, she
+would not venture actually to intrude till ten
+o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>However, she decided to make the journey
+at once, and to pass the remaining time in
+that neighbourhood. So she mounted the first
+omnibus that came along, and, once settled
+down for the long drive, she drew a deep breath
+of relief. Now that she was definitely on the
+way, some of the stress and pressure seemed to
+leave her, and the expedition seemed less
+terrible. She pictured herself stealing down
+Tite Street, standing nervously on the opposite
+pavement in the shadow, and looking up to see
+if the studio were illuminated. Even if all were
+dark, Wyndham might still be dressing in
+the room at the back; for, from the state of
+the hall, nothing could be deduced, as often he
+would not take the trouble to light the oil-lamp
+on which he at present depended. No, it would
+be certainly more prudent to wait long enough
+for certainty. Should she once break in upon
+him, she knew he would take good care she
+should not see the picture; for no doubt he had
+taken measures against such a surprise visit.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+    Immersed in these reflections, Alice was dimly
+aware of the miles of streets through which
+she was being carried. Indeed, she forgot to
+change omnibuses at Oxford Street, and was
+borne some distance out of her way before
+she discovered the omission. The whole town
+seemed to her like a dream; the street and the
+studio at her journey's end were all that existed
+for her. And even when she gazed at the
+world around her, it refused to take on any
+reality; the people that were abroad, going
+their way and standing out brilliantly in the
+night wherever a blaze of light fell upon them,
+seemed all strangely irrelevant. The only
+figures that mattered were her affianced
+husband and the beautiful, sad woman of
+stately presence, whose loveliness and nobility
+had drawn him from her. She knew now she
+hated Lady Lakeden&mdash;definitely, terribly. It
+was shameful, it was wicked&mdash;to hate like
+that! Lady Lakeden was blameless, and had
+not the least idea of all this suffering which
+her loveliness had caused to a fellow-woman,
+and to Wyndham, too. Yet how good it was
+to let this mad fury against Lady Lakeden
+develop in her heart!</p>
+
+<p>She pictured the portrait as standing with
+its face to the wall, unobtrusive, even lost,
+amid the hosts of other canvasses. With what
+terrible eagerness she would dart on it, turn
+it again, and let the light fall on it! At last
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+she should gaze on the face, should satiate her
+consuming curiosity!</p>
+
+<p>At Sloane Square she alighted, deciding to
+eke out the time by walking the rest of the
+distance. As she plunged into the heart of
+Chelsea, and was so sensibly near her journey's
+end, her pulse beat faster, her breath came
+irregularly, and again her whole mind was
+concentrated vividly on her goal. The streets
+through which she passed were almost deserted.
+The old houses, the gardens, the stretches of
+brand-new buildings, the great Hospital itself,
+were all vague silhouettes; above, the stars
+were keen, but her eyes were fixed rigidly
+before her.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of Tite Street she stopped to
+draw breath, for her heart was now thumping
+painfully. At the same time she felt almost
+afraid to set foot in the street itself. The
+hesitation was unexpected; she had imagined
+herself going straight to the studio, all of the
+same impulse. But here a sense of wrong-doing
+came upon her; the underhandedness of the
+whole proceeding stood out in that moment,
+curiously revealed, strangely impressive. A
+strong temptation assailed her to turn, to run
+off with all her force, to go back home. But she
+set her teeth, again. No, she must not go back
+without seeing Lady Lakeden's portrait. She
+must not yield to these moments of cowardice.
+It was stupid. Other women dared much
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+greater things; would hesitate at nothing,
+however false and ignoble, to gain their own
+end!</p>
+
+<p>She crossed to the opposite side, and flitted
+down the street like a shadow. She had so
+effectively lengthened out her journey that it
+was at last nearly ten o'clock. Wyndham's
+whole house was dark, and she had little doubt
+but that he was already out. Yet she wanted to
+be absolutely certain, so she moved on again, and
+sauntered off into a network of neighbouring
+streets. But she was too impatient to go far
+afield, and, after a few minutes, she retraced
+her steps till once more she found herself looking
+across the street at the silent house that
+lay all in deep shadow. How dark and deserted;
+how unnaturally still the whole quarter! Then
+tramp, tramp, tramp, came the heavy foot of
+a policeman, and she made him out dimly
+approaching her. She crossed the road, nervous
+indeed of any human scrutiny, and walked on
+briskly, only venturing to turn back when he
+had finally passed out of the street. Now, she
+told herself, was the moment.</p>
+
+<p>With every muscle tense, her heart beating
+now with terrible strokes, so that she felt she
+might fall swooning at any moment, she approached
+the house, and mounted the few steps
+that led to the doorway. Her key was in her
+little purse-bag, and she extricated it tremblingly.
+At last she had the door open, gave
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+a last, quick, furtive, glance around, and then
+stepped into the hall. For a moment she stood
+listening, her ears intensely on the alert for the
+least sound in the house. But the sense of
+absolute emptiness was too profound: the
+measured ticking of the tall hall-clock seemed
+to be sounding a curiously vigorous note. She
+let the door slam behind her, and moved forward
+a step or two, her feet sinking into the
+deep Turkey carpet that she herself had chosen;
+then she sank on a hard oak chair, and sat
+there gratefully, trying to master her breath,
+and waiting for her heart to thump itself
+through sheer weariness into a gentler measure.
+She unfastened her wraps and threw her coat
+open, for from head to foot she was burning.
+She did not note the time that passed, but when
+she rose again with a start she heard from
+some neighbouring church clock the single
+stroke of a quarter. She hesitated no longer,
+but determined to go up at once to the studio.</p>
+
+<p>But first she lighted the hall lamp. Now that
+she was here she intended to take possession
+openly, as was her right. If he should come
+back suddenly, he at least should not imagine
+that she was there in secret. But the cunning
+of the reasoning gave her a twinge of shame;
+she knew that she was throwing dust in her
+own eyes in thus spouting of her right. Admit
+at once that this liberal illumination was a piece
+of craft, was intended to maintain the surface
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+of innocence that was the cover for woman's
+guile from time immemorial. Well, so be it!
+She had been a child all her life. If perhaps
+she had been less truly innocent, even she might
+have kept the man who had slipped from her.
+She was graduating in womanhood now; how
+splendid it was to be unscrupulous, to do absolutely
+what you wished, yet skilfully maintain
+the blind belief and confidence of those you
+tricked! What great power, what joy could
+be gathered for yourself that way! Yes, that
+was the only thing for woman in this world;
+otherwise she was left to rot!</p>
+
+<p>And, as if to emphasise the conviction, she
+deliberately lighted a second spare lamp that
+stood in the hall, so that the spaces were
+illumined resplendently. Then she mounted
+the flight of stairs, letting her hand trail along
+the graceful sweep of balustrade, and pushed
+open the door of the studio.</p>
+
+<p>Peering into the darkness, her eyes at first
+could distinguish nothing save the objects in the
+spaces near her, as some of the light flowed up
+from below. But presently she was able to
+distinguish the familiar furniture, and cautiously
+felt her way across to the mantelpiece. Soon
+two powerful lamps were in full flame, and she
+sat down again to rest for a minute, whilst her
+eyes wandered round seeking for the portrait that
+was the object of her pilgrimage. She did not
+remove her coat and wraps, although, spacious
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+as the room was, the atmosphere felt oppressive
+and the slow fire, banked up with ashes, seemed
+to give out an immense heat. Yet she felt
+singularly at leisure, in full possession of her
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously Lady Lakeden's portrait was not
+on any of the easels; nor could she distinguish
+any fresh unit amid these many canvasses, all
+individually familiar to her&mdash;like a card-sharper,
+she could identify any one of them immediately
+from its apparently featureless back. Her first
+feeling was one of astonished disappointment,
+and she rose now, ready to institute a closer
+search. The possibility of being baulked of her
+purpose stirred a sudden rage in her. She no
+longer knew herself. "I am mad&mdash;mad," was
+the thought that echoed through her brain.
+"But if I am," she reasoned grimly, "my sufferings
+all these weeks have made me so. I would
+sooner die than endure this all over again."
+Then she set about examining all the canvasses,
+turning them one after the other to the light, in
+the vain hope that her too accurate knowledge
+of them might prove in some instance mistaken.
+But in vain! Was it possible that the portrait
+was already on its way to Paris?</p>
+
+<p>But wait, was there anything behind the
+screen so carelessly sprawling in the corner
+there under the great window? In a moment
+she had dashed across, and had half-dragged,
+half-flung it out of its place. Ah! she could
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+almost have screamed with fury at Wyndham's
+cautious foresight&mdash;this unmistakable provision
+against an accidental visit from her. It was
+then true; definitely, absolutely true! The
+man whom she loved to madness, who had
+professed to love her for herself alone, belonged
+heart and soul to another woman!</p>
+
+<p>A mist palpitated in the air before her, and
+the gold foliage and convolutions of the ornate
+Venetian frame shone through it distorted and
+terrible. But the canvas itself was a vague
+blur to her. She staggered over to the nearer
+lamp and bore it over to the corner, kneeling
+so as to bring the light full on the picture and
+her own face opposite Lady Lakeden's. And
+as now she saw this rare princess, bathed in
+a mystic light, this figure, full of a sweet dignity
+and a stately grace; as her eyes rested on the
+girlish face whose character yet shone out in
+a splendid illumination, though the rounded,
+youthful features were free from any stamp
+that might have touched the bloom of their
+spring-tide beauty, a cruel knife worked in
+Alice's heart, a knife that seared as well as
+stabbed. For a long minute she gazed at the
+portrait, letting it burn itself on her vision in its
+every shade and detail&mdash;the fresh sheen on the
+hair, the proud yet sweet tilt of the face, the
+wonderfully fresh and deep violet-grey eyes,
+the veritable rose-bud mouth that was yet so
+firm and true! This, then, was her rival! How
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+could she, the plainest of the plain, hope to
+struggle against the irresistible might of this
+loveliness! A sense of absolute defeat, of complete
+hopelessness invaded her whole being;
+it was the same submissive acquiescence with
+which she had contemplated herself in the glass
+on that momentous evening when Wyndham
+had appeared in her father's house for the first
+time. But then the hope had never been
+roused; now the joy was literally snatched
+from her lips. But, though her intelligence saw
+the hopelessness, her heart was full of desperation.
+And while yet her eyes were riveted on the
+picture, fascinated, yet loathing it with a passion
+that seemed to flame and to dominate her as
+though her real self were too puny to stir
+against it, a wild whirling thought came to her
+that made her body rock and shiver, and she set
+the lamp on the floor to save it from crashing
+down out of her hand. What if this woman
+were as guilty as the man?</p>
+
+<p>"I understand now," her lips broke out
+involuntarily. "They loved each other from
+the beginning, but she married another for
+convention's sake. Now they have resumed
+their old love, but I am in the way. He will
+not jilt me, because his honour is at stake, but
+as a man of honour he would not think it
+dishonourable to deceive me." She laughed
+aloud in bitterness. That was it! They would
+both deceive her, though he would never break
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+his word. Had she not seen the point exemplified
+in a hundred books and plays?</p>
+
+<p>Ah, this honour of the fashionable classes!
+And she had believed Lady Lakeden to be true;
+had, in pity and sympathy, set her on the
+highest pedestal of womanhood. How her
+belief in her rival's perfect goodness had blinded
+her! What a fool she had been, going through
+life with such simplicity! With a heart so open
+and trusting! No wonder nothing had come to
+illumine her existence!&mdash;that what had seemed
+to hold the promise was a cheat and a delusion!</p>
+
+<p>And, as her mind ran back over the past
+weeks, a thousand things seemed to confirm her
+new inspiration at every turn. Ah, God! how
+she had been tricked! Was there another
+woman in the world who would have been so
+trustingly stupid? The blood seemed to surge
+all to her temples: everything before her faded.
+An impulse to give vent to her fury seized her.
+She longed to tear and rend the canvas, to crush
+and break it with her fingers, to bite it through
+and through with her teeth. And she would
+have carried the imperious impulse into effect,
+had not a new thought, like a zigzag of lightning,
+come flashing through her brain. Lady Lakeden
+had no doubt written him letters; there must
+be a whole packet of them somewhere here in
+the studio! She would read them; they would
+not lie!</p>
+
+<p>Intent on this new end, she darted across to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+the bureau (of which the lid was permanently
+down and laden with papers and portfolios),
+and scrutinised the pigeon-holes. These were
+always open to her without restriction, but she
+had never thought of examining the contents,
+though she had often put away papers and
+receipts for him. She made a quick, feverish
+inspection of them now, not hoping to find the
+letters she sought in a place thus conspicuous,
+but yet fearful of overlooking them. The
+pigeon-holes yielded in fact nothing to interest
+her, and then with trembling fingers she turned
+out the little drawers, one at a time, replacing
+the contents of each carefully before proceeding
+to the next. She was reckless now, having no
+control over itself. She did not fear his sudden
+arrival on the scene; she would face him&mdash;she
+would taunt him with the truth!</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly her physical powers seemed to break
+down, and she clutched at the bureau for
+support. And as soon as she had steadied herself,
+she was glad to drag over a chair, and
+continue her search with feeble, tired movements.
+And with this abrupt collapse, her
+crude, violent emotions seemed to have blazed
+themselves out. She felt now a poor forlorn,
+helpless creature; her eyes were wet with tears,
+and she was choking down her sobs. And it
+seemed to her that she was gulping down an
+infinite bitterness. "I have it," she said suddenly,
+a momentary illumination flitting across
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+her features. He had once shown her in this
+old provincial French bureau a receptacle which
+he had spoken of as his secret drawer, a space
+neatly stowed away amid the other surrounding
+spaces so that its ingenious existence might
+remain reasonably unsuspected. She immediately
+stopped her operations, replacing things
+with a movement that was increasingly languid
+and feeble; and eventually opened the principal
+compartment in the centre which was on a
+level with the writing-lid. Removing all its
+contents, she inserted her nail in a little innocent
+slit, made the floor of the compartment
+slide along, then thrust her hand into the space
+revealed.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly a packet of letters was there. She
+drew it forth&mdash;over a dozen of them, carefully
+preserved in their fashionable-looking envelopes
+and tied together with a broad piece of tape.
+A faint perfume of violets was in her nostrils
+as she handled them. And this packet, too,
+seemed strangely imbued with the personality of
+their writer, reminiscent of a world of dream
+and books. How remote from her they seemed!
+How remote from her, indeed, all the amazing
+history of these past months! That, too, belonged
+rather to a world of dream and books.
+What! these great tragic complications and
+emotions had sprung up in her simple, uneventful
+existence! had related themselves to a brick
+bow-windowed house in the suburbs!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+    She gazed at the packet again, conscious that
+her fingers were faltering. How mean, low,
+hateful to read letters that had not been meant
+for others' eyes! And what purpose would be
+served by her reading them? She needed no
+further proof of the intrigue that had been
+carried on in the shelter of her own credulity
+and simplicity. Besides, she could divine what
+passionate vows of love were written herein,
+and to pry into them would be to renew her
+tortures beyond human endurance. She feared
+and turned away from them as from a furnace
+heated seven times hot. The packet dropped
+amid the masses of papers that encumbered the
+desk. Her tears came anew, and she gave them
+full vent; a storm of hysteric sobbing shook her
+convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>When eventually the attack had spent itself,
+she sat there listlessly, without the force to
+stir hand or foot. But her brain was working
+feverishly, definitely recognising that her life
+was spoilt. She had made her great cry of
+revolt in this mad dash and underhanded
+search; better perhaps to have made it in the
+silent depths of her heart! Ah, God, it was
+bitter, it was cruel! But what had she expected?
+Had she not known from the beginning
+that she ought never to accept one so far
+above her?&mdash;that she was not the ideal his
+heart would crave for, but that, at the best, a
+deep secret dissatisfaction would rankle in him
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+all his life? Had she not steadily seen this,
+while yet a shred of sanity remained to her?
+But it had all happened in spite of herself; she
+had been stricken with blindness, and her clear-seeing
+mind had been possessed with inexplicable
+folly. She&mdash;Alice Robinson!&mdash;and the
+thought made her laugh out aloud&mdash;had wholly
+believed that this man sincerely loved her!
+She laughed again and again, seized suddenly by
+the pitifully comic spectacle she presented to
+herself&mdash;Alice Robinson, shy, awkward, devoid
+of all the graces, lacking <i>savoir-faire</i>, neglected
+not only by men, but even by her own
+sex: Alice Robinson, the granddaughter of a
+carpenter, seriously beloved by an aristocrat
+with all the graces and culture, an artist, moreover,
+for whom beauty was always the primal
+appeal! She&mdash;Alice Robinson&mdash;had been under
+this wondrous delusion! Was there <a name="anything" id="anything"></a>anything
+more ridiculous since men and women were?
+Her laughter could not be repressed, but it
+rang out through the studio weirdly, with a
+strange note of hardness and bitterness, and
+somehow it echoed and re-echoed through all
+the house, coming back to her mockingly from
+the empty rooms beneath her.</p>
+
+<p>Even when her laughter had died away she
+sat there brooding. And for the first time
+there was mingled in her emotions a touch of
+pity for Wyndham. She was conscious now of
+a softening, in spite of all. Poor Wyndham!
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+Had he not loved Lady Lakeden years before he
+had set eyes on the Robinsons? If only he had
+not possessed that terrible code of honour! He
+might then have come to her frankly and begged
+her compassion! She would have released him.
+But he could not break his word. His honour
+only allowed him to carry on an intrigue!</p>
+
+<p>But time was passing, and she told herself
+she must not stay. She knew she was defeated
+and must accept it: she must leave him to his
+intrigue, whilst she herself stepped back into the
+old suburban existence!</p>
+
+<p>She replaced the letters in the secret receptacle,
+and restored everything in the bureau as
+it had been before. Then she dragged back the
+screen before the picture, turning away her
+eyes resolutely so as not to catch sight again of
+that gracious figure gleaming out in exquisite
+radiance. The lamps were put back as she had
+found them, then carefully extinguished. But
+the difficulty she had with them revealed to her
+the tense nervous condition under which she
+was still labouring, though she had appeared to
+herself quiet and resigned now. She stood in
+the dark a moment, conscious of the suffocating
+closeness of the atmosphere. How good
+it would be to be out in the air again! She
+would walk on the Embankment for a few
+minutes, and then ingloriously go home as fast
+as possible&mdash;in a hansom! having yielded to
+ignoble impulses and played the rôle of a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+common spy. But in one way she at least had
+no regret She was enlightened, knew as much
+of the position as Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>She descended the stairs, put out the lamps
+in the hall, and stepped into the streets again.
+The cold air beat in her face deliciously; the
+stars were brilliant in the pure sky. She looked
+up to them now yearningly&mdash;their calm and
+beauty shamed the storm and fever in her own
+mind. The street, too, seemed so exquisitely still
+in the splendid darkness. She let her wraps
+hang loosely about her, and did not fasten her
+coat. She breathed the air greedily, and it
+seemed to allay the stress at her heart. Then
+somehow she turned her steps towards the
+river, wondering where Wyndham and Lady
+Lakeden were passing their evening! She
+could take that for granted now, she felt. How
+carefully he had built up the wall around his
+romance!</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the street the river night-scene,
+scintillating with points of light, burst
+on her vision, and seemed to draw her into its
+own strange mood of mystery. It was as
+though a new universe of stars had come into
+being, wafting some fascinating message which
+baffled her reading. And as she stood in the
+great avenue, under the far-spreading arch of
+foliage, a deeper calm seemed to fall upon
+her. She went to the parapet, and looked over.
+The long stretch of water, all gleams and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+shadows, lay gently between the two gray
+bridges that hung suspended from their steel
+network in soft silhouette.</p>
+
+<p>Alice strolled some distance down the bank,
+then turned and retraced her steps. She told
+herself it was foolish to linger here, that she
+ought to make at once for the busier streets,
+and take the first vehicle that offered itself.
+But it was so deliciously silent, so majestic, that
+it comforted her to stay here. Besides, somehow,
+she could not tear herself away from the
+neighbourhood of the studio. She looked at
+her watch; to her surprise it was nearly half-past
+eleven; she had been at the studio a full
+hour and more! Surely he must be coming home
+soon. Perhaps, indeed, he had returned already!</p>
+
+<p>She found herself instinctively turning up
+Tite Street again, keeping as before to the
+opposite side of the road. But all was as dark
+and still in the house as when she had left it.
+Then the idea came to her that she would wait
+and see. It was a mere whim perhaps; but she
+could not go home till she had watched him
+enter. Still, she could not wait here in one
+fixed spot; she had almost the sense of being
+observed by she knew not whom. Besides, she
+must be cautious; she did not intend that he
+should suspect she was actually so near to him
+at that hour of the night. It gave her an
+anguished thrill to think he would pass close
+by her, and yet never give her a thought.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+    She was, however, loth to move away, for she
+could not know from which end of the street he
+would come. If she waited too long near one
+end, he might slip by from the other. And this,
+whether he came on foot or in a hansom.
+Feverishly she paraded the street, stopping here
+a minute, there a minute; keeping well within
+the shadow, and avoiding the encounter of
+every chance passer-by. Now and again she
+heard the ring of a hansom, the smart trot of
+a horse, and she held her breath with excitement.
+And there was even a minute when
+hansoms came dashing into the street one after
+the other; most of them to pass right through
+it, and only one or two to draw up in the street
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Midnight sounded, but still no sign of Wyndham.
+She looked up at the sky, but was surprised
+to find the stars were blotted out. A
+spot of rain fell on her upturned face. Her
+sense of misery reasserted itself, and with it
+came a sullen resolution to stay out till dawn,
+if needs be. Again she went to the Hospital
+end of the road and took up a discreet point of
+vantage. But again the tramp of a policeman
+scared her away, and accepting this as a sort
+of unpropitious omen she definitely decided to
+keep to the other end. She was like a gambler
+uncertain how to stake, but at last abruptly
+deciding for any irrelevant reason.</p>
+
+<p>The minutes passed, infinitely long to her
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+now impatient mood. The spots of rain kept
+falling. The neighbouring clock boomed out the
+quarters. At last another hansom&mdash;coming
+from the abandoned direction! Back she went
+again into the road, but it had stopped short
+farther down. The studio was still in darkness.
+Strangely disappointed and fatigued almost to
+the point of falling, she dragged her worn feet
+once more down to the Embankment, keeping
+her wits alert with a sustained effort, that
+grew harder and harder. This time she did
+not cross to the parapet, but walked under the
+great red brick houses, noticing idly their gates
+and doorways as they loomed on her. And her
+eyes were half closed in spite of her struggle.
+The trot of a horse, and the rattle and tinkle
+of a hansom sounded just then, coming smartly
+along the avenue. But she went on more and
+more as if in a dream, taking one step only
+because she had taken the last. Nearer and
+nearer came the hansom, louder and louder
+beat the horse's hoofs on the asphalte, but she
+pursued her meaningless way, without paying
+any heed to it. Her senses had almost left her.
+She opened her eyes suddenly, and, looking towards
+the river, saw that a greyish mist hung
+over it, that the pavements were wet and
+glistening. Ah, yes, the water lay below, dark
+and soft, full of an eternal peace. The message
+that had baffled her!&mdash;she understood it now!
+She had nothing to live for! In a flash all
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+would be finished. Impulsively she stepped into
+the roadway to cross to the parapet.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo, hallo!" The horse's head was almost
+on her, and she drew back with a natural unreasoned
+movement. The driver shook his
+whip and shouted angrily, then went onwards.
+But a moment's vision had burnt itself on her
+consciousness as deep as that first sight of the
+portrait of Lady Lakeden. Wyndham was
+seated in the vehicle side by side with Lady
+Lakeden, his face turned towards her, whilst
+her hand clutched his convulsively. And in
+that same swift moment Alice had felt Lady
+Lakeden's face encounter hers with mutual
+intensity. The sudden backward movement
+had almost paralysed her muscles; an agonising
+pain racked her at her knees and ankles. She
+dragged herself to the nearest wall and leaned
+against it. The picture of those two side by
+side was always with her: of Lady Lakeden's
+eyes flashing full on her own.</p>
+
+<p>She knew not how many minutes had passed
+when she was called to herself by the inexorable
+clock that had sounded its notes throughout this
+strange evening, and that now seemed to fling
+its boom through all the spaces of the night.
+Was the universe resounding with a peal of
+mockery?&mdash;disproportionately Titanic for so
+humble a soul as hers, so paltry a destiny? Ah,
+she remembered now her frustrated purpose;
+the instant when death had beckoned her
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+imperiously and she had responded with every
+fibre of her soul and body. Why, then, had she
+not let the wheels crush her?</p>
+
+<p>But she shuddered. Ah, no, no! Thank
+Heaven she had been inspired to save herself.
+How his life would have been saddened and
+embittered by so ironic an accident! She had
+meant only to help him; never to be a cause
+of grief to him! Since apparently it had been
+thus fated, better perhaps to live on. "I have
+others as well to think of&mdash;father and mother!"
+she murmured. "How wicked it was of me
+to forget them! Besides, as I never expected
+anything in life, why should I be disappointed
+now at getting nothing?" The argument
+seemed convincing, so painfully she began to
+hobble along the Embankment, moving again
+towards the familiar street, why she knew not.
+But her lips kept muttering, to herself. "She
+has gone with him alone to his studio. She is a
+wicked woman."</p>
+
+<p>And opposite the house, that had held her
+brilliant hopes of love and wonderful happiness
+for so brief a period, she stood still again, and
+looked up to the great window of the studio
+that was now illumined with a warm light,
+though everywhere else the house was dark.
+She saw a shadow flit across the blind, and then
+another shadow. They were there together.</p>
+
+<p>How they would stare if she boldly used her
+key and intruded upon them! How they would
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+tremble if they knew she was there, straining
+for a glimpse of their shadows!</p>
+
+<p>But she had no impulse now to disturb them.
+The game had been played, and she had been
+thrown out.</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh she moved away, turning her
+painful steps up the street, more instinctively
+than consciously. She walked and walked
+mechanically, retracing the route she had taken
+on her way there. The rain descended in thin,
+sharp lines, but she took no heed. But suddenly
+an arm was thrust through hers, and she looked
+round with a terrible start. A burly flush-faced
+man with a ruffled silk hat was holding an
+umbrella over her, was speaking to her. Her
+eye noticed irrelevantly they were just by a
+closed dark public-house whose nickel reflectors
+caught the light from an adjoining street-lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't you better take me home with you,
+my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>For a second she stared at him, then, with a
+hoarse cry, she shook herself free, and with
+a supreme effort rushed off like a frightened
+fawn. As she turned into another street she
+overtook a hansom going at a snail's pace.</p>
+
+<p>"Where to?" asked the man through the
+roof, after she had got in.</p>
+
+<p>"Straight home as fast as you can," was her
+strange answer.</p>
+
+<p>The man looked down upon her. "Where's
+that?" he asked good-humouredly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+    "I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, vainly
+attempting to control her breath. She gave
+him the address, and off they went.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the journey she paid him
+profusely, and he thanked her with as profuse
+a civility. She let herself in with her key, went
+up at once to her room, and threw herself
+across her bed. Her sobs broke out afresh.
+"Darling," she called; "I want you back again
+to be mine, and mine only."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXV</h2>
+
+<p>Lady Betty did not let go the hand which she
+had clutched in terror, and her companion
+responded with a touch of caressing reassurance.</p>
+
+<p>"My heart is still beating," she said, as they
+turned off the river bank into Tite Street.
+"Suppose we had crushed that poor creature.
+What a terrible memory it would have left
+with us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Happily she wasn't in the least hurt," he
+replied. "She must have been in a fit of
+abstraction."</p>
+
+<p>"I caught sight of her face," said Lady Betty;
+"and I shall not easily forget it. Such a wild,
+haggard look I have seldom seen. She must
+have been labouring under some terrible stress
+of emotion." She gently withdrew her hand,
+and appeared lost in thought. "I hope, dear,"
+she exclaimed suddenly, "that there is nothing
+horrible happening."</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed! The thing has got a little
+bit on your nerves."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not see her," she insisted. "She
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+came full into the light of our lamp, though it
+was barely for an instant. My face was turned
+that way and yours away from hers."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally she was startled at the moment!"
+he ventured. He was certain Lady Betty's
+nervous imagination had deceived her, and that
+her alarm was groundless.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not a startled look. It was a set
+look, something like the desperation of a hunted
+animal. Some man has treated her badly.
+Darling, you don't think she was going to throw
+herself into the river?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seriously&mdash;I don't think anything of the
+kind. If she had wanted to take her life, would
+she have stepped back so promptly?" he
+argued.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay you are right," she conceded,
+though her tone was not wholly one of conviction.</p>
+
+<p>The hansom pulled up, and he helped her
+down. They mounted the house-steps in silence,
+she unusually engrossed in thought, and with an
+unmistakable air of sadness, as if her mind still
+lingered on this woman's figure that had flashed
+on them out of the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>They entered the hall, and after some searching
+and fumbling he lighted one of the lamps.
+His companion shook herself out of her abstraction,
+and surveyed the place with affectionate
+interest. He was anxious she should take away
+with her a very definite impression of his future
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+home, and threw open the various rooms, and
+led the way into them, as he held the lamp
+aloft. They went, too, below stairs, and here
+Lady Betty's eyes beheld the many evidences
+of domestic comfort and foresight that the
+Robinsons had established in these regions
+where they had reigned supreme. Her face
+lighted in comprehension, though her thought
+remained unexpressed. At last, after they had
+completely explored the rest of the house, he led
+the way up to the studio, and soon had it
+brilliantly illuminated. Lady Betty refused the
+chair he wheeled forward for her. She preferred
+to be moving about, to be examining everything
+at leisure&mdash;his bureau, his great oak worm-eaten
+armoires, his long, low chests on whose panels
+Gothic Church dignitaries stood solemnly in high
+relief, his wonderful easels, his model's throne,
+his draperies and costumes, and, so far as it
+was possible by this lamp-light, his old canvasses.
+She did not ask for Miss Robinson's portrait, as
+she knew it was at the house in Hampstead, and
+would remain there till its despatch to the
+Academy. She saw, however, the large picture;
+and although she did not love it (for she knew
+at what a cost it had been brought up to its
+present pitch, and felt, moreover, that it was too
+sensational a bid for public attention), she yet
+recognised that there was much excellence in
+it, and that it would probably bring him the
+actual success which was of importance even to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+genius. Her ideal for him, she repeated, would
+have been the most absolute "no compromise."
+"But I agree that we must take a
+strictly practical view of the situation. It is
+not really compromise," she added, "but only a
+surer grasping of the ideal in the future. The
+idealist who does not know when to make his
+concessions in practice is just the one who loses
+his ideal altogether, and never comes down from
+the realm of abstractions."</p>
+
+<p>He seized a favourable moment, whilst her
+attention was otherwise engaged, to fetch her
+own portrait from behind the screen and arrange
+it on one of the smaller easels. Then she turned
+with some curiosity to see what he had prepared
+for her, and gave a little cry of delight.</p>
+
+<p>"You are pleased with it?" he asked, gratified.</p>
+
+<p>"And touched&mdash;deeply," she answered. "You
+have chosen the setting with excellent judgment.
+But what pleases me most is the
+absolutely fresh impression I now get of the
+picture itself. Though I have seen it grow, and
+have lived with it every day, I am really seeing
+it for the first time. It is a beautiful piece of
+work&mdash;I speak for the moment as if I were
+entirely unconnected with it." She stood examining
+it in silence, and he watched her face
+and every shade of expression that declared
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>"And this truly is your personal impression of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+me?" she asked, with a new flash of the joyous,
+eager comrade.</p>
+
+<p>"My everyday impression of you! I have
+another which I keep for Sundays&mdash;something
+with more of the stateliness of an olden time,
+with a far graver outlook and a deeper thoughtfulness."</p>
+
+<p>"But this one is thoughtful and dignified, too,
+is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most decidedly. But it is a real warm
+human being as well. To tell the truth, I stand
+a little bit in awe of the other one."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor me!" she laughed. She stood yet a
+moment contemplating the portrait, then turned
+her eyes away. "Oh, well," she said. "It will
+be a happiness to possess it, but a greater one to
+feel that, in some measure, it has helped to gain
+you the recognition that must be yours&mdash;a little
+sooner, a little later, signifies nothing. But I
+leave you in perfect confidence as to your
+career."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed his head. "I shall not dare to
+disappoint your confidence. To justify it is
+what I shall live for before all things."</p>
+
+<p>"I am content," she said. "I ask for nothing
+better than that our hopes shall be realised. I
+am glad you have chosen so charming a home
+for your labours. I hope you will be happy
+here."</p>
+
+<p>He did not reply at once, not trusting himself
+to speak. Lady Betty, too, looked sadly down.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+    "Ah, yes," he conceded at last. "It is an ideal
+home for an artist!"</p>
+
+<p>There were bitter implications in his tone,
+and she made no pretence of not perceiving
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling," she said, "you know it would be
+the dream of my life to help you. That is the
+only meaning happiness would have for me&mdash;to
+live by your side and help your work and your
+life. Before everything else, I am not the
+solemn, dignified being&mdash;the thought of me you
+keep for Sunday," she interposed smilingly&mdash;"but
+a mere human being, a simple woman, for
+whom the love of the right man, once she has
+found him, is the principal thing in life."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't realise that you are going away,"
+he broke out. "I want to keep you with me
+always. Don't leave me, darling! Let us begin
+our life anew&mdash;now, this minute! An ideal
+home here! I hate and loathe it. Let us make
+a home together&mdash;a home of our very own&mdash;far
+away from all these associations. Let us laugh
+at all else. I am strong enough to throw over
+everything, to fight!"</p>
+
+<p>She read the passion in his vivid face, in his
+terrible movement towards her. She stepped
+back, and held up her hands to check him.</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be," she said. "Perhaps we are to
+blame for delaying our parting. Believe me,
+I thought and thought about it after our first
+meeting till I feared I should go mad. I felt I
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+had already made my great blunder&mdash;I had
+revealed the awful secret of my life. I had till
+then nursed it all alone, but when I saw you
+again, after those miserable years, I had to pour
+it out. I did so recklessly, unthinkingly; it was
+such a joy to feel there was one friend in the
+world to whom such things could be said, and I
+put no curb on myself. And afterwards I was
+bitterly sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, darling," he interposed. "You hurt
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't misunderstand, please. It was splendid
+to think that you shared my confidence;
+above all that you had cared for me as
+I had cared for you in the old days.
+But yet I was tortured incessantly. You
+had contracted other ties; there were your
+duties to others, and the tangle was horrible!
+After I left you on that first day I was determined
+that, if I was to be an influence in your
+life at all, I must be the first to keep you true
+to your duties. You and I are enlightened,
+you see. We have the advantage over these
+simpler souls. Therefore we must efface ourselves
+to leave them their simple rights."</p>
+
+<p>He stood humbly; silent before her gentle
+and unanswerable rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>"I struggled terribly with myself. I felt it
+would hardly be right to see you even a second
+time, and I was almost on the point of leaving
+London at once, perhaps without sending you
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+a single line of adieu. But then the thought
+came to me that that perhaps would be a worse
+blunder than the first. My intrusion into your
+life might in that case have disturbed it to no
+purpose. I thought my sudden departure might
+leave a bitter memory for years. So I determined
+to stay long enough to soften the parting
+for both of us&mdash;for me as well as for you. And
+during all the time I meant to influence you to
+be loyal to your engagements. I had made the
+first mistake; on me lay the obligation of
+mending things. I stayed only to mend them!
+That was my sincere motive in asking you to do
+the sketch. I know I have had my moments of
+weakness; it is hard to live with one's hand in
+the fire without flinching now and again.
+Darling, I must go&mdash;far away from you, and
+you must not follow me. Your honour,
+dearest, is precious to me. The thought
+of your perfect loyalty to Alice will help
+me. I only ask you to remember the high
+standard I have set for you. Strive for the
+best; let your watchword be 'No compromise!'
+You will let me go now, darling. Say
+you understand my motives, and forgive me
+if they were mistaken. Perhaps, instead of
+mending things, I have only added mischief to
+mischief. I throw myself on your generosity
+and magnanimity. Promise me you will be the
+truest husband to her, that you will do everything
+in your power to promote her happiness."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+    He seized her hands; his flesh burnt hers.
+"I love you, darling, I love you," he cried
+hoarsely. "I cannot let you go."</p>
+
+<p>She looked him frankly and firmly in the
+face. "Don't break my heart, dear," she said
+gently. "It is as hard for me as it is for you.
+Think, darling, what it might be, if you gave
+her up. If she were to kill herself, our love
+would be a curse to us. Dearest, the face of
+that woman we saw on the Embankment still
+haunts me. It was the face of a woman whose
+heart had been broken. I tell you, dear, that
+if I had not of myself the strength to part from
+you to-night, the awful glimpse I had of her
+face would have given it to me. I have always
+seen where our duty lay; yet I read it in that
+poor face a thousand times more. Darling, it
+must now be goodbye. I shall often think of
+you here, and of this evening&mdash;and of our whole
+glorious day," she added, smiling. "Come, you
+do promise all that I ask of you?"</p>
+
+<p>Her smile and her cheerful note won his
+surrender. "I promise," he said slowly and
+solemnly, yet with distinct decision. "All that
+you have urged on me shall be sacred, shall be
+the principle of my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, darling," she said simply. "I
+believe you, and I trust you absolutely."</p>
+
+<p>They gripped hands, looking each other full
+in the face. The neighbouring church clock
+sounded its preliminary change, then struck
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+two sonorous notes. It recalled them to the
+sense of the night and the silent world without.
+"Come," he said at last. "I will escort you
+back."</p>
+
+<p>They went down, and out into the street
+again. "The clouds and the rain have vanished.
+It is a beautiful night again," she said. "Even
+that helps to soften the moment."</p>
+
+<p>He strolled along by her side; they spoke now
+of matter-of-fact points. If the picture were
+accepted by the Salon he was to send it eventually
+to her father's country-house in the North.
+She hoped, too, he would not entirely forget her
+father, but that he and his wife would call and
+see him at Grosvenor Place&mdash;they could count on
+finding him there most years during the height
+of the London season. And, by the way, she
+was curious to know how the picture would
+fare when it got to Paris. Was the Salon so
+considerate to foreigners that it took the trouble
+to open packing-cases and take care of them?
+Wyndham gravely explained that pictures were
+usually consigned to the good offices of a French
+frame-maker who unpacked and delivered them
+to the Salon, afterwards collecting them and
+sending them back to England when the show
+was over. Some of these people had a large
+foreign clientèle, and put only a moderate value
+on their services. Thus chatting in this trivial
+fashion, they were fortunate to meet a hansom,
+though they had abandoned the hope of one
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+at that hour, and were prepared to stroll all the
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us say goodbye here," she insisted. "It
+is simpler, and perhaps easier. We part just
+as two friends who have met casually."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodbye, then," he said huskily. "I wish
+you many happy days and dreams in your
+wanderings in the sun-lands."</p>
+
+<p>"And I wish you the power to be as great in
+your life as I am sure you will be in your work."
+She held his hand with a gentle pressure.
+"You will be loyal to her," was her last wistful
+whisper. Then she gave him a parting smile,
+full of sweetness and affection, and he heard
+the driver crack his whip, and the horse started
+off briskly.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was left standing on the pavement,
+his head bowed. For a long minute he did not
+stir, and when he roused himself again to look
+after the hansom, it was already in the distance,
+though the trot, trot, of the horse came sharply
+to him. He watched it till it was out of sight,
+then turned slowly and gently homewards.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXVI</h2>
+
+<p>"Father," said Alice Robinson the next morning
+at the breakfast-table, "I want you to find
+some more portraits for us. This whole month
+has to be given up to the big thing for the
+Academy, and then we shall come to a stop for
+the present, at any rate so far as immediately
+remunerative work is concerned, and you must
+not forget we have a heavy rent to pay now."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall certainly keep my weather eye open,"
+declared Mr. Robinson, "and my ears too.
+Portraits in oils are rather the thing just now
+in the City, and I daresay we shall be able to
+find something for you."</p>
+
+<p>"That is nice of you, father. I think I am
+just beginning to like you."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robinson smiled, and looked across at her
+affectionately. "You know it is my greatest
+pleasure to work for you both," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Alice bore his gaze heroically, sustained by
+the curious satisfaction she felt at having thus
+set the never-failing machinery in motion.
+But his trusting belief that all was well touched
+the tenderest chords of her nature. She longed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+to throw herself into his arms, to tell him the
+terrible truth. But why cause him suffering
+when she still hoped to avert it from everybody,
+and let the whole burden rest on her shoulders
+alone? She must do nothing abrupt, nothing
+to cause any trouble or scandal; above all, she
+must pay the most watchful regard to the peace
+of those around her.</p>
+
+<p>For she had seen the quietest and simplest
+solution of the tangle; nobody but herself need
+suffer a single pang! Since she had endured
+so much, she might now as well offer herself
+for the sake of everybody else's happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Such had been her dominating thought, as
+she had lain thinking through the night. And
+the moment had come when she held the
+solution clear in her mind. How glad she was
+that she had decided to live! Her parents had
+been spared a cruel grief, and her affianced
+husband would be left to his happiness without
+any alloy of remorse or tragic memories.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one worthy and rational
+path before her. She must break with Wyndham
+and leave him free. Mr. Shanner wanted
+her; she would give herself to Mr. Shanner.
+His ashen figure, gray-clad, rose before her,
+wistful, pleading, pathetic. She remembered
+his touch of sentiment, his hint of deeper
+feeling&mdash;how he would have treasured her
+promise; how he would have looked forward
+to "the new light to shine in his household."
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+He was good and honourable; full of kind
+actions. She knew that Mr. Shanner had not
+found felicity in his first marriage. After all,
+if she could bring somebody a little happiness
+she might as well do so; and she could make
+this ostensibly the ground for her action. She
+and Wyndham were unsuited to each other&mdash;could
+anything be truer? She had made a
+mistake, since she now found she cared for
+Mr. Shanner, who reciprocated the sentiment,
+and for whom, as regards upbringing and
+ideas, she would make so much more suitable
+a wife. That was less true, and, after her
+surrender of the evening before to her ignobler
+side, she now loathed the idea of playing a
+further part. But the fiction that she cared
+for Mr. Shanner, and her actual marriage with
+him, constituted in essence the sacrifice that
+the position demanded of her. To Mr. Shanner
+she could atone by incessant devotion&mdash;she
+would illumine the light in his household he had
+spoken of so yearningly; her parents would
+be spared all but the first painful surprise;
+to Wyndham the break would come as a
+splendid release. It would restore to him his
+honour and self-respect, since in his eyes, and
+in the world's eyes, she would be taking all
+the blame for his freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham had told her that Lady Lakeden
+was leaving England indefinitely, and that he
+did not know when he was likely to see her
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+again. But Alice now did not believe that. That
+was part of the wall he had been building
+behind which to pursue his romance; she had
+tested things far enough to feel sure of it. And
+even if Lady Lakeden was really going to travel
+for a time, there would be correspondence
+between them, and their relations would be
+renewed on her return. Since he loved this
+woman he should be free to love her openly.</p>
+
+<p>And all the world would be left at peace!</p>
+
+<p>In the days before she had come into his
+consciousness, had she not longed and prayed
+in vain for the joy of helping him to rise again;
+had she not dreamed of stretching out a helping
+hand across the abyss that separated them,
+telling herself that that alone would mean
+supreme happiness for her? It now came
+strongly upon her that that mission had been
+granted her, and the knowledge that she had
+achieved it should help her to be strong! Had
+not her love for him held a perfect unselfishness?
+Was not her goal his happiness before everything?
+Ah, there was far too much self in
+the earthly love of woman for man. This note
+of self, at first so carefully suppressed, had
+yet asserted itself insidiously. Yes, that had
+been the cause of all her suffering&mdash;poignant,
+shattering, almost beyond human endurance.
+It had been wrong of her; she ought to have
+kept closer watch over herself. She had not
+meant to be a source of pain and embarrassment
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+to him. To burden his life with a marriage
+against his heart and true self were hate, not
+love. Let him mate with this brilliant,
+beautiful woman of his own world, who could
+tranquilly breathe the air of the great heights&mdash;of
+Society, of Art&mdash;in which his destiny had
+placed him. What more could she wish him
+than that he should find in life all that he
+desired?&mdash;all the joy, all the achievement, all
+the love! Was not this the supreme self-sacrifice
+of love?</p>
+
+<p>And she must be content with the privilege
+of the high mission that had been hers, nay,
+she must be proud of it&mdash;to have entered into
+his life at his moment of blackest despair,
+and set him on the road to heaven! Let her
+go back into the darkness now with the ecstasy
+of sacrifice for a great love, keeping herself
+for such service to others as she might find to
+her hand.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXVII</h2>
+
+<p>But her mission was not yet complete. She
+thought of his inadequate resources, of the
+uncertainty of the future, if his exhibition
+pictures were not successful with the Press
+and the public. She wished to see him
+embarked on the full tide of success before
+she retired, so that all joy should flow to him
+at once. Her retirement must cause him some
+little emotion, but the intoxication of success
+would soon thrust that aside, and the lapse of
+a day would find him in full appreciation of his
+freedom. The projected period of their engagement
+had of itself three full months to
+run; there was time to withdraw at any
+moment she chose. And these months that
+remained should be devoted to her finding
+more work for him, so that he should be left
+with a substantial balance at his bankers.</p>
+
+<p>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
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+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
+<i>en route</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham, for his part, only rejoiced that
+she seemed so contented and happy; so ready
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the month flew away with almost unprecedented
+rapidity. Show Sunday arrived,
+and the great picture (on which he had worked
+till the last moment) was revealed to the world
+at large. The house was thrown open, the
+empty dining-room improvised into a commodious
+buffet, and the great studio arranged as a
+gallery, with the new portraits and the best of
+the old work all brilliantly framed and lining
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+the walls. Alice's portrait, which had been
+brought across for the occasion, occupied a
+central place of honour immediately facing the
+masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>The function was eminently successful, and a
+great many people of the very pink of fashion
+came to lend it the light of their countenances.
+The Robinsons had worked hard the previous
+fortnight preparing for it, and had arranged
+the house and buffet, and had seen to the framing
+of the pictures, and attended to the catering
+arrangements, without taking a moment of the
+precious time away from Wyndham. Everybody
+said the house was charming and the
+pictures works of genius. People could be
+overheard asking each other, "Well, what do
+you think of it all?" and then eyes would be
+turned up in ecstasy, and faces would glow with
+enthusiasm, and the long-drawn "Beautiful,"
+full of conviction, was the epithet most largely
+utilised. There was in the air the dominant
+note of triumph, the unmistakable feeling of
+Success. Alice, who flitted about quietly, showing
+herself as much as good taste demanded, yet
+by no means in the centre of the world's eye,
+was keenly sensitive to the prevailing spirit of
+the afternoon, feeling closely the pulse of the
+assembly, and she knew at last that Wyndham's
+barque was to sail in full career.</p>
+
+<p>Mary, too, was there, immensely important as
+the host's sister, conducting special friends of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+her own round the walls, and talking ubiquitously
+in an unusual glow of zest and animation.
+If for Alice the occasion happily revealed the
+future, for Mary that future had emphatically
+arrived already!</p>
+
+<p>And in the midst of all the crush Sadler
+arrived, extraordinarily smart in an immaculate
+frock-coat and a beautifully embroidered tie,
+his big powerful face shining with friendliness.
+"Gee! What a swell affair you've got on!" he
+shouted in Wyndham's ear. "I thought there'd
+be something of the kind, you old brute, so I
+rigged myself out."</p>
+
+<p>"You are certainly fascinating," smiled
+Wyndham.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's a jolly good coat!" declared Sadler,
+glancing down at himself. "I gave the tailor
+hell over it. Gee! you've fetched them this
+time! We shan't be able to squeeze past your
+damned picture at the Academy!"</p>
+
+<p>The crowd still kept surging up the stairs,
+and Sadler was swept aside. But Wyndham
+was not only receiving his visitors; with great
+address he was here and there, pointing out his
+Exhibition pictures, explaining his ideas and
+motives, accepting choruses of laudation. He
+had good reason to be elated with this afternoon
+of tribute and foreshadowing!</p>
+
+<p>In the last two or three weeks, moreover,
+Mr. Robinson had been drumming up the further
+commission for which his daughter had enlisted
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+his good services. He had heard that one of
+the great joint-stock banks meditated presenting
+their retiring general manager with his portrait;
+the gift to be made with full ceremonial at the
+next meeting of the shareholders. Mr. Robinson
+was himself an important shareholder, and two
+of the directors were his personal friends, but
+although they worked strongly on his side, he
+had a far more difficult task than usual in
+achieving his purpose. He was forced to expend
+his choicest diplomacy and pull enough strings
+for a piece of international politics, but the
+majority of the directors, who knew what was
+appropriate to the dignity of the bank, wanted
+a full-blown Royal Academician, and were
+strongly in favour of following the lead of
+another great institution, which, under the like
+circumstances, had approached one of the most
+learned of the body Academic, and had honoured
+him and themselves with their command. There
+were dissensions at several board meetings, but
+the opposition, sedulously fanned by Mr. Robinson,
+could not be beaten down. Academicians,
+they argued, sometimes went down woefully in
+the sale-room only a few years after their
+demise. Surely it was better to choose a genius,
+the connection with whom would be everlastingly
+honourable to the bank, whose insight
+might become historic. In the end a small
+sub-committee was appointed to investigate and
+report on the matter. The members of this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+sub-committee were invited to Tite Street for
+Show Sunday, arrived together, were received
+by Wyndham with charming urbanity, had
+every attention showered on them, and were
+greatly impressed by this society gathering.
+They were enchanted at their reception, and,
+being kept and marshalled together, stimulated
+each other's enthusiasm. This great display of
+Wyndham's work astonished and dazzled them.
+Above all, the amazing <i>pièce de résistance</i> of the
+afternoon won their obeisance to the genius.
+They stared at the vast canvas in wonder, at
+once conquered by this crowd of tattered labour
+intermingled with the silk hats and frock-coats
+of Bond Street, the smart brougham rolling
+along with its aristocratic occupant and her
+poodle, the pillared structure in the background,
+the vista of roadway, the trees and the foliage.
+At the buffet they talked it over among themselves,
+and presently Wyndham himself appeared
+again, and with a discreet introduction here and
+there to people of social importance, he quietly
+and swiftly sealed his victory. Such civility
+indeed was the only part that had fallen on him
+in the matter, and the commission was well
+obtained at that outlay of trouble, he told himself,
+since, with so fairly an expensive place on
+his hands, he could not yet despise so solid a
+piece of business. But with the new little heap
+of guineas to accrue from the month's work or
+thereabouts that would be involved, he felt he
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+could face marriage and the beginnings of housekeeping
+with dignity, and yet carry out any
+artistic schemes he might next conceive. And he
+welcomed the work, too, as likely to keep him
+busily occupied during the time his great picture
+was in the balance at the Academy.</p>
+
+<p>When Alice reached home after the reception,
+with the full confidence of his success in her
+heart, she realised the end was now fast approaching.
+The afternoon had excited and
+unnerved her again, and she had once more to
+reassure herself that she had the strength to go
+through with the coming breach. Since her
+memorable secret visit to the studio she had
+borne up with firm strength, but to-night she
+felt frail and broken! A storm of sobbing
+shook her, but when at last she had controlled
+herself she knew that she would never weep
+again for her lost dream of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>And now all things began to go incredibly
+well with Wyndham. No sooner was he
+flourishing and doing work that was well paid
+for, than every other horizon opened out before
+him. The Academy received both his portrait
+of Miss Robinson and his great piece of allegory;
+and a couple of the other paid portraits found
+a niche in the New Gallery. The Salon, too,
+presently notified him of their acceptance of
+Lady Betty's portrait, but that he had really
+been counting on with an almost fatalistic
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+    On varnishing day he was delighted that both
+his Academy exhibits were hung on the line. His
+Press, too, was unmistakably good; the critics
+seemed all to conspire to hail him as the man
+of the year. At the clubs those who knew him
+accosted him enthusiastically, came thronging
+round and pressing hospitality upon him. There
+were so many anxious to "get" him for this
+and that occasion, to take possession of him,
+and have the honour of dragging him here and
+there. New names and faces bombarded him,
+and even his own special coterie were anxious
+to intensify their various degrees of intimacy
+with him, contending for the privilege of entertaining
+him, of being able to boast of an almost
+proprietorial friendship. In Society, too, he felt
+himself the object of a curious <i>empressement</i>;
+on all sides he was courted and flattered, and
+rival dealers were inquiring the price he set on
+his wares. It was the stampede of the world
+to acclaim Success!</p>
+
+<p>Well might his eyes be dazzled by all this
+glare of sunshine! Was not this success as
+persistent as the failure that had been his lot
+previously? It made him think of the run of
+red that sometimes followed a run of black at
+roulette. He was indeed a public personage
+now! And rolling in prosperity to boot!</p>
+
+<p>A touch of worldly bitterness indeed lingered
+with him; there was the remembrance of the
+lean years behind him. But his nature was too
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+mercurial, too affable and genial, to dwell on
+that aspect of his career for long. He took all
+this homage very seriously, and thought tremendously
+well of himself as an artist, walking
+through the world with elastic step and as one
+of the elect of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in the still moments when he sat alone at
+night with his lamp for sole company, he would
+lose himself in reverie; and then he would feel
+saddened ineffably by the ironic side of the case,
+since the more brilliant the success that came
+to him, the deeper his sense of the mockery of
+things! How splendid if the woman he loved
+were by his side to share it all with him! How
+near too he had come to attainment, yet destiny
+had played him this shameful, this merciless
+trick!</p>
+
+<p>And just as his absorption in work had helped
+him hitherto in the situation, so now this new
+excitement of business and the world coloured
+his everyday demeanour and conversation;
+wrapped the Robinsons, too, in the whirl of
+busy interests, and carried him safely towards
+the inevitable time when he must seriously
+discuss the date of the wedding.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXVIII</h2>
+
+<p>One morning early, towards the end of May,
+Alice sat down at her desk, and wrote the
+following brief letter to Mr. Shanner.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">My Dear Friend</span>,&mdash;I owe you an acknowledgment.
+When you ventured to raise the
+question of the wisdom of my engagement to
+Mr. Wyndham, you were right in one respect.
+He is in every way a man of honour, and I have
+nothing against him. But, as the time goes by,
+it grows upon me more and more that he and
+I have made a mistake, as you were first to see,
+and that we are not suited to each other. His
+world and his ideas of life are not mine, and I
+have decided that it is wiser for me not to
+attempt to adapt myself to them. I recognise
+this before it is too late, and I have determined,
+not lightly, but after full and serious consideration,
+to draw back. I promised you that I
+should let you know if ever I arrived at such
+a conclusion. I now carry out my promise."</p>
+
+
+<p>She directed it to his office, carefully marking
+it "Personal and Confidential." Shortly after
+noon she was startled by the rat-tat of a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+telegraph boy. "Approve of your decision with
+all my heart. Please remember that I am the
+first applicant for the privilege." Such was
+the answer he had flashed back the moment
+her letter had reached him, and the perusal of
+it gave her the satisfaction that accompanies
+the realisation step by step of an elaborate
+purpose. "So be it," she exclaimed. "To-day
+I shall ask for my release."</p>
+
+<p>Wyndham was expecting her to join him at
+the studio. They were to dine together, then
+go to a Paderewski recital. But now she
+decided she would not go. What good to face
+him personally? Besides, it was easier to feel
+that she had already seen him for the last time.
+She went back to her desk, and began the
+laborious composition of a long letter. On and
+on she wrote, breaking off only to join her
+mother at lunch, and returning to her desk at
+the earliest moment. She had covered several
+sheets, when brusquely she changed her mind.
+Perhaps this was not really fair to him, and,
+besides, he might feel he ought to come to the
+house to see her again. Surely they might at
+least shake hands and part as friends. So she
+tore up the letter, and went to prepare herself
+for the journey to Chelsea. "I have been brave
+all through," she murmured; "and I mustn't
+spoil it at the end by turning coward. I am
+taking all the blame&mdash;let me be strong enough
+to take it face to face with him."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+    And now she was impatient to have done with
+it all. Her mission was ended. So, although
+he would not be looking for her yet, she would
+descend on him, even at the risk of disturbing
+him. The commission from the bank had
+already been completed, and at present he was
+making cartoons and sketches for new pictures.
+But he would be all the more grateful afterwards
+that she had not delayed her coup.</p>
+
+<p>She got into a hansom, which, choosing its
+route through unobstructed back streets, arrived
+at her goal wonderfully soon. She got down
+firmly, paid the driver, and walked up the steps
+unfalteringly. She felt her calm and self-control
+as a great blessing; she had so long
+schooled herself for this moment, and it was
+splendid to feel how actual a fact was her
+resignation, how completely ingrained in her
+this acceptance of the inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>She let herself in with her key for the last
+time, and put it on the hall table lest she should
+forget to leave it afterwards. Then she went
+upstairs, and tapped gently at the door of the
+studio, though it stood half open. She found
+Wyndham in a mood that was even a shade
+more affable than usual. Indeed, he seemed
+almost light-hearted to-day as he came forward
+with a friendly alertness to greet her, and
+pressed his lips affectionately to her forehead,
+and wheeled forward a chair for her. She was
+in a close-fitting coat and skirt, of a heliotrope
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+shade, and there were roses in her hat. But, in
+spite of this burst of spring gaiety, her face
+retained the marked pallor that had characterised
+it of late. He indeed observed it for the
+first time.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have a little of this light
+Chambery," he said. "It clears the head and
+nerves. I remembered I used to have a glass
+at the Café des Lilas in the old days whenever
+I felt done up, so I laid in a few bottles."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I seem so unusually flurried?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, but he saw at once that the note
+was forced, and began to suspect that something
+was amiss.</p>
+
+<p>"It's rather close to-day&mdash;the heat has come
+upon us all of a rush. It's sure to be crowded
+and stuffy at the concert to-night. Now do try
+my remedy, child."</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't mind, we'll not go to the
+concert."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means," he agreed. "We'll dine early,
+take a stroll on the Embankment, and if there's
+a boat going up or down, it doesn't matter
+which, we'll get on, and see where it takes us.
+Not a bad idea, little girl, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," she said, "but I meant that we
+were not to pass the evening together at all. I
+came now, instead of later on, to see you and
+talk to you."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her hard. "You rather mystify
+me."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+    "I'm sorry," she said again. "I sat down to
+write you a long letter to-day," she resumed,
+after an almost imperceptible hesitation. "In
+fact, I really began it, or rather I wrote a good
+many pages, and then I thought it would be
+fairer and braver to come here to you at once
+instead."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned up against the table for support.
+"My dear child, I don't in the least understand
+your drift&mdash;I am bewildered."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled wanly; yet the smile of one about
+to set forth in a cool, reasonable way a case that
+needed exposition, and that necessarily must
+carry conviction. "I was writing to ask you
+a favour. Now I have come to ask for it in
+person."</p>
+
+<p>"It is yours to command." He inclined his
+head graciously and gallantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You are sweet to me, as always," she
+returned. "But, as you will see, I am quite
+undeserving of your graciousness on this present
+occasion."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. "Modest as usual, my dear
+child! I'm afraid it's going to be one of the
+tasks of my life to impress you with a sense
+of your own merits."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't say any more nice things to
+me," she implored. "Your kindness hurts me."</p>
+
+<p>He looked hard at her again, then passed his
+hand across his face. "Let me see," he said;
+"where were we? I confess I'm rather confused.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+Ah, yes, you said you preferred that we
+shouldn't go to the concert."</p>
+
+<p>She drew her breath hard; her bosom
+palpitated. "Because I want you to set me
+free altogether." Her face was suddenly on
+fire, but an exultation thrilled through her. At
+last the words had been spoken; she was near
+the end.</p>
+
+<p>But she felt his eyes upon her; she saw his
+face set in a strange expression, half-vacant,
+half-surprised. "To set you free?" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"To break off our engagement," she launched
+out. "Oh, I know it is horrible of me," she
+went on quickly, feeling herself giving way at
+this moment of trial, despite all her fortitude
+and all her schooling. She saw that his lips
+made as if he were about to speak, but, dreading
+to hear him yet, she gathered up her force
+and hurried on piteously. "Please don't think
+that I have anything against you, that you are
+in the least to blame. You have been chivalrous
+and kind throughout. The responsibility must
+all rest on my shoulders."</p>
+
+<p>He winced at the pain she was visibly enduring,
+the expression of her eyes, the convulsive
+catch of her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"But what on earth has come between us?"
+he exclaimed, in a sort of dull despair. He felt
+no joyous glow at the return of his liberty.
+The occasion seemed too miserably tragic, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+his human association with her had made him
+care for her enough to be deeply distressed at
+the agony under which she was labouring.
+Even now, if it could have made her happy,
+if it could have induced her to withdraw all she
+had said, he would have taken her hand tenderly,
+and melted away every cloud between
+them. "Yesterday all was well, and to-day&mdash;&mdash;"
+He gave a gesture of blank bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"I have arrived at the conviction that we are
+not suited for each other, that I am not the sort
+of woman to make your life all that it should
+be."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come," he said. "I am surprised to find
+such morbid nonsense running in your head."</p>
+
+<p>She was taken aback at this resistance on his
+part; and she rightly set it down to pure
+fraternal consideration for her. She let herself
+go now; best to give her explanation at full
+length.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not a sudden impulse I have yielded to,
+or a passing wave of depression," she urged,
+trying to conjure up the ghost of a smile again.
+"Believe me, I have seen the right path before
+me only after the deepest consideration."</p>
+
+<p>He interrupted her with a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"But what has come between us?" he insisted
+again. "You do not say you have ceased to
+love me."</p>
+
+<p>With a great effort she looked straight at
+him. "Yes," she said with steady voice, and no
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+physical flinching. "I have ceased to love you.
+I searched into my heart before it was too late,
+and I found my affections had gone to another."</p>
+
+<p>A flash of understanding seemed to come to
+him. "Mr. Shanner!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>She averted her eyes. "He was my friend
+before I knew you," she pleaded, as if driven
+to defence.</p>
+
+<p>"I see now you are perfectly serious," he
+murmured, hurt at last, and firmly believing
+her. "Does love come and go in women with
+such momentary capriciousness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," she said with a weird dreaminess.
+"It comes and goes like the blossoming of a
+flower in the sunlight&mdash;beautiful for the day
+or two it lives. My love for you is dead. I
+should not be happy with you, so why make the
+pretence? I should not ask you to forgive me,
+only I am not worth your remembrance for any
+reason. Let us shake hands and part not too
+bitterly."</p>
+
+<p>He stood silent, his head bowed. There was
+no thought in his mind, only a sense of shame
+and of poignant regret.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, it is for the best," she resumed,
+trying to smile. "And be assured, the guilty
+party alone shall be condemned, should the
+world discuss us!" She held out her hand. He
+took it and held it gently, in sign that he bore
+her no ill-will.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXIX</h2>
+
+<p>In the first profound depression into which this
+unforeseen occurrence had plunged him, Wyndham
+remained totally indifferent to his freedom.
+His thought in a feeble way reached out, recalling
+her words, lingering on her crowning confession.
+Suddenly he laughed out aloud. How
+much greater the irony of his life than even he
+had imagined! For the second time he and
+Lady Betty had come together, only voluntarily
+to part that they might not disturb the happiness
+of this other life! How they had tortured
+themselves; how Lady Betty had sought
+deliberate martyrdom, staying near him only
+long enough to school him to perfect loyalty to
+Alice! "Whilst I was fretting my heart away,"
+his lips murmured, "lest I should wound her
+with a chance word, she was vibrating again
+towards her own kind, and was planning her
+retreat. Surely the gods are pulling the strings
+and making us poor puppets dance for their
+amusement!"</p>
+
+<p>And then he thought of the Hampstead street
+miles away, where he had passed so many years
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+of his life in suffering and degradation; and the
+sense of its distance helped him. Were he still
+in the old studio, the sense of the Robinsons'
+house within a stone's throw would have been
+intolerable. He would hardly have dared to
+set foot out of doors for fear of the painful
+accident of stumbling up against one of the
+family. He desired no further explanations and
+apologies. He shuddered at the very idea.
+Here at least he could take shelter silently
+within his own pride.</p>
+
+<p>And the thought of his pride made him rise
+up again, and pace to and fro vigorously. It
+was beneath him to admit that that had been
+wounded. But he came to a standstill, and the
+blood rushed to his temples at the abrupt
+remembrance that all the prosperity and success
+that must still remain his had come to
+him through the Robinsons. Were not the
+humiliating evidences here before his eyes?
+This charming house and studio, the successful
+pictures hung in the galleries, the money at his
+bankers, the promise of unlimited treasure yet
+to flow into his coffers, the acclamation of the
+world and his social lionising&mdash;how much of all
+this would have been achieved without the
+timely co-operation of the Robinsons? He
+staggered in moral agony under the burden of
+good they had heaped on him so lavishly.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of course could be undone. Wisest
+to acquiesce silently, and start forward afresh
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
+from the point at which he stood. But since
+it was now only the end of May, and the best
+of the season was yet to follow, he felt that to
+stay in London would be intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>The world seemed to swarm with people, all
+intent on chattering about his affairs, on discussing
+and misunderstanding this sensation in
+the life of the lion of the season. A lovely titbit
+for the social gossips to relish! He could
+not possibly meet people, shake their hands,
+answer their stupid questions, listen to the
+hateful sympathy of the more intimate. He
+must shut up the house and fly from London.
+But where could he hide himself for the time?</p>
+
+<p>He resumed his pacing to and fro, sometimes
+perambulating the studio to vary his movement.
+So far he was under the influence of the first
+excitement attendant on the rupture. Whatever
+his astonishment at having been ousted in the
+affections of a woman by a man whom he had
+more or less despised, whose rivalry he had
+brushed aside as easily as a cobweb; the bare
+idea that a broken engagement should figure in
+his life was so distasteful that it made the
+wound to his mere vanity a secondary matter.
+He could not at once extricate his mind from
+the contemplation of these immediate bearings
+of the event. His relation to Lady Betty,
+indeed, was present to him, but he had not
+yet turned the flood of his thought in that
+direction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+    In the reaction of feeling, however, when the
+first sting and shock had somewhat lightened, it
+was natural for his whole soul to turn to Lady
+Betty longingly; not with the joyous impulse
+of one unexpectedly free to claim his true
+comrade, but like a bruised child to find relief
+for his hurt. But how to reach her again he
+did not know. So thorough had been their
+sacrifice that he had even promised never to
+write to her. Besides, letters would only follow
+her if sent through a certain banker, whose
+name she had withheld from him. And though
+now he felt that circumstances absolved him
+from the promise, he did not care that such a
+letter as he must write, once he put pen to
+paper, should go to her father's deserted
+house, and thence be tossed about the world
+in perhaps a futile pursuit, with the possible
+fate of being read in a dead-letter office, and
+finally returned to him. He would wait awhile.
+Perhaps, if the gossip got abroad, it might by
+some circuitous route arrive even as far as
+Lady Betty's ears, and then no doubt she would
+announce her whereabouts to him. The pressing
+problem before him was to decide on his
+own plans for the immediate present.</p>
+
+<p>How stale and tired he was! How terribly
+he had toiled these past months, sustained by
+he knew not what mysterious energy. It
+seemed almost as if he had exerted a supernatural
+strength, and the work he had accomplished
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+might well have claimed double the
+period. And now, something had suddenly
+gone snap. He was finished; a mere hollow
+shell of a man.</p>
+
+<p>His mind turned again towards other climes
+and other skies. It seemed so long since he
+had crossed the Channel; so many years indeed
+that it was hateful to count them. It reminded
+him too much of the big slice of his life, the
+years of his prime, that had been so miserably
+sterile.</p>
+
+<p>But his face brightened as his thought played
+again amid the haunts of his early manhood.
+Ah, those were happy times&mdash;the work in the
+schools, the discussions in the café, the pleasant
+camaraderie, the freedom to laugh, to feel
+master of one's own soul. The brilliance and
+green avenues of Paris beckoned him; his
+blood beat pleasurably. And then of course
+there was his portrait of Lady Betty in the
+Salon. What better shrine for a pilgrimage!</p>
+
+<p>He would linger a little in Paris, then proceed
+further South. He was not of the great crowd
+that refuses to venture in those regions during
+the summer. He knew well how to adapt himself
+to the conditions, and the lands of the South
+would be soon in their full glory. His imagination
+dwelt on the prospect, and sunshine broke
+in on his mood. Perhaps, too, there was the
+hope, deep in his heart, that he might encounter
+Lady Betty somewhere&mdash;by some charming
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+train of events! Heigho for the orange trees,
+for the old Italian palaces, the Venetian canals,
+the coast-line of Salerno! He would make
+a leisurely progression, working a little as
+he went&mdash;just a few distinguished sketches,
+odd impressions of light and beauty caught
+on the wing! Late in the year when time had
+done its work, when the wretched affair was
+forgotten, and himself recovered from the
+sordid experience, he might return to London.
+But never here to this studio again!</p>
+
+<p>The prospect of departure stirred him! "Here
+I cannot breathe another day!" he kept murmuring
+to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Then why not start this very evening?</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at his watch; it was not yet
+four. There would be time to dash round to a
+local bank and provide himself with funds for
+the start. But on investigation he found he
+had enough to take him to Paris, so he could
+devote the whole time to his preparations and
+necessary correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>And no sooner was the decision arrived at
+than he adjusted his outlook to it as an accomplished
+fact. Without any further delay, he got
+ready his trunk and dressing-case, and started
+his packing in earnest.</p>
+
+<p>The train left at nine that evening. He had
+five good hours to catch it. So he worked
+deliberately and carefully, overlooking nothing
+in the haste of departure. Lady Betty's wizard,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>
+his most cherished possession, went down deep
+into the trunk, and he did not forget his cheque-book
+and his private papers. Otherwise, everything
+was in such excellent order that his task
+was comparatively simple. Whatever he lacked
+for his journey he could count on purchasing in
+Paris, where also he could renew his funds for
+travelling.</p>
+
+<p>At last everything was ready, and he had
+ample time for his correspondence. This was
+speedily disposed of, since his letters were
+mostly to cry "off" from invitations already
+accepted. Only one was of a more intimate
+character, and that was to his sister Mary.
+But even that was brief and to the point.
+"Dearest Mary," he wrote,&mdash;"I regret I have
+rather disagreeable news for you, but I trust
+you will not take too serious a view of it. Alice
+asked me to release her to-day, and of course
+I had no alternative but to accede to her wishes.
+I cannot bear to stay in London just now, so I
+leave this evening for a long stay abroad.
+Forgive this brief note, forgive me also for not
+coming to kiss you goodbye, but, as you may
+guess, I am off on impulse, time is short, and
+there were a few matters to arrange. Perhaps
+you may be able to join me later when your
+vacation comes, and then we shall have a happy
+time together. I am all right, so please don't
+worry about me. I shall write to you soon, and
+keep you posted as to my adventures."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+    He took out the batch of letters to the post,
+picking up a cab on his way back. In a few
+minutes his traps were on the roof, and he was
+being driven to the station.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was a serene summer night, and the
+crossing was ideal. As he promenaded the
+deck, and looked into the spacious darkness, and
+let the breeze play free about his face, the sense
+of strain and fatigue, all the broken feeling
+that remained from the stress of his tussle with
+the world, seemed to be swept away. His early
+manhood, when he had gone to and fro as he
+listed, began to stir in him again, and the
+consciousness of mature power and ripe experience
+which were now added to it awakened
+an almost overweening sense of well-being and
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>The episode of his broken engagement already
+began to look absurd rather than tragic in this
+new spirited mood of his. The whole thing seemed
+beneath his dignity. Of course, in some ways,
+he would always look back upon it as a bitterly
+unpleasant incident; but, in this life, you were
+necessarily called upon to be a stoic in some
+degree. The point was to choose the degree
+yourself. In face of unpleasant things stoicism
+was no doubt the wisest; but where good things
+were concerned it was best to preserve all the
+fresh feelings of the natural human being.</p>
+
+<p>The Robinsons were already receding into the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
+mists of distance. Despite the reality and the
+closeness of his connection with them, they were
+taking their place among the shadows that
+peopled the past. His own vision was turned
+forward&mdash;ever forward!</p>
+
+<p>"Strange," he thought, "how things and
+people cease to have any consequence, once you
+have turned your back upon them!"</p>
+
+<p>The night passed like a dream. In the train
+from Calais to Paris he dozed lightly, and woke
+only at dawn. The sky was cloudless and wonderfully
+blue, but the sun shone as yet coldly
+over the landscape, and the fat fields sparkled
+with dew. Save for the quiet herds of cattle, the
+world was deserted. Immediately all his faculties
+were pleasurably alert again. He noticed
+with delight the hamlets and sleeping villages,
+the still wayside stations where moustachioed
+old women, who surely dated from the Revolution,
+stood on guard with flags at the cross-ways.
+At last they were running through the
+environs of the capital, and Wyndham tasted
+the sensation of entering the great city of light
+and intellect as keenly as in his jubilant boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>The drive through Paris in the early morning
+was exhilarating and enchanting. At that hour
+the streets at first were surprisingly thronged, the
+roadway sometimes blocked with a heavy traffic
+of carts all converging to the Halles. But soon
+they were passing through quieter neighbourhoods,
+through stately avenues lined by vast
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+hotels with far-stretching lines of shuttered
+windows. Wyndham surrendered himself to
+the charm of steeping himself again in this
+atmosphere, drawing freer breaths, subtly
+attuned to it, aided by golden memories.</p>
+
+<p>The brisk buxom matron, who was already
+at her post in the hotel bureau, recognised her
+old client, and welcomed him with a cry of joy.
+Her face beamed with pleasure as he shook
+hands with her, and he had a joyous sense of
+home-coming!</p>
+
+<p>"But one has not seen you for eternities," she
+exclaimed. "We had thought that you had
+quite abandoned us!"</p>
+
+<p>"The loss has been more mine than yours,
+madame," he returned. "I should have
+announced my arrival beforehand, if I had
+not left London so suddenly."</p>
+
+<p>Presently he took possession of his room, and,
+as it was not yet seven, he sank into an arm-chair
+and dozed for a time. At nine he
+awoke, washed, changed into more civilised
+clothes, then strolled out cheerfully on to the
+Boulevards, and had his morning coffee at a
+little table in the open, with a budget of French
+papers to look through, and the spectacle of the
+passing world in the sunshine for his entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>He sat on for a long while in leisurely enjoyment,
+then proceeded to stroll by way of the
+Place de la Concorde (which looked vaster and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+finer than it had ever appeared to him) round
+to the great Palace of Art off the Champs
+Elysées. It had sprung up during these years
+of his absence, and he wandered round
+it delightedly, examining all the façades,
+familiarising himself with all the points of
+view.</p>
+
+<p>At last he entered through the nearest turnstile
+and went straight to see how Lady Betty's
+portrait was hung.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>But Wyndham did not linger in Paris as he
+had intended. He had found Lady Betty
+beautifully placed on the line, and had returned
+to her daily, not to gaze at the painting, but
+at the features of the woman he loved. And
+then there surged in him a fever of impatience.
+He had not the least hope of finding her here
+in Paris&mdash;he took it for granted she had long
+since seen the Salon, and he had the strangely
+settled belief&mdash;he did not know why&mdash;that she
+was not then in France at all. And somehow
+he was unable to conceive of himself now save
+as actively in search of her. All the first impulsion
+towards holiday and repose that had
+swept him headlong across the Channel had
+mysteriously died away, to give place to this
+haunting, this imperious, idea of a mission. He
+must push on with it at once!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+    He chose his route largely haphazard, yet
+zigzagging through her favourite cities. His
+heart thrilled with hope as he was borne again
+through the outskirts, and Paris lay behind him.
+In this dash through Europe, the happy chance
+might perhaps befall him! He knew the quest
+in that way was wholly irrational, but it had
+its charm. He might pass within a stone's
+throw of her a score of times, and yet remain
+unconscious of the proximity. A billion to one
+at least against him!</p>
+
+<p>Yet he pursued his journey feverishly; passing
+through Belgium swiftly, thence to Dresden
+by stages, then hurrying down to Munich, next
+on to Vienna, and passing further southwards;
+vibrating off the beaten path at every turn;
+staying here a day, there a night, rarely anywhere
+longer; guided by no principle, but
+darting about at random, often doubling back
+on his track, and yielding to every fantastic
+impulse that rose in him.</p>
+
+<p>At Belgrade, where he found himself some
+four weeks after leaving Paris (though the days,
+packed with changing scenes and impressions,
+had seemed to run into months), he had an inspiration,
+and abruptly took the train straight
+back again. Might not Lady Betty gravitate
+once more to the portrait, before the Salon
+closed its doors for the season? Even though
+it was to be her own possession in the end,
+she might well desire to pay it that tribute.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>
+Had it not given them their brief companionship
+in avowed affection? He would haunt
+the Salon daily; he would wait and watch for
+her. He journeyed all day, all night, and all
+the next day, impelled by the same fever of
+impatience, which now oppressed him tenfold.
+He stepped out of the train in the evening amid
+the bustle and lights of the terminus. He was
+in Paris again! He breathed with relief as at
+a goal accomplished.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXX</h2>
+
+<p>One blue summer morning, Wyndham, for
+the twentieth time at least, entered the Salon
+through his customary turnstile, and stood in
+the great central court, under the crystal roof,
+amid the gleaming display of statuary. There
+was already a goodly number of people about;
+not yet a crowd, but enough for the costumes
+and hats of the fair sex to colour the whole
+place like a flower-garden. He moved about
+among them for awhile, his eye keen and
+ready; then ascended the staircase, and entered
+the nearest doorway. He spent an hour or two
+in leisurely progression through the galleries,
+long since familiar with all the pictures, and
+staying only before the interesting ones, yet
+with attention ever on the alert.</p>
+
+<p>At last he had set foot in the particular room,
+which was to him the shrine, the inner
+sanctuary, of this Temple of the Arts. It was
+already crowded here, and his first impression
+was of a mass of silk hats and beflowered
+millinery rather than of pictures. He hesitated
+in the doorway an instant, then began the slow
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>
+tour of the room, pausing before every picture
+in turn, so as to indulge in the pleasurable
+make-believe of coming on Lady Betty again
+suddenly. Gradually he worked his way along
+and it was not till he had come again within
+reach of his starting-point that his own
+frame gleamed on his vision. He manoeuvred
+through a bevy of ladies, and then found
+himself side by side with a girlish figure in a
+light flowered muslin costume and a pretty
+hat trimmed with violets. He had stepped
+quite close to her out of the crowd, by which
+she had been entirely hidden; but, his eyes
+drawn imperiously to the portrait of Lady
+Betty, he was merely aware of his neighbour as
+one of the crowd, and he did not even look at
+her definitely. He saw just her gloved hand
+holding her catalogue, and, in a vague way, he
+wondered what she was thinking of the picture.
+He felt rather than saw that his neighbour had
+stepped back a little, as if naturally to make
+way for him. Then some mysterious impulse
+made him turn, and their eyes met. In all
+those winter days that were past he had never
+seen her so bright and gracious as she appeared
+now, clad for the summer, and in this sparkling
+universe. Never before had those violet
+eyes shone with so perfect a light, as of the full
+freshness of childhood. Yet her face was pallid
+and awestruck as she gazed at him. But a wild
+joy sang at his heart, and he felt his blood
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>
+pulsing with a glad note that seemed to be at
+one with the note that sang to him from
+horizons of enchantment opening before him;
+at one, too, with the note that sang to him out
+of all this exquisite Paris!</p>
+
+<p>"I am free," he whispered. "Do you understand?
+Free!"</p>
+
+<p>"Free?"</p>
+
+<p>He divined rather than heard the breathed
+exclamation from the movement of her lips&mdash;read
+the amazed questioning of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not broken my promise to you!"
+The crowd surged round them, struggling to see
+his picture, ejaculating banal words of admiration.
+"You do not doubt!" he whispered
+tensely.</p>
+
+<p>The blood came back to her face at last.
+"No! But the how?&mdash;the why?"</p>
+
+<p>"She sought her release!"</p>
+
+<p>"She suspected the truth!" She was pale
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"We cheated ourselves. She cared for one of
+her own kind. Our renunciation was an irony."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Betty bent her head. Her brow was
+wrinkled for a moment in thought, and her
+hand trembled visibly.</p>
+
+<p>"An irony&mdash;no," she said gently. "We were
+true to ourselves&mdash;the future lies the fairer
+before us."</p>
+
+<p>The press around them grew closer.</p>
+
+<p>"Mais c'est chic ça!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
+    "Un beau talent!"</p>
+
+<p>"C'est exquis!"</p>
+
+<p>She took his arm, as if seeking freer air, and
+they moved through the throng that continued
+its compliments, unsuspecting of the proximity
+of either artist or subject. They stood at last
+on the great balcony, and looked down on
+the splendid court agleam with sculpture and
+greenery.</p>
+
+<p>"I have searched Europe for you!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"This great change in our lives&mdash;it is too
+wonderful to grasp all at once," she murmured
+musingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not see why we should not stroll round
+to the Embassy now, and inquire," he suggested
+stoutly.</p>
+
+<p>"Inquire about what?" she asked, her deep
+absent look changing to bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"As to when they can marry us, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see," she said, with a quick smile; but
+her glance was inward again.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think me precipitate?" he asked
+uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"I am thinking of Alice," she returned. "I
+could have sworn she was the soul of constancy."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The End.</span></h4>
+
+<h5>UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRAHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.</h5>
+
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 334]<br />[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
+<h3>LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY</h3>
+<h1>BROWN, LANGHAM &amp; CO.,</h1>
+<h3>78 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W.</h3>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Life of the Right Hon Thomas Burt, M.P.</h2>
+<h3>By AARON WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">With Portrait and Illustrations. 8vo. 15s. net.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burt's life is indissolubly bound up with the rise of the Labour
+Movement in this country.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"Mr. Aaron Watson places at the beginning of his deeply interesting biography of
+Mr. Thomas Burt the following tribute, paid to the veteran labour leader by Earl Grey:
+'The finest gentleman I ever knew was a working miner in England, whose gentleness,
+absolute fairness, instinctive horror of anything underhand or mean, or anything that
+was not the strictest fair-play, gave him a character that enabled him to rise to the
+position of Privy Councillor.' Never was eulogy better deserved.... Mr. Burt's host
+of friends will be grateful to Mr. Aaron Watson for his excellent work."&mdash;<i>Daily News.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>The Automobilist Abroad.</h2>
+<h3>By FRANCIS MILTOUN.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Author of "Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine," "Cathedrals of
+Northern France," &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p class="center">With Illustrations and Decorations by BLANCHE McMANUS, a number
+being in full colour. 8vo. boxed. 10s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Miltoun's new book of travel "<i>en automobile</i>" is the record of
+hundreds of miles of motoring through regions rich in beautiful views, in
+strange costumes, and quaint peoples, whose pictured and narrated charms
+form a volume of exceptional attractiveness.</p>
+
+<p>The trip is across seven frontiers, through the British Isles, France,
+Belgium, Holland, and Germany, and contains much of historical sentiment
+and romance that could only have been gleaned by leisurely travellers.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>England and America, 1763 to 1783.</h2>
+<h3>The History of a Reaction.</h3>
+<h3>By MARY A. M. MARKS.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">2 vols. Demy 8vo, gilt top. £1 10s. net.</p>
+
+<p>An important historical work dealing with the War of Independence.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Letters of Christina Rossetti.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With Memoir and Introduction.</h2>
+<h3>By W. M. ROSSETTI.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Many interesting Portraits and Facsimiles. 8vo. 15s. net. <i>Shortly.</i></p>
+
+<p>Miss Rossetti had many correspondents among the distinguished artists
+and literary personages of the day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Diary of Dr. Polidori.</h2>
+<h4>Edited, with Introduction and Notes by his nephew,</h4>
+<h3>W. M. ROSSETTI.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s. net. <i>Shortly.</i></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Polidori was travelling physician to Lord Byron during his tour in
+Europe in 1816. His diary gives an account of this tour, in which Shelley
+and many other interesting personages appear.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Second Edition.</span></h4>
+<h2>Some Reminiscences.</h2>
+<h3>By W. M. ROSSETTI.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">2 Vols. 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top. 42s. net.</p>
+
+<p>This important work contains a full account of the early days of the
+Rossetti family,  with most interesting side-lights of the <span style="white-space:nowrap;">Pre-Raphaelite</span>
+movement, and the literary and artistic career of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti. The volumes are illustrated with numerous reproductions, very
+few of which have been published before. Mr. Rossetti's "Reminiscences"
+are very complete, dating from his birth in London, 1829, down to the
+present day. Most of the great names in the art and literature of this
+epoch are to be met with in his pages.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>The Western Avernus</h2>
+<h3>By MORLEY ROBERTS.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth gilt. Price 3s. 6d.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"All who think of going to the far West of America or British Columbia, would do
+well to read this book carefully before booking their passage."&mdash;<i>To-Day.</i></p>
+
+<p>"These powerful sketches of life in the Western States of America are written from
+first-hand knowledge, and are memorable pictures of a period which has largely passed
+away."&mdash;<i>Echo.</i></p>
+
+<p>"This story of his wanderings and hardships in Western America reads like a novel&mdash;even
+like a novel by Mr. Roberts himself. As a picture of earlier days in British
+Columbia, it should soon be invaluable."&mdash;<i>St. James's Gazette.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Moons and Winds of Araby.</h2>
+<h3>By ROMA WHITE.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth gilt. 5s.</p>
+
+<p>Amusing sketches of official life in Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Pranks in Provence.</h2>
+<h3>By PERCY WADHAM, A.R.E.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">With coloured Cover-design by Cecil Aldin. Profusely Illustrated.<br />
+Square 8vo, gilt top. 5s.</p>
+
+<p>An amusing skit on modern books of travel.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Si Mihi</h2>
+<h3>By "Egomet."</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo. 3s. net.</p>
+
+<p>A volume of thoughtful, personal essays, by a new writer of very
+considerable promise.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Going Through the Mill.</h2>
+<h3>By Mrs. GERALD PAGET.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, gilt top. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"It is impossible to deny the force of much which she avers. She throbs with
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+vote; certainly the case could not more effectively be put. The beauty of the
+language and the intense conviction which lies behind the polemic cannot be gainsaid.
+In many respects Mrs. Paget contrives to say fresh things on old subjects, and certain
+very awkward subjects are most delicately handled."&mdash;<i>Liverpool Post.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Auction Bridge.</h2>
+<h3>By VANE PENNELL.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">2s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p>A treatise on the new variation of bridge as now generally played.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"To any lover of bridge the new game will prove most fascinating, and intending
+players cannot do better than study Mr. Vane Pennell's book."&mdash;<i>Western Mail.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p>
+<h1>POETRY.</h1>
+<h2>Nineveh and other Poems.</h2>
+<h3>By GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Viereck is a poet who will have to be reckoned with seriously.
+The son of a German father and an American mother, he has "listened to
+the music of two worlds." This volume is his introduction to English
+readers.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>FICTION.</h1>
+<h2>An Engagement of Convenience.</h2>
+<h3>By LOUIS ZANGWILL.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"He is one of the forces to be counted with in contemporary literature.... Mr.
+Louis Zangwill is bound to travel far."&mdash;<i>Weekly Sun.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>The Brotherhood of Wisdom.</h2>
+<h3>By FRANCES J. ARMOUR.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<p class="center">A Story dealing with the occult.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Follow Up!</h2>
+<h3>By ARCHIBALD D. FOX.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<p class="center">A Story of Harrow School.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Faith Unfaithful.</h2>
+<h3>By FRED E. WYNNE.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Author of "Fortune's Fool." 6s.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A Mirror of Folly.</h2>
+<h3>By HAROLD WINTLE.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"A powerful tale of modern society."&mdash;<i>Spectator.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>The Barony of Brendon.</h2>
+<h3>By E. H. LACON WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"The plot is excellent and it is handled with delicacy."&mdash;<i>Daily News.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Cannot but add to his already considerable reputation."&mdash;<i>Daily Mail.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Fortune's Fool.</h2>
+<h3>By FRED E. WYNNE.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"A remarkable achievement for a first book."&mdash;<i>Daily Graphic.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>The Nancy Manoeuvres.</h2>
+<h3>By CHARLES GLEIG.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"A very droll mixture of Fleet Street, Bohemia, and life on board a
+man-of-war."&mdash;<i>Country Life.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>The Feast of Bacchus.</h2>
+
+<h3>By ERNEST G. HENHAM.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>One or Two.</h2>
+<h3>By THEO. DOUGLAS.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<p>Two stories of the occult world that have met with considerable
+success.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Builders.</h2>
+<h3>By W. G. EMERSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"There is no story of the West like it. There are no dull patches in it."&mdash;<i>Boston
+Globe.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Eve and the Wood God.</h2>
+<h3>By HELEN MAXWELL.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s.</p>
+
+<p>A new novel by the author of that very successful book, "<span class="smcap">A Daughter
+of Thor.</span>"</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"She writes admirably, and in 'Eve and the Wood God' she has given us a book that
+can be read with pleasure&mdash;a remark that is not always applicable to novels of present-day
+life."&mdash;<i>Black and White.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">New Edition.</span></h4>
+<h2>The Gaiety of Fatma.</h2>
+<h3>By KATHLEEN WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Author of "Litanies of Life." Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s.</p>
+
+<p>This is a novel in quite an unusual vein. Fatma is a maiden of Arabian
+and French descent, who is married, during his last illness, to an English
+nobleman wintering in Algeria. The bulk of the book is taken up with
+her introduction to English Society, and the sensation she creates therein.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">New Edition.</span></h4>
+<h2>It Happened in Japan.</h2>
+<h3>By the BARONESS ALBERT d'ANETHAN.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">With coloured Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>The Voyage of the Arrow.</h2>
+<h3>By T. JENKINS HAINS.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Author of "The Windjammers," &amp;c. With 6 Illustrations by H. C.
+EDWARDS. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt, 6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"It stirs the pulse like a close ride to hounds or a stiff finish to a well-fought race."-<i>Standard.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Sunset Trail.</h2>
+<h3>By A. H. LEWIS.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Author of "The President," and "Wolfville Days." Illustrated. 6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"The smell of the open air haunts every page. One could hardly say more for such
+a volume than that it is worthy of comparison with Bret Harte at his best, and that
+can be said without hesitation."&mdash;<i>Daily Express.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>The Making of a Man.</h2>
+<h3>By E. H. LACON WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"All may read it for the sake of the light and genial touch displayed in the treatment
+of life. Comedy is here plentifully provided and is of the best."&mdash;<i>Daily Graphic.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Christopher Deane.</h2>
+<h3>By E. H. LACON WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">A New and Cheaper Edition of this Story of Winchester and Cambridge.<br />
+With Frontispiece. 3s. 6d.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"A review of 'Christopher Deane' must necessarily harp upon the two notes
+'charming' and 'wholesome,' because there is no part of this straightforward story of
+how two manly boys grew up to be Englishmen of the best public school and University
+type which does not deserve one or both of these adjectives."&mdash;<i>Week's Survey.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Playmates; or, Studies in Child Life.</h2>
+<h3>By Rev. H. MAYNARD SMITH, M.A.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Author of "In Playtime" and "Church Teaching at Home."<br />
+Crown 8vo, cloth, extra, 2s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"We conclude our too brief notice of the volume by saying that the child-lover will
+revel in it, whilst it may well turn the child-hater from the error of his ways. As we
+read, we were startled by coming upon a short paper on Charles Lamb, whose mantle,
+by the way, it seems to us, has fallen, in no slight degree, upon Mr. Maynard Smith; nor
+can we repress the thought that if the great essayist had had the privilege of reading
+these pages, he would never have perpetrated the atrocity, with which tradition charges
+him, of toasting the memory of Herod the Great."&mdash;<i>Church Family Newspaper.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">New and Cheap Edition.</span></h4>
+<h2>Reflections of a Householder.</h2>
+<h3>By E. H. LACON WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">With Cover Design in Colour. 1s. net.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Benedictine.</h2>
+<h3>By E. H. LACON WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">With Cover Design in Colour. 1s. net.<br />
+Cheap editions of Mr. Watson's sketches and light essays.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"It is a compliment to the much-maligned tribe of the general reader that a second
+edition has been called for of Mr. E. H. Lacon Watson's genial sketches of married life,
+which he calls 'Benedictine.' In their new and revised edition (Brown, Langham &amp; Co.,
+1s. net) they make a sober-looking, tasteful volume, which is wonderfully cheap when
+we consider the humour and literary quality of the writing."&mdash;<i>Pall Mall Gazette.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Hints to Young Authors.</h2>
+<h3>By E. H. LACON WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo. Cloth extra, gilt top. 2s. net.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"We unhesitatingly recommend young authors to accept the advice tendered as that
+of one who knows what he is writing about."&mdash;<i>St. James's Gazette.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Third Edition.</span></h4>
+<h2>Litanies of Life.</h2>
+<h3>By KATHLEEN WATSON.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Cloth extra, gilt top. 2s. 6d. <a name="net" id="net"></a>net.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"A little book containing five short stories, but every one of them is worth reading,
+and the note of all sounds sweet and free. The reader will lay down the book, as I did,
+with a feeling of profound sympathy and gratitude to the writer."&mdash;Mr. <span class="smcap">W. T. Stead.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>Three Little Gardeners.</h2>
+<h3>By L. AGNES TALBOT.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">With Illustrations by GERTRUDE BRADLEY. Cover Design in
+Colour. 2s. 6d. net.</p>
+
+<p>A charming book for children who wish to learn how to manage a
+small garden.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"This book should be given to every little girl or boy who has a garden, and who is
+anxious to do things properly."&mdash;<i>Examiner.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The Handy Volume Edition of</span></h4>
+
+<h2>Nathaniel Hawthorne's Romances.</h2>
+
+<p class="center">14 vols. 12mo. Cloth, gilt top, 1s. 6d. net.<br />
+Lambskin, 2s. 6d. net, each.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<h4>London: BROWN, LANGHAM &amp; Co., Ltd., 78, New Bond Street, W.</h4>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="tn">
+<h4>Transcriber's Note</h4>
+<ul class="corrections">
+<li>Punctuation has been normalized.</li>
+<li>Page <a href="#unobtrusive">106</a>, "unobstrusive" changed to "unobtrusive". (her unobtrusive
+walking-costume)</li>
+<li>Page <a href="#anything">277</a>, "any thing" changed to "anything". (was there anything
+more ridiculous)</li>
+<li>Page <a href="#net">347</a>, "ne" changed to "net". (2s. 6d. net)</li>
+<li>Chapter numbers at end of book have been corrected so as to be
+sequential. (Chapter XXVIII, XXIX, and XXX</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An Engagement of Convenience, by Louis Zangwill
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+Project Gutenberg's An Engagement of Convenience, by Louis Zangwill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Engagement of Convenience
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Louis Zangwill
+
+Release Date: September 17, 2010 [EBook #33747]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENGAGEMENT OF CONVENIENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Pat McCoy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+  _An Engagement
+  of Convenience_
+
+  _A Novel_
+
+  _By_
+
+  _Louis Zangwill_
+
+  _Author of "The World and a Man,"
+  "One's Womenkind," &c., &c._
+
+  _London
+  Brown, Langham & Co., Ltd.
+  78 New Bond Street, W.
+  1908_
+
+
+
+
+        "In tragic life, God wot,
+  No villain need be!"
+
+  GEORGE MEREDITH.
+
+
+
+
+  An
+  Engagement of Convenience
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Miss Robinson had first seen Wyndham and fallen in love with him on the
+day that he appeared in the road as a neighbour and set up his studio
+there. But that was years before, and she had never made his
+acquaintance. He was the Prince Charming of the romances, handsome, of
+knightly bearing, with a winning smile on his frank face. From her magic
+window in the big corner house where the road branched off into two, she
+had narrowly observed his goings and comings, had watched eagerly all
+that was visible of his romantic, mysterious profession--the picturesque
+Italian models that pulled his bell, the great canvasses and frames
+that, during the earlier years at least, were borne in through his door,
+to reappear in due course as finished pictures on their way to the
+exhibitions--and it was sometimes possible to catch glimpses of stately
+figure-paintings and fascinating scenes and landscapes.
+
+Then, too, there was the suggestion of his belonging to a brilliant
+social world: she had indeed felt that at her first sight of him. Smart
+broughams and victorias in which nestled stylish people not unfrequently
+drew up at his studio about tea-time, and in the season he could be seen
+going off every night in garb of ceremony; not to speak of his
+occasional departures--to important country-houses, no doubt--with
+portmanteaus and dressing-bags stacked on the roof of his hansom.
+
+And not less eagerly had Miss Robinson followed his work, scanning the
+magazines for his drawings, and haunting the galleries in the search for
+his paintings. No one guessed how much he was the interest of her life:
+her parents had no suspicion at all, though they knew of their unusual
+neighbour, and spoke of him occasionally at table. But Alice Robinson
+was the humblest of womankind. Her youth lay already in the past: she
+accounted herself the plainest of the plain. So she idealised and
+worshipped her hero at a distance, feeling immeasurably farther from him
+than the hundred yards of respectable Hampstead pavement that separated
+their lives.
+
+One morning at breakfast her father read out from his paper the news of
+a sensational bankruptcy. A world-famous house of solicitors had
+fallen, and some of the first families in England were losers. Immense
+trust funds had gone for building speculations, and amongst the
+fashionable creditors who had been hit the worst were Mr. Walter Lloyd
+Wyndham, the artist, of Hampstead, and Miss Mary Wyndham, his sister. It
+seemed a curious little fact to Mr. Robinson that this affair should
+vibrate so near to them, and a mild and not unpleasant stimulation was
+thereby imparted to the breakfast-table. But Miss Robinson was hard put
+to it to dissimulate her deeper interest in the announcement. Her
+agitation was profound, shattering: she was glad to escape, and sit
+alone with her secret. It seemed a sacrilege that earthly vicissitude
+should touch this brilliant existence. And thereafter she watched her
+hero more narrowly than ever, reading in his bearing a stern defiance of
+adversity.
+
+At first indeed there was little difference visible in Wyndham's outward
+seemings, and Miss Robinson was thankful that the calamity had ruffled
+him so imperceptibly. Yet, as the year went by, it began to dawn upon
+her that things nevertheless were changing. She had learnt to read with
+consummate skill all the little activities that beat around the studio,
+and it did not escape her attention that he was going into society
+rarely, that smart visitors were fewer, and that pictures were being
+returned to him after astonishingly brief intervals. And gradually, as
+if in corroboration of her own conclusions, she found his work missing
+from the exhibitions, and knew with a sinking of her heart that his
+brilliant days were waning.
+
+And as time further passed, and one year merged into another, she
+realised definitely that his vogue had ended. She could not even find
+anything of his in the magazines, though she purchased them prodigally,
+and searched them through with a hope that was desperation, and a fear
+that was well-nigh frenzy.
+
+The last year or two a dead unnatural calm had settled over the studio.
+Pictures were neither despatched nor returned: if models rang the bell,
+it was only to turn away the next minute with disappointed faces. Of
+fashionable visitors there was never a sign now: not even a comrade or
+fellow-artist came to look him up. But only a tall, sad-faced girl, who
+somehow resembled him, called there at long intervals, and Miss Robinson
+envied this sister the sympathy she could bring him.
+
+He did not leave London now. All through the summer he kept in town,
+lying low, as Miss Robinson could well see from the pallor of his face
+on her return from her own conventional holiday at the seaside. She
+could cherish no delusions--he was a beaten man!
+
+Time and again she brushed close to him, passing him by chance in the
+street, and observed the languor of his step, the growing sadness of his
+features. Other details did not escape her. There was no one to attend
+on him; no one to care for him. Even a charwoman was a rarity at last,
+and Wyndham could be seen shopping almost furtively in the adjoining
+streets, and bearing back his own provisions to the studio. Miss
+Robinson divined, under their wrappings, the tin of sardines, the potted
+tongue, the loaf of bread. She knew that he never took a meal out now,
+and that, if he left the studio in the daytime, it was only to escape
+from the misery of solitude and hopelessness.
+
+She alone observed him so minutely. Her mother had in some degree shared
+her interest in his work, and had sometimes accompanied her to the
+galleries; but the common interest of the family in their neighbour was
+casual and fitful. Miss Robinson hardly dared mention his name now: it
+seemed to her that to draw attention to his poverty was to humiliate
+him. Besides, she feared to reveal her own emotion.
+
+One day Miss Robinson's own life caught her with a breathless upheaval.
+An honoured and intimate friend of her father's, successful, opulent,
+came forward with an avowal of esteem for her; deferentially desired her
+association with him in his second essay in matrimony! Mr. Shanner
+seemed to spring it on her with untempered abruptness; though the
+attentive courtesies that had preceded the crisis might have glimmered
+some little warning. But Mr. Shanner's footing in the house was as
+old-established as the rest of his appertainings; and Miss Robinson's
+spirit was ever at the nadir of diffidence. Men as a rule shunned her:
+women cared as little to talk to her. That anybody might ever wish to
+marry her had seemed impossible, inconceivable. Mr. Shanner had many
+pretensions to style, yet, to her spoiled eye, he seemed merely of clay
+indifferent.
+
+She strung herself to the ordeal of refusing him, though her real
+strength knew no faltering. For he proved insistent; wooed
+her--soberly--decorously--as became the dignity of five decades
+completed; wooed her with reasons of urgency, and implications of
+sentiment. He was to depart on a mission to the New World; wished to
+bear her promise with him. He would treasure it; would think of the new
+light to shine in his household. But within her lay an unfailing
+inspiration, and her innermost soul stood like a tower impregnable;
+though she was all wounds and distress, and quivered with the hurt. Was
+not her heart with her Prince Charming? her one dream in life the
+privilege of helping him?
+
+Mr. Shanner had to sail away disconsolate!
+
+But, though Miss Robinson's mind was occupied day and night with this
+problem of Wyndham's salvation, she could arrive at no plausible
+solution. For how should she ever dare to give him a sign? She who would
+have yielded her life for him could only watch him drifting downwards
+with an agonised sense of her helplessness.
+
+And he all the while unsuspecting of this obscure, loving historian of
+his existence; of the warm heart that beat for him in these evil days on
+which he had fallen!
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+For hours the rain had beaten against his windows, and at last, now that
+a lull had declared itself, Wyndham dragged himself to the door, and
+looked out into the gray afternoon. His eye took in the familiar vista,
+but, as it rested on the great bow-windowed house at the corner where
+the road branched into two, he turned away with a shudder. For years the
+sight of that house had irritated him: its ugly brick bulk had been
+symbolic of all Suburbia, of everything in life to which he was
+instinctively hostile as an artist and a gentleman.
+
+But presently he laughed: it had struck him as comic that he should have
+preserved in its freshness his full youthful contempt for all this
+Philistine universe!--he, a half-starved devil of an artist, down in the
+mouth, with a solitary half-crown in his pocket, speculating with bitter
+humiliation whether his hard-worked sister had yet a little to spare for
+him, after all the life-blood which, leech-like, he had sucked out of
+her! Nay, more, he was conscious that his distaste for this surrounding
+wilderness of affluent homes, in the midst of which he had so long
+dwelt as an isolated superior intelligence, had grown more marked in
+direct proportion as he had become poorer and poorer.
+
+The prosperous figure of the owner of the bow-windowed house rose before
+him. Immersed in his own existence, Wyndham had deigned to notice very
+few indeed of his neighbours. But old Mr. Robinson was one of the few,
+not only because of the regularity with which he passed the studio every
+day at six o'clock as he came home from business, but also because he
+invariably bore something in a plaited rush-bag that had a skewer thrust
+through it, suggesting visits to Leadenhall Market, and purchases of
+game or salmon for the good wife according to season. But Mr. Robinson's
+mild aspect, benevolent white beard, and gentle amble had never
+impressed Wyndham with much of a sense of human fellowship. He might
+concede that the old man was "a decent sort, no doubt, in his own way";
+but they were creatures belonging to different planets.
+
+Still amused at his own disdain, though the corners of his mouth were
+set a trifle grimly, Wyndham turned back into the studio with the idea
+of making himself presentable and going to see his sister--since it now
+seemed possible to get across town without the prospect of an absolute
+drenching. Happily his wardrobe had substantial resources: in the old
+days he had kept it well replenished, and his simple life of late here
+in the studio had made small demands on it. Thus he could still go out
+faultlessly clad and shod. Nobody need suspect his poverty, he flattered
+himself, if he ever chose to dip into his own world again. Only he did
+not choose; there was always so much questioning to face. "We've seen
+nothing of yours in the last two or three Academies--when are you going
+to give us another masterpiece?" "Still on the big picture? How is it
+getting along?" However genially thrown out, such usual interrogation
+annoyed him beyond measure. It was so long since anything had been
+"getting along." On all sides he was regarded as a doomed man, and
+suspected it: suspecting it, he was morbidly sensitive. His life was
+unnatural and not worth the living. Months and months had been wasted in
+apathy. Each day he dreamt of a new lease of energy and courage to begin
+on the morrow; but, after making his bed and clearing away his breakfast
+and purchasing his food for the day, he would find himself dejected and
+incapable of a single stroke.
+
+And yet he could not wholly realise the change that had come over the
+scene. He rubbed his eyes sometimes, as if expecting to awake from an
+unhappy dream. Was not the flourish of early trumpets still in his ears?
+The dazzle of admiration still on his retina? The gush of extensive and
+important family connections still tickling his self-esteem? The
+sweeter approval of a superior art-clique still flattering his deeper
+vanity?
+
+He had been born with a silver spoon; his childhood and youth had been
+ideally happy. From the playing-fields of Eton he had passed to the
+quadrangles of Oxford. A distinguished student of his college?--not in
+the ordinary grooves; yet favourably known as an intellect with
+enthusiasms. Phidias was more of an inspiration to him than Aristotle;
+Titian more actual than Todhunter. Ruskin, Pater, Turner, had stirred
+him; left his mind subdued to their colours. From boyhood had been his
+the swift skill with pencil that ran as easily to grace as to mockery.
+And, left early arbiter of his own existence, with gold enough for
+freedom, he had made for the one career that called to him.
+
+Genius cannot prove itself at a stroke: it has its adventurings to make.
+Seldom it realises at the outset that it is adventuring in the dark,
+therein to grope as best it may to self-discovery. Even this first stage
+may be long deferred; yet, however sure of himself at last, the artist
+has still to tread the unending road with the great light of
+self-realisation ever in the distance. There are the years of strenuous
+search, of faithful labour; of bitterest failure on failure to bring the
+deep, mysterious impulses to bloom and fruition. But there is yet
+another, if independent, adventuring. The great light that crowns the
+artist's journey shines only in his own spirit. The world sees and knows
+nothing of it. He has none the less to find his way into that other
+light--the lurid, mocking limelight of the world's acceptance; to seek a
+place beside or beneath the charlatan. This is the bitterest stage of
+all--- to stand shivering in marketplaces that are knee-deep with dung
+and offal; to be upholding precious things to the vision of swine. What
+wonder if in the course of so harsh a journeying, as he lives and
+breathes in his own universe of striving, his precise moral relation to
+things external grows dim, intangible; and, if money one day give out,
+he clutches at any crust for sustenance.
+
+Wyndham began his journeyings. His advantages were many and obvious; his
+disadvantages subtle and unseen. There was the danger that facile talent
+and social prestige might bring him an early delusive success; a
+failure, rightly seen, however tricked out with glamour.
+
+His beginnings, indeed, were pleasant: it was great fun throwing himself
+into this new queer Bohemian world of art. He worked hard as a student,
+the sheer interest of his labours lightening them astonishingly. And,
+after some preliminary swayings in varying directions, he at last "found
+himself," as he supposed; developing a dexterous imitative craft, and
+joining an advanced crowd with Whistler and Sargent for his deities.
+
+Wherever he pursued his studies--in London, or Paris, or Italy--there he
+was remarkably popular. Everybody said: "Wyndham belongs to very good
+people. They're swells--tip-top!" And indeed he had obviously the stamp
+of being "the real thing," and even the elect of Bohemia were flattered
+and fascinated by personal association with him.
+
+When ultimately he set up his studio here in Hampstead, he had his
+policy definitely before him. With the means and the leisure to aim at a
+high career, he would make no concessions to popularity or the market.
+He had chosen the locality deliberately. It was London, and within reach
+of the world; but not so near the world as to endanger his labours. The
+little tide of fashion that rolled up to his door was not a tribute to
+fame, but merely the fuss and interest of his non-Bohemian circle
+pleased for a time with the novelty of having a studio and a genius
+connected with them.
+
+So in the early years he worked enthusiastically, and was able to win
+some footing in the galleries. But, in the eyes of his numerous family
+connections, he was seriously launched; especially when a couple of his
+pictures at last attracted buyers, and he moreover found himself earning
+guineas from the patronage of friendly editors whose humbler commissions
+he carried out in the same spirit of the dignified, ambitious worker.
+
+Then the financial crash came, leaving brother and sister entirely
+dependent on their labours. Both met the crisis with commendable
+philosophy. Mary, who had long before taken up educational work as an
+amateur, was soon able to establish herself as a professional, and had
+taught ever since at a high school in Kensington; picturesquely settling
+herself in a tiny flat in an artisan's building, and living as a homely
+worker. The dignity and serene simplicity of her life had of late
+furnished the one ideal thing for Wyndham's contemplation.
+
+Wyndham himself had stood up straight and felt very strong; had
+reassured his fussy, frightened folk that he could rely on his
+profession. He felt in himself an endless ardour for achievement, a
+confidence of triumph in the contest with men. Nay, more, he would gain
+his bread without descending from his high standpoint! The task was
+fully as difficult as he had anticipated; but at any rate he contrived
+to live for a couple of years. Then, somewhat to his surprise, the
+Academy began to return his pictures; and somehow, to his greater
+surprise, everything else went against him at the same time. He could
+not even get "illustrating" to do. Those who had acclaimed him before
+because he was a "swell" were now turning against him apparently for the
+same reason. Your aristocrats were never to be taken seriously; they
+were necessarily amateurs! It was all so unanimous, so settled and
+persistent, that it had almost the air of a conspiracy. Wyndham saw well
+enough that everybody had tired of his work, that he had had his hour
+and his vogue; his career lay like a squib that had blazed itself out.
+All bangs and fizzings, and then a blackened bit of casing, silent,
+extinguished! Yet he had the discernment to recognise that the
+dying-down had been really inevitable; that his present relative poverty
+had little or nothing to do with it. He had been dexterous on the
+surface, but the sameness of his note--without even the saving grace of
+convention--had destroyed him commercially.
+
+Well, he believed in himself, and he refused to accept this erasure. On
+the contrary, he would launch out more daringly than ever. An end to
+facile imitation of other people's styles! He must express his own
+deeper self. The strict Whistlerian creed was much too narrow. Art was
+not merely a bare abstract aesthetics: humanity counted for something
+after all. Was woman's loveliness something really apart from woman
+herself? True that art meant beauty--in the largest sense, of course;
+but why should not humanity and beauty fuse together?
+
+So, scraping together all he could command in the way of money, he set
+himself to work out a large dramatic idea, suggested by the sight of a
+May-day demonstration. The canvas was gigantic, and he strove to depict
+a mob of strikers straggling out of the Park after their great meeting,
+with elements of fashion caught in this _melee_ of labour. The pictorial
+irony had greatly interested him, and he felt that this painting on the
+grand scale was being sincerely born out of his own emotion, that it
+would trumpet out a warning to the age.
+
+The beginnings were full of promise, and he decided to stake everything
+on it. But for so realistic a representation of Hyde Park Corner he
+needed to make a great many sketches on the spot. So, through the
+friendly offices of an amiable acquaintance, he obtained access to a
+convenient window in Grosvenor Place, and made free use of the
+privilege. The master of the house, a nobleman of the old school, who at
+first sight seemed stately as the portraits in his own dining-room,
+proved on acquaintance to be singularly bluff and genial, sometimes
+almost slap-dash. He had made Wyndham welcome and at his ease, bidding
+him come and go as he pleased, and "never to mind a bit about turning
+the room into a studio." And this charming nobleman had likewise a
+charming daughter, who sometimes came for a minute or two to talk to
+Wyndham and interest herself in the sketches. Lady Betty was a brilliant
+figure of a girl; had travelled a good deal and knew the world. She was
+sunny and friendly, yet naturally on a pedestal. She was clear-headed
+and capable; in the home supreme mistress. Wyndham was the subject of
+many graceful little attentions. If he came in the morning she saw that
+his glass of sherry and biscuit was never neglected; in the afternoon
+she presided over tea in the drawing-room and expected him to appear
+there.
+
+Of course poor Wyndham never dared tell himself that he was in love with
+her. A girl like that must naturally be reserved for a great match, as
+regards both position and fortune. He could not think of her save as
+presiding over a plurality of palaces or voyaging in a magnificent
+yacht. Palaces and yachts were not the rewards of painters, so Wyndham
+kept his mind sternly fixed on the purpose for which he was there. Even
+so, the intervals between his appearances grew wider and wider. And
+when, after some couple of years of toil, discipline, searching, it had
+come home to him that in this terrible picture he had undertaken a task
+beyond his strength and experience, he found himself too shamefaced to
+"abuse" further the courtesy that had been extended to him. The
+consciousness, too, of his growing poverty was becoming acuter and
+acuter. Already he was drawing back into his shell, and, once he had
+ceased going to Grosvenor Place for the sake of his work, he had not the
+heart to continue his visits as an ordinary acquaintance. More than a
+year afterwards he read of Lady Betty's engagement in the papers--it
+was the very match one would naturally look for. Yet the news "shattered
+him to bits"--absurdly enough, he told himself, since he had known her
+at best irregularly, and not in the ordinary course of social intimacy.
+He was really half-surprised at receiving an invitation to the wedding.
+He could not prevail on himself to go; but, remembering she had once
+admired one of his Academy pictures, he sent her a photograph of it on a
+miniature silver easel as a trifling wedding gift. She wrote back a
+gracious acknowledgment, which had since remained one of his treasures.
+
+Meanwhile he had been struggling on with the picture, determined to
+conquer. But its difficulties and problems were endless. After all his
+toil it stood on his easel in a terribly unfinished condition, though he
+had stinted his own body to lavish his money on it. At last, gulping
+down the humiliation, he was forced to accept of Mary's little store of
+savings to pay his rent and his models. It was his first step of the
+kind, and he paid the full proverbial cost of it. But he had still the
+hope of returning the loan a thousandfold. Was not his success to redeem
+her life as well as his?
+
+Certainly Mary believed in him and the picture, and looked forward to
+its scoring a great triumph. The whole heart and hope of the sister
+centred on that vast canvas. She sometimes ran across town to see it,
+though--poor child!--Hyde Park Corner always looked the same to her at
+every stage of its long creation. But the picture was Wyndham's
+backbone; it was his stock-in-trade before his world. He was more and
+more of a recluse now, refusing all invitations, discouraging his
+friends from coming to interrupt him--as he put it. Certainly Wyndham
+would rather have died than confess to failure after all the magnificent
+trumpeting. Even as it was, the time came soon enough when the big
+picture no longer served to protect his dignity. He imagined
+half-pitying glances and ironic smiles, and so eventually he found
+himself avoiding everybody without exception.
+
+It was only on Lady Betty's wedding day, after more than three years of
+futile striving, that he had the resolution to remove the great canvas
+from the easel and stand it with its face to the wall.
+
+He was tired now, but he must make an effort to emancipate himself from
+Mary's exchequer. Till then he could not hold his head up. So he painted
+some smaller and pleasanter pictures, but again he could do nothing with
+them. The Academy sent them back, the minor galleries sent them back,
+the Salon sent them back the following year. The dealers offered less
+than the cost of the frames. Meantime he had ceased to count up the
+five-pound notes Mary had starved herself to keep for him. He knew he
+was a coward and dared not. He had reached that stage of moral
+confusion which Nietzsche registers as in the natural history of the
+artist-type, and which may not be eyed too harshly from the point of
+vantage of ordered and organised existence in this outer universe. One
+idea stood clear beyond all others; grew into his mind; grew till it
+became his mind. He must cling to his studio, hold desperately to this
+atmosphere of paint and canvasses.
+
+He was getting on in years now--past thirty-three. It was like the
+striking of a pitiless clock, this adding of swift year after year to
+his unsuccessful life. His hand began to fail him. The necessity of now
+doing his own house-work; of bothering with coals and cinders, preparing
+his makeshift monotonous meals, pouring oil into lamps, and boiling
+kettles, and washing plates and teacups, had begun by encroaching on his
+time and energies, and ended by absorbing them altogether. The care of
+ministering to his own primary needs had at last superseded art as his
+profession. Even so, the cobwebs multiplied and the dust lay thick.
+
+Months now slipped by, he scarcely knew how; he was astonished to
+realise how time might elude one, how a colourless day might be trifled
+away without appearing to hold the possibility of even a morsel of
+achievement. Yet he still grasped the hope that something would
+"arrive"--an unexpected magazine commission, a request from a dealer.
+Ideas for a new start would teem in his head as he lay tossing on the
+narrow iron bed up in the gallery at the end of the studio. Why not do
+some pretty little things--to fetch ten guineas apiece, say--Cupids
+playing amid wreathed flowers with pale Doric structures in the
+background? If Mary could manage just another few pounds for him, he
+would have time to turn out a number of such decorative trifles. Such
+things were in constant demand and were a sure source of livelihood. He
+had stood out long enough, much longer indeed than he had had the right.
+He had consistently worked on a basis of high endeavour, but now he must
+withdraw his dignity and enter on the pot-boiler phase. Better that than
+this abominable leech-like existence. Continued misfortune had befogged
+his wits, and this last year certainly he had been half mad.
+
+So be it! He must wake up now, and no longer lose his days in this
+stupid pottering about!
+
+Every dog had his day, and his own turn would come in time. He was an
+artist. He felt it in his bones and blood. Art was his life and destiny.
+He had blundered in attempting too big a feat too early in his career,
+but he did not intend that that should wreck his existence. No, no! he
+would never throw up the sponge. He would rather die than admit defeat,
+with all those who knew him looking on at the game.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He dressed himself carefully to go to Mary's, trying hard not to think
+of the real purpose of his visit--he had merely informed her that he
+would be in the neighbourhood and would look in for a cup of tea. But,
+though it was distasteful to dwell on these unending demands on her
+earnings, he was anything but profligate in spending them. He had spun
+out her previous five-pound note so that it had kept him going for weeks
+and weeks, and he had grudged himself even a newspaper. In view of the
+newly-projected work to tickle the dealers, he regretted more than ever
+that he had not been able to pull himself together sooner: in these past
+precious weeks he might have knocked off half a dozen of such
+pretty-pretty things.
+
+A series of omnibuses took him across London to Kensington Church, where
+he descended, presently turning out of the High Street. The "Buildings"
+where Mary resided were in a side alley at the back, and Wyndham made
+direct for them. He walked straight in through the large front door that
+stood perennially open, and followed the trail of muddy footmarks up
+the worn stone stairway. On the third landing he came to a stop, and
+pulled a bell half hidden in the obscurity of a corner. The door opened,
+and Mary stood before him. He could not help seeing how unnaturally slim
+she appeared to-day; how her simple stuff dress seemed to hang loosely
+on her.
+
+"This is so good of you. I am so glad to see you, dear." Her earnest
+face brightened with a wistful yet pleasant smile.
+
+He stooped and kissed her, then followed her into her tiny sitting-room.
+It was evidently the home of a gentlewoman. With the shelf or two of
+books, the escritoire, the few prints, and the little trinkets and
+photographs she valued, she had contrived to make a dainty little nest
+of it, and all these simple things gave the place a peculiar personal
+stamp. The table was laid for tea, and the kettle sang on the fire.
+
+"You have had a dreary journey," she said, as she gave him a chair.
+
+"No, the weather has been unexpectedly kind," he reassured her. "The sun
+peeped out just for one moment. I believe I was the only person in
+London that noticed it: the rest of the world were intent on other
+things. Have you been keeping well?"
+
+"You forget I am just back from vacation."
+
+"Of course--I had forgotten," he laughed. "How did you spend your time?"
+
+"I passed the first three weeks with Aunt Eleanor, as I told you I
+should. We were a big, merry party, and everybody made a great fuss of
+your little sister." Again that wistful smile. "They all spoiled and
+petted me shamefully."
+
+"Ah, that was good for you."
+
+"I am not so sure about that," she returned thoughtfully. "I am
+certainly not used to the sort of thing, and I really found it restful
+and refreshing to go on to old Lady Glynn, who had me to herself."
+
+"So that's your idea of a holiday--taking care of paralytic, deaf old
+people whom everybody else shuns like the plague." He shook his finger
+at her. "And you call it restful and refreshing."
+
+"Service is the greatest of all happiness," she answered gently. "Even
+as it is, I'm sadly afraid I'm a sham and a fraud. I'm not really a
+worker--in the same sense as others I know. They have no fashionable
+friends with big houses in the country."
+
+She brewed the tea and gave him his cup.
+
+"Do people inquire much about me?" he asked, as the uncomfortable
+thought recurred to him.
+
+"Certainly not of me," she returned. "You neglect them, you refuse their
+invitations, they never hear a word from you, and naturally they suppose
+you wish to be quit of them all. And so, no doubt, they feel it the
+proper thing not to appear to wish to discuss you with your sister."
+There was a pause. Both seemed lost in thought for the moment. "And so
+you, poor Walter, have had no holiday at all!"
+
+"Ah, well," he sighed. "I try to content myself with the thought that
+I'm saving it up. One of these days I daresay I shall go off to Rome or
+Venice, and recuperate from several points of view. I daresay a bit of
+luck will be coming my way presently, and I'm keen on getting back to
+Italy again. I've often planned it out. A month or so at Paris, a couple
+of months in the South of France, three at Rome, and three at
+Venice--with a look-in at Naples some time, of course."
+
+"What a lovely holiday that would be!" He did not surprise her quick
+flash of longing. Both remained pensive.
+
+"But tell me about everybody," he said at last. "You see I take more
+interest in them all than they suppose."
+
+"That's natural enough. After all, Hertfordshire's your home."
+
+He winced visibly, half sorry that he had set her mind in that
+direction. She, however, proceeded to draw for him various pictures, and
+he presently found himself listening with a deeper eagerness than he had
+foreseen. She brought him close again to his own world, uplifted him in
+his own eyes: he had almost the sensation of being restored to a sphere
+which it had been more painful to abandon than he had ever admitted.
+The minutes passed, bringing him a warm, happy sense of social
+comradeship with his sister. The little fire burned brightly, and the
+feeling of the well-ordered nest was fragrant and exquisite. He felt his
+bitterness softening under its influence; a deep peace seemed to
+surround him, filling the little haven, radiating from Mary's wistful
+face, from her gentle smile and voice. How thankful he was this terrible
+London yet held her sympathy!
+
+"It is a great thing for me to have you to come to, Mary," he broke in
+on her suddenly. "It helps me tremendously."
+
+"Poor Walter!" she breathed. Her eyes filled with tears.
+
+For a moment both were too moved to speak again. But abruptly, as with a
+courage and firmness long since resolved upon, she looked straight at
+him.
+
+"Why don't you give it up, darling? This art is ruining your life."
+
+He did not seem surprised at this sudden turn of the conversation,
+though such a suggestion had never before fallen from her lips. He took
+her words as a cry of despair rather than an attempt at a stern
+reckoning.
+
+"Why don't I give it up?" he echoed. "That's an easy question to ask.
+The answer is difficult. But I can't give it up. It is impossible."
+
+"It is not so impossible as it seems."
+
+"What can I turn to? I am fitted for nothing."
+
+"Go to the Colonies. Labour on the soil--or work with hammer and saw."
+
+"I am willing to labour, willing to face anything in life. But,
+Mary--the confession of failure--you don't see how deep, how mad the
+pride is in me."
+
+"You have nothing to confess. The whole world knows you are a failure.
+They talk about it openly. They spare me as much as possible, but I
+can't shut my ears."
+
+It was a staggering blow. "They despise me!" he breathed.
+
+Her lips hesitated, clenched together, the corners convulsed with pain.
+
+"They despise you!"
+
+He found his defence. "Because I have not succeeded commercially." His
+voice was full of scorn. "It matters little that these gross Philistines
+misjudge me. They will yet regret it. I shall yet show them that I am
+not so self-deceived as they imagine. I am an artist--art was born in my
+blood, art is my whole existence. I shall stick to it till I fall dead.
+I ask you, Mary, to believe in me a little longer."
+
+"Heaven knows I have never wavered in my belief a moment. But it is not
+my belief that can save you. You have made a brave attempt, but you have
+been defeated. I am only facing the simple facts. The present position
+seems to me a hopeless one to start from. You have no means behind you
+now, so what is there before you save to go on in the same miserable way
+as you have lived the last year or two? I see no possibility of anything
+but repetition of the same unhappy experience--the world is not going to
+step out of its way for your sake. And remember it has already made up
+its mind about you."
+
+"Then I have lost your sympathy!" he exclaimed. He stared gloomily into
+the fire.
+
+She saw now that the morbid sensibility of the man who had failed would
+never face clear, cold reason, however gently administered.
+
+"No, dear; you have not lost my sympathy. Please don't think that," she
+pleaded. "Don't you see I want to be a real friend to you; don't you see
+that you are more to me than your art?"
+
+"I must fight it out," he insisted. "To-morrow I am starting a fresh lot
+of things--to sell! I have always stood out for the big accomplishment,
+but now I offer my labour in the market. Pretty designs, prettily
+coloured--Cupids and pearly clouds and wreaths of flowers. The dealers
+will take them. You will see, Mary, I shall manage to pull through yet."
+
+She shook her head incredulously. "Better to give it up altogether
+before it is too late."
+
+"You can't mean it," he exclaimed. "You have stood by me so long that I
+can't believe you are going to turn against me."
+
+"I repeat that I care for you more than for your art, and I cannot see
+you sacrificed. No, I have not turned against you. I have been against
+you all this long, unhappy time. To-day I am your friend for the first
+time. Listen, darling. When I got your letter yesterday, I knew that
+things were as bad as ever, that you were at your wits' ends again for
+money."
+
+He maintained a shamefaced silence, not daring to make any pretence to
+the contrary. She looked straight at him as she continued: "I am sure
+you will be the last to think I have ever considered the few pounds I
+have been able to put aside for you--my heart's best affection has
+always gone out to you with them. But the whole of last night I kept
+awake, and prayed for strength to refuse you any more money."
+
+He held his head down; he was too abased to speak.
+
+"Strength has been granted me at last. You are dear to me, and I will
+not help to continue this unhappy state of affairs. Sell off your
+studio, try your fortune in the Colonies, and you will yet pull your
+life out of the mire."
+
+He rose, and took up his hat. "I daresay you are right, Mary. But I am
+an artist. Art is my life. Outside that there is nothing for me. Don't
+think I am ungrateful for all you have done. Goodbye!"
+
+"Goodbye, darling. Perhaps you will yet think it over."
+
+He shook his head wearily and turned away, not seeing that she had held
+her lips to him. The next moment he was descending the muddy staircase,
+slipping and stumbling on the bare stone. He was conscious that Mary was
+standing in the doorway a moment, but he did not see the convulsive
+working of her face, nor know that as soon as he was out of sight she
+had thrown herself on her bed, heart-broken, her body shaken in a
+terrible burst of sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+In the High Street Wyndham waited impatiently for an omnibus to take him
+home again. Instinctively he turned for refuge to the bleak studio, from
+whose loneliness he had so often been impelled to escape. But it was his
+own corner, and all he had. He would not light his lamp; he would lie
+there in the gloom till his pain and self-abasement should have worn
+themselves out. Merciful sleep might come; perhaps--and the idea seemed
+sweet to him--the sleep of all sleeps.
+
+So he possessed his spirit as best he could, while the vehicle lumbered
+along through the endless streets; shivering a little in the autumn dusk
+as now and then a gust of wind arose. The sky clouded heavily, and, when
+finally he descended, the rain was falling swiftly again.
+
+At last he was at home! He thought of the studio now with affection, and
+quickened his pace feverishly. Then he became aware that a familiar
+figure, holding a familiar rush-bag with a skewer thrust through it, was
+trudging just ahead of him in the growing darkness. But he was not
+surprised at catching sight of Mr. Robinson, since it was the regular
+hour of the merchant's appearance after his homeward journey from the
+City. As usual, Mr. Robinson's house filled the centre of vision,
+looming vast at the cross-roads, and softened in the evening mist; and
+for the first time the figure plodding towards it under the dripping
+umbrella struck Wyndham as interesting and strangely human.
+
+Steadily, steadily, Wyndham gained on his neighbour; then, acting on
+some vague instinct, slackened his step so as not to have to pass him to
+get to his own door. But just outside the studio Mr. Robinson slipped,
+swayed, then came to the ground heavily. Wyndham at once hurried
+forward, and helped him to his feet.
+
+"You are not hurt, I hope?" he inquired.
+
+"I think not," returned the old man. He leaned against the studio door,
+whilst Wyndham took the rush-bag from his clenched fingers, and gathered
+up the umbrella from the gutter into which it had rolled. Mr. Robinson
+surveyed his soiled garments ruefully, and shook his head sadly.
+
+"It _is_ beastly," assented Wyndham.
+
+"It can't be helped," said the old man; "though mud like this on a new
+suit of clothes puts a hard strain on a man's philosophy." There was a
+good-natured gleam in his eye and a brave smile on his face. Wyndham
+found himself unexpectedly attracted, and was much concerned when Mr.
+Robinson tried to take a step or two, but was pulled up painfully.
+
+"Pray, don't alarm yourself, sir," said Mr. Robinson, as Wyndham caught
+at his arm solicitously. "I am only a little bruised, and have had
+rather a wrench. I must just breathe for an instant."
+
+"Won't you come into my studio, and rest for a moment or two?" suggested
+Wyndham. "I shall be delighted if you will."
+
+He produced the key from his pocket, turned it in the lock, and threw
+open the door. Then he offered Mr. Robinson the support of his arm.
+
+"It is very kind of you, sir," said the old man, as he linked his arm in
+Wyndham's. "My name is Robinson. I live just up the road. I daresay you
+may have noticed me: I have often noticed you."
+
+"I am enchanted to make your acquaintance, though I regret the
+particular circumstances," said Wyndham, as they passed through the
+little ante-room into the dim interior.
+
+"I cannot share your regret," returned Mr. Robinson, with a touch of
+suave conviction. "No, not even if the accident were more serious, since
+I have been afforded the pleasure of knowing you."
+
+Wyndham was surprised at the sweetness and old-world courtesy revealed
+in the old man's personality. "You are very kind," he said with a smile.
+"I hope indeed I am worth so pretty a sentiment. But please take this
+arm-chair."
+
+He pushed it forward, then set the rush-bag down on the table, hastily
+throwing a serviette over the litter of his last meal, which he had not
+had the energy to clear away, and which now brusquely offended his
+fastidiousness. But as Mr. Robinson, good careful soul, hesitated to
+soil the chair, Wyndham got a rag and wiped away the more lurid splashes
+from his garments. Then, whilst the old man rested, Wyndham trimmed his
+lamp; and presently the glooms vanished before a cosy illumination. Mr.
+Robinson at once began to scrutinise the studio on all sides with
+amusingly deep interest. The old Normandy presses, the model's throne,
+the giant easel, the well-worn Persian carpet, the hosts of canvasses of
+all sizes standing with their faces to the wall, the disorder and
+informality everywhere--all seemed to strike for him a note of youth and
+gaiety, to animate him with a sense of a new romantic universe. His face
+lighted with pleasure. He gazed up at the lofty roof and the oak
+cross-beams that supported it, and finally his eye rested on the little
+stairway and gallery at the far end, now almost lost in the shadows.
+
+"Is your bedroom up there?" he hazarded, his naive interest slipping out
+on his tongue.
+
+"Yes," smiled Wyndham, as he tackled the dying fire. "It's the
+traditional arrangement."
+
+"What a fascinating place you've got here! It's all a new world to me."
+
+"Ah, it's a very ordinary sort of world--when once you've settled down
+to work."
+
+"I have never known an artist before," pursued the old man, "and it is
+all fresh to me. I think that if I were a youngster again, I shouldn't
+at all dislike having a place like this, and making my home of it. Not
+that I mean I should ever have made anything of an artist," he added
+with a smile. "It's the spirit of the thing that appeals to me. You must
+be very happy here."
+
+"Not necessarily," said Wyndham. He saw the old man's eyes fixed on him
+gravely. "You see, I'm not one of your successful artists, and the years
+have a way of passing on." He struggled with the fire, making the sticks
+blaze, then piled up the coals unsparingly. Mr. Robinson was the only
+person in the world to whom he had ever admitted failure, but somehow it
+did not seem to matter.
+
+The old man gazed at him in frank astonishment. "Why, you are in the
+prime of early manhood!" he exclaimed. "Really it is most extraordinary
+to hear a splendid young man like you complain of the years passing!"
+
+"I'm thirty-three," volunteered Wyndham. "And an unlucky devil of
+thirty-three, who has as much trouble in getting rid of his work as I,
+feels old enough in all conscience."
+
+"But you artists have to expect these adverse experiences," said Mr.
+Robinson. "Art of course isn't like other things--it isn't exactly a
+business or profession in the ordinary sense, and so long as a man has
+the gift, he ought not to get disheartened. In our business world, of
+course, pounds, shillings and pence are everything, but in the world of
+art it wouldn't do to set up a standard of that kind."
+
+Such sentiments on the part of a Philistine who came home every evening
+from the City at six o'clock struck Wyndham speechless.
+
+"The struggle of genius is proverbial," Mr. Robinson added, before the
+younger man could find his tongue; "and genius wouldn't be genius
+without it."
+
+"Ah, if I were only a genius!" said Wyndham, laughing.
+
+"I am sure you are a genius," said the old man very gravely. "I have
+often thought what a clever face yours was. At home we have often spoken
+of you."
+
+"I suppose then I must be a conspicuous figure in the road. I had no
+idea of it!" Wyndham laughed again.
+
+"You've been in the neighbourhood some years now," said Mr. Robinson
+half apologetically; "and neighbours naturally notice one another.
+Besides, if I may say so, you are quite unlike the ordinary run of
+people. You are not the sort of man one sees in the City."
+
+"You interest me. In what way do I differ from others?"
+
+"You have the stamp of belonging to leisured people; it is plain from
+your walk and bearing, from your voice and manner of speech. And then
+there is something about your clothes even--I don't quite know what."
+The old man's eyes rested on him with a sort of approval and
+satisfaction.
+
+Wyndham was amused. "You are really an original character," he
+exclaimed. "I like you."
+
+Mr. Robinson smiled with gratification. "I more than return the
+compliment, I can assure you."
+
+"But pray go on," said Wyndham. "I believe you're a wizard. I must get
+you to cast my horoscope."
+
+Mr. Robinson raised his hands. "I don't think I could manage that," he
+laughed. "I am only a quiet observer of my fellow-men. In the present
+case it is very easy to see that yours is the face of a gentleman by
+birth. There is a certain composure in your whole style. Whatever you
+had to face, you would never have that appearance that men get in the
+City--of wearing themselves out."
+
+"Better to wear out than to rust out," said Wyndham meditatively. "I
+rust out."
+
+He was astonished at his own frankness. But there was a deep pleasure in
+being natural for once, in throwing off the cover of sham and pretence
+that had characterised his intercourse with his kind in the past. He did
+not even consider it was strange that the person he should be baring
+himself to so freely was one whose existence hitherto he had merely
+deigned to notice. But nothing could exceed Mr. Robinson's amazement at
+this last profession of his.
+
+"Rust out!" The old man's eyes opened wide. "Why, you have done an
+immense amount of work!" He waved his hand significantly towards the
+army of canvasses ranged against the walls.
+
+Wyndham affected to be impressed by the consideration. "Yes," he
+admitted; "I have used up a considerable amount of material in my time,
+I must admit." He had suddenly perceived that Mr. Robinson was largely
+discounting his ingenuous frankness, and was really taking his
+profession of failure, which, as it happened, he had thrown out in an
+offhand way, as rather affectation than literal truth.
+
+"And no doubt will be using up still larger amounts in the future." The
+old man smiled and rose. "But I am taking up your time!"
+
+"No, indeed," Wyndham assured him. "I hope you have quite recovered
+now."
+
+"Oh, quite," returned Mr. Robinson. "I had altogether forgotten the
+little accident in the pleasure of our conversation."
+
+There was a pause. "I am sorry there's no light," said Wyndham; "else I
+should show you some of my work--that is, if you cared to see it."
+
+The old man looked eager. "Couldn't you make the lamp do?" he exclaimed.
+"I'm sure it would give me a very good idea of your pictures. But I am
+presuming on your kindness."
+
+"Oh, no," protested Wyndham.
+
+He began to move about the studio, conscious of a new energy. Somebody
+was here to appreciate him; somebody desired to see his work, was
+looking up to him in admiration! He felt strangely rejuvenated--it was
+as if he had taken a dose of some wonderful elixir. He selected half a
+dozen of the smaller pictures, and brought them forward. Then, as he
+wheeled the great easel into position, the whim took him to see how his
+huge "masterpiece" looked after all this long interval of time.
+
+For, since he had stood it with its face to the wall on Lady Betty's
+wedding-day, he had never had the heart to glance at it again. Not
+merely failure and wasted years were associated with it, but it stirred
+memories of the hours he had spent at Grosvenor Place in the first
+freshness of his hopes, when he had worked with the passion of youth.
+Then, too, there was the silent drama that had played itself out in the
+depths of his own spirit. Looking back, it seemed to him that no man
+could ever have cherished a more hopeless love, or have encountered a
+more inevitable one. Nor had the lapse of time softened the bitterness
+of that strange romantic chapter. Lady Betty's figure and personality
+would remain with him as his ideal of woman for the rest of his life;
+and he clung to the memory of his hurt as typical of his whole fortune.
+
+But though the thought of the picture to-night inevitably stirred up
+some of these old emotions, there was joined to them a sudden
+overwhelming curiosity. What would be his impression at the first
+glance? Would all its deficiencies and crudities stand out in relief,
+and make him turn away from it in sickness and loathing? Or would it
+strike him, however unfinished it might be, as having yet promise in it,
+as justifying some at least of the time--nay, even life-blood--he had
+consecrated to it?
+
+"What a huge thing!" ejaculated Mr. Robinson, as Wyndham tilted it back
+from the wall.
+
+"It _is_ tremendous," smiled Wyndham. "I'm afraid I shall have to ask
+you to give me a hand with it."
+
+Together they carried it to the easel, and Wyndham hoisted it to its old
+place. "I don't know whether we shall be able to make head or tail of
+it," he said; "but I'll do what I can with the lamp. As you see, it's a
+powerful one."
+
+"Of course I don't profess to be a connoisseur of oil paintings," Mr.
+Robinson warned him. "But I know what I like, though I daresay you will
+think me extremely benighted."
+
+"No, indeed," protested Wyndham; "I shall value your opinion highly." He
+worked away at the little wheel at the back of the easel as he inclined
+the canvas at the most favourable angle, whilst the old man watched the
+process fascinated.
+
+The next moment Wyndham was holding the big lamp high in the air, and
+carefully illumining the surface of the picture. For a moment everything
+before his eyes was blurred, and he could see nothing at all; but he
+stood his ground firmly, and gripped the lamp heroically. And before the
+mist could clear he heard Mr. Robinson's voice rise in admiration.
+
+"Wonderful!" exclaimed the old man, his tone vibrating with an immense
+conviction; and at that moment Wyndham received the picture full on his
+vision and felt at once he had there a basis that could be worked up
+into a splendid achievement.
+
+"The crowd of strikers with their banner is the most life-like thing
+I've ever seen. Wonderful!" Mr. Robinson gazed and gazed, his interest
+overflowing into a running comment. "It's Hyde Park Corner! Why, of
+course--there's the Duke of Wellington's house, and there's Lord
+Rothschild's. Marvellous! What a variety of faces and characters! And
+the old fellow there in the corner--what powerful features full of
+despair! And the old woman with the red shawl--she hasn't had a morsel
+of food, poor creature, for twenty-four hours, I'll wager. Why don't you
+leave her alone, you old ruffian of a policeman! And then that
+fashionable lady in her brougham with her over-fed poodle--what contempt
+on her face for all these artizans! How real everything is--the
+perspective is grand! Why, you could take a walk out there in the
+distance! Marvellous! It doesn't need an art education to see that's a
+work of genius."
+
+Wyndham stood listening in elation, though, in his own perception of the
+work just now, he felt as aloof from it as if it had sprung from
+another's labours. His brain seemed emancipated from the tangle of its
+old problems and all his old flounderings. And as Mr. Robinson continued
+his admiring ejaculations, Wyndham put in now and again a word of
+explanation, drawing attention to a point here and there, though this
+was at first rather by way of soliloquy than conversation. But,
+presently, as he moved the lamp to and fro, up and down, he warmed to
+the occasion; even enlarging on his pet ideas, and pointing out where he
+had failed to realise his own scheme and formula. Mr. Robinson listened,
+wholly absorbed and fascinated by these new horizons that opened before
+him. His respect and worship for art was contagious: Wyndham began to
+worship it more himself.
+
+And the younger man grew eloquent, expatiated on the old art and the
+new, on academies and masters, on realism and symbolism, on plein air
+and sunlight, on colour and technique. And as he spoke, he was enchanted
+with his own voice. It was splendid to feel himself speaking again after
+all this long suppression--he was realising the strength and
+infallibility of his own artistic convictions. Never before had he felt
+so sure of his conceptions; his former humility had only led to
+confusion and hesitation. In future, his own mind should dominate--he
+would not be blown about by all these conflicting schools and critics.
+
+He was conscious of standing more vigorously upright; and, as he
+enlarged on the picture, he seemed to get a new and sure hold of it,
+seeing more and more the potentiality of a great and powerful structure
+that no Academy could dare refuse to recognise. He saw now that his long
+interval of hibernation had not been unfruitful. And it had made a
+necessary sharp division between the two parts of his life--the first,
+uncertain, stumbling, unsuccessful; the second, confident, mature,
+triumphant.
+
+The picture before him was transformed. Problems that had baffled him
+seemed to solve themselves in a flash. Effects he had vainly sought
+through maddening months stood at once revealed, flowing naturally out
+of what he had already set down. His hand longed to be wielding the
+brush again.
+
+"But if I may make the remark," interposed Mr. Robinson at length; "it
+seems matter for surprise that a gentleman like you should be attracted
+to the choice of such a subject. I should hardly suppose that you have
+ever come into any real contact with labour, and workmen on strike would
+therefore scarcely come within the sphere of your sympathy."
+
+"The artist is of universal sympathy," said Wyndham gravely, and himself
+believed it. At that moment he felt his endless sympathy spreading
+itself out, embracing all creation. "And then it was not only the
+humanity of the scene that touched me, and inspired me to attempt to put
+it down finely and greatly; there was also the pure art part as it
+appealed to the trained vision--the splendid difficulties to be
+vanquished, the opportunities for draughtsmanship and subtle colour, the
+sense of far-stretching space to be produced from only a narrow gamut of
+light and shade."
+
+"Marvellous!" echoed Mr. Robinson again.
+
+"But if I may make the remark in my turn," said Wyndham, "your sympathy
+with labour surprises me equally."
+
+"Why so?" asked Mr. Robinson.
+
+"The natural antagonism between capital and labour!" smiled Wyndham.
+
+"Oh, I started as a poor boy--right at the foot of the ladder,"
+explained Mr. Robinson. "My father was a carpenter. Wages were low in
+those days, and prices of all necessaries were high. I remember in my
+childhood we had a pretty hard time of it. In my own firm we share the
+profits with all the employees. So you see I'm rather partial to labour
+so long as it's decent and reasonable. When I think of my own struggles,
+I like to see every man get fair opportunities. When a man has no
+particular talent--such as myself, for instance--it is ever so much the
+harder to go through discouragements. But, at the worst of times, it
+must be a great thing for a gifted man like yourself to be conscious of
+his own powers."
+
+"So you set up to have no particular talent!" explained Wyndham. "You
+amuse me. Haven't you made your fortune unaided? I confess that that
+seems to me the most difficult thing in the world--immensely cleverer
+than anything in the way of art or painting."
+
+Mr. Robinson laughed. "Now you're making fun of me."
+
+"I was never more serious in my life," insisted Wyndham, now wheeling
+forward a smaller easel, in order to display the pictures he had at
+first selected. "I consider it frightfully clever to make money."
+
+"My dear sir, fools often make money," Mr. Robinson assured him.
+
+Wyndham shook his head incredulously. "Do you care much about this
+landscape?" he asked.
+
+"Very much indeed. It is so green and fresh and airy, and those are
+grand old trees."
+
+"It's our old home in Hertfordshire. I lost the property and a modest
+fortune through a rascally set of lawyers."
+
+Mr. Robinson's face expressed deep concern. "Yes, I remember the affair
+well," he said. "I remember reading it over the breakfast-table to my
+wife and daughter. We saw your name among the creditors. It was a bad
+business."
+
+"They had managed all our family concerns for thirty years."
+
+Wyndham was now wound up to enter into more personal matters than he had
+so far touched upon. As before, he was perfectly frank, recounting in
+the intimacy of the moment all the details of this financial
+catastrophe. He spoke freely of his relations in the country, and of his
+sister Mary, and the independent way in which she was earning her bread;
+passing from canvas to canvas the while, and breaking off frequently to
+discuss the paintings.
+
+At last they had gone through all the selection, but the unfailing
+appreciation of his visitor was so pleasant to the artist that he could
+not help bringing forward two or three more, and then finally another.
+And still yet another after!--like the preacher's "one word more."
+
+"I have passed a very happy time here with you," the old man declared,
+as Wyndham restored the lamp to its usual place on the table. "You see I
+was right; the occasion was well worth the accident that brought it
+about."
+
+"Happily you were not really hurt. So all's well that ends well."
+
+The old man took hold of his rush-bag. "I mustn't forget my middle of
+salmon," he smiled. "I generally fetch something home for my wife--some
+game or fish fresh from the market."
+
+"You make me wish _I_ had a husband in the City," sighed Wyndham.
+
+Mr. Robinson laughed. "Well, I suppose I must make up my mind to be off,
+else my wife and daughter will be wondering what has become of me."
+
+Wyndham came forward hurriedly. "I hope I have not been keeping you," he
+murmured. Somehow he did not like being left alone now. The old man's
+coming had saved him for the time being from the clutch of a terrible
+despair, and he saw it waiting to descend swiftly on him. The half-hour
+of self-respect would vanish like an illusion.
+
+But Mr. Robinson's voice was breaking in on his mood again.
+
+"Would it be presuming too much on our slight acquaintance if I
+suggested----" The old man hesitated with an evident shyness that was
+very winning.
+
+"Pray suggest anything you like," said Wyndham.
+
+Thus encouraged, Mr. Robinson launched out boldly. "Would you come home
+and dine with us--quite without ceremony. We're the simplest of people,
+but we shall offer you the heartiest of welcomes."
+
+"That is very kind of you," said Wyndham. "I should not be deranging
+your household?"
+
+"I am sure my wife and daughter will be as delighted to see you as I am.
+Will you not come home with me now--in a simple, friendly way?"
+
+"Since I am to meet ladies," smiled Wyndham, "I should like to make
+myself presentable. I have just been across town, and in this filthy,
+murky atmosphere one gets to feel so utterly unclean."
+
+"Oh, yes; am I not in the same plight myself?" smiled Mr. Robinson.
+
+Wyndham escorted him to the door, and the old man again thanked him for
+the pleasure the visit had afforded him.
+
+"We dine at half-past seven," was his parting reminder, and Wyndham,
+promising faithfully to be punctual, closed the door after him.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+But his visitor had no sooner departed than Wyndham experienced a sharp
+revulsion of feeling. How stupid to have accepted this invitation! His
+isolation in this suburban wilderness had always afforded him a certain
+satisfaction--he had consistently maintained his magnificent want of
+interest in all this Philistine population. His studio was his castle,
+and if he chose to starve therein it was at least a mitigation of his
+misery to be able to do so without the sense of others' eyes prying at
+him. And now he had surrendered his privacy. The indiscretion was really
+inexplicable! And he had let his tongue run on so recklessly and
+confidentially! He might even have drawn back at the very last--alleged
+an engagement, and cut short the acquaintanceship there and then.
+Perhaps it was not yet too late!
+
+In his annoyance he started pacing the length of the studio. But the
+great canvas, still glistening there on the easel, suddenly claimed his
+attention again, and brought him to a standstill. Impulsively he caught
+up the lamp, and once more directed its light on to the surface. The
+picture took deep hold of him, and he stood absorbed in it. And somehow
+Mr. Robinson's wondering voice began to sound its praises. "Marvellous!"
+the old man seemed to be saying. "It doesn't need an art education to
+see that's a work of genius." And as he recalled each stroke of
+admiration, he nodded his head in agreement.
+
+Was not the old man's appreciation of good augury? Surely it
+foreshadowed a popular Academy success. Whatever one's personal art
+ideals, it did not detract from their worth if one could carry them out
+and please the crowd at the same time--incidentally, of course--without
+deliberate intention. Did not Moliere first try his comedies on his
+housekeeper? Mr. Robinson's tastes were the tastes of the great
+public--nay, of even the better classes that went to the galleries. Like
+him, they dwelt entirely on the illustrative aspect of painting, and
+were altogether swayed by the humanity of a picture, by its dramatic or
+anecdotal interest. No wonder some of his fellow-craftsmen had been
+driven to the opposite extreme, and tried to rule out humanity
+altogether. But the human side of art need not be necessarily on a low
+plane, or descend to mere anecdote. In his hands art should be the
+vehicle of real intellect and emotion.
+
+If only he were not forced to do those idiotic trifles! After holding
+out so long, to capitulate absolutely for want of bread! No, he would
+not dine with Mr. Robinson--he would starve rather!
+
+"Better to starve than stoop to inferiors!" he exclaimed, as he set down
+the lamp again. How little, indeed, he had eaten all that day! And with
+the thought a distressing weakness came over him. There was a humming at
+his temples: the studio disappeared in a mist, then reappeared
+oscillating. He was constrained to steady himself by clutching at the
+table.
+
+In a minute or two the vertigo passed off, leaving him with a dull
+craving for food and drink. He might make some sort of a meal from such
+poor provender as his larder afforded--a portion of a loaf, the
+remainder of a tin of sardines, a hunk of cheese; but somehow the
+prospect was singularly uninviting. He might, indeed, add variety to the
+store by laying out his last shilling in the streets adjoining, but the
+shilling was too precious, and anyway he had not the energy to go
+shopping. There swam up before him the picture of a well-lighted,
+comfortable dining-room with a heavily laden table, and of a middle of
+salmon, piping hot, that was being served with a dainty white sauce. And
+then there were hosts of bottles on a mahogany sideboard: fat,
+gold-tipped bottles; tall, long-necked bottles; fantastic twisted
+bottles. Good well-cooked food was nourishing him, a delicate wine was
+moistening his feverish palate, touching his whole dull self to a
+lighter mood.
+
+He had accepted the invitation. The Robinsons were expecting him, would
+be troubled and put out if he did not arrive. He carried the lamp up to
+the gallery, and began his preparations. And then the whim took him to
+change his clothes again. Not that he supposed the Robinsons affected to
+be fashionable of an evening, but the pride of the half-starved man rose
+in irrational self-assertion.
+
+So he dressed carefully, tying his bow to perfection, and arranging the
+set of his waistcoat fastidiously. It was so long since he had put on
+evening clothes, and as he saw himself in the glass, well set up, and
+bearing himself exquisitely, the fact of his poverty seemed absurd and
+incredible. His face, too, seemed to have recovered some of its olden
+confidence as he scanned it critically. True the cheeks were a trifle
+thin and shrunken, but the lines of dejection and sadness had lightened
+at the new stirring within him.
+
+Then for the first time in all these years he made his way up the road
+to the ugly house at the corner that had stamped itself upon him as the
+symbol of all Suburbia, as the stronghold of a type of life that Bohemia
+mocked at and Belgravia waved aside as impossible.
+
+If he had not yet entirely overcome his distaste, it was at least
+mitigated by a splendid sense of condescension.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+A handsome Phyllis, in cap and apron, opened the door, and Wyndham
+stepped into a broad corridor, carpeted in red, and hung with popular
+engravings that he had seen in the windows of all the carvers and
+gilders in London. Next, he was ushered under a crimson door-hanging
+into a resplendent drawing-room, lighted by a dazzling crystal
+chandelier, and sensuously warmed by a great red-hot fire. There was
+nobody to receive him yet, and he was left to amuse himself with the
+show-books on the tables--padded photograph albums full of old-fashioned
+naive people posing against rococo backgrounds, collections of views of
+the Valley of the Thames and of the Lake District, and richly bound
+volumes of Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott.
+
+The interest of these treasures was soon exhausted, and Wyndham, sinking
+into a remarkably soft arm-chair, impatiently beat with his foot at a
+cluster of roses on the brand-new "Aubusson" carpet. The room was almost
+triangular, a large bow window commanding the vista of the main road,
+and pairs of other windows, straight and tall, overlooking the streets
+that branched on either hand. And all these windows were elaborately
+draped in a would-be Renaissance style, with many loops and festoons,
+and with big gilt cornices above. And between each pair of them stood a
+gilded consol table surmounted by a mirror that reached to the ceiling.
+Oval mirrors with lighted candles in sconces glittered from several
+points of vantage, and crimson couches and the immense piano completed
+the tale of splendours.
+
+At length the door opened softly, and Mr. Robinson entered. Wyndham
+rose, not displeased to observe that his host was likewise in evening
+clothes; as he had been already regretting the self-assertion to which
+he had yielded.
+
+"Ah, you are in good time," said the old man, coming forward in his
+quiet, gentle way, and shaking hands again. "I am sorry to say that my
+wife and daughter are not down yet."
+
+His tone was apologetic, and Wyndham smiled, readily understanding that
+the announcement of a guest to arrive had scared the ladies to a more
+elaborate toilette than usual.
+
+"They were enchanted when I told them you were coming," Mr. Robinson
+continued. "As for commiseration over my fall--not a word!"
+
+The two men had conversed for some few minutes before the hostess and
+her daughter came sweeping into the room; and, as he had half expected,
+Wyndham found he knew them more or less vaguely by sight. Mrs. Robinson
+was a tall dame, fully sixty, with gray hair, and a most amiable
+expression; stately, even handsome, in her black silk dress with its
+tasteful lace at the throat and wrists. The daughter who followed rather
+shyly behind her gave Wyndham the impression that he was beholding the
+most simple, homely person he had ever met; and this despite the
+complexity of her costume, which seemed to be built up almost entirely
+of old lace that lay over itself in thick folds and rich creamy masses.
+Timidity of temperament and modesty to the verge of self-distrust were
+at once suggested by the almost awkward constraint of her bearing and
+the quiet, half-averted glance of her dark eyes. He could see that she
+hardly dared look at him. He gallantly supposed that she was a year or
+two younger than himself, and as he met her desperately friendly smile
+(intended for him but hardly bestowed in his direction) with his
+choicest bow, he received a further impression that was distinctly more
+favourable than the first of unrelieved plainness. For, once his eye had
+taken in her features, the artist in him was ready to do justice to her
+throat and arms, which were really good: and her dark hair, her greatest
+glory, lay in a superb coil, which, with a surprising touch of
+coquetry, was set off by a velvet band and some lilies of the valley. It
+was curious that the figure of Lady Betty should swim up before him just
+then, as if to emphasise his real ideal of woman's beauty, and to make
+him feel once for all how impossible it was ever to step down from that
+standard. But he could not help smiling covertly at the thought that the
+family were making such a serious business of so casual an
+invitation--these toilettes were really so very much more elaborate than
+anything he might conceivably have looked for; though at any rate it
+reassured his pride in the fullest degree--evidently, his frank
+admissions to Mr. Robinson notwithstanding, they were not taking him as
+a poor devil of an artist, but were looking up to him with a perfect
+appreciation of the respect that was his due.
+
+Wyndham's presentation to the ladies over, there followed an instant of
+general embarrassment. Mrs. Robinson smiled again, and quickly tried to
+make conversation.
+
+"How pleasant to become acquainted at last, after being neighbours so
+many years!" she murmured. "And so unexpectedly, too."
+
+"When the unexpected does happen," said Wyndham, "it generally is
+delightful. I suppose that's because most of us in this hard life get
+into the habit of expecting only the opposite sort of thing."
+
+Miss Robinson laughed shyly, whilst her mother seemed somewhat puzzled.
+
+"They say that the unexpected always happens," ventured the younger
+woman tremulously. "I'm sure the proverb must be wrong, because nice
+things happen so seldom." Her voice was soft, vibrating with gracious
+amiability.
+
+"I disagree with Mr. Wyndham," said her father. "I was not at all
+expecting to slip down. When the unexpected happened, I am bound to say
+I did not find it delightful."
+
+They all laughed; and then Mrs. Robinson resumed the interrupted tenour
+of her discreet, agreeable way. She herself had often thought how
+pleasant it would be to know him; but in London one could live for ever
+so many years and yet know absolutely nothing of one's next-door
+neighbour. In the country, of course, things were different: there
+etiquette was more human, and people called of their own accord. Was Mr.
+Wyndham exhibiting anything just now? They had seen pictures of his in
+the Academy in past years, and were great admirers of his. Wyndham was
+by now too faint and exhausted to do more than hold his own in a
+smiling, conventional way: the splendours of the room, too, dazzled him
+to the verge of confusion. He was thankful when Phyllis appeared with
+the announcement that dinner was served; and Mr. Robinson, giving his
+arm to his daughter, led the way across the hall, under another crimson
+door-hanging, and into a long dining-room, wherein was set out a great
+table with flowers and fruit and silver. The covers were laid at one
+end, which gave the dinner an air of informality and family intimacy.
+
+A glass of sherry at the start revived Wyndham considerably, and soon he
+fell to conversing at his ease. Presently he found he was somehow taking
+the lead, and their evident respect and admiration for his lightest word
+made him clearly perceive that he was an important and brilliant figure
+for them. Such grains of resentment as he still cherished at having
+entered on the acquaintanceship were dying away. Meanwhile the seductive
+prevision of material joys that had risen before him at the studio at
+that moment of physical weakness was being literally realised, almost
+comically so. There on the immense mahogany sideboard stood bottles and
+decanters galore, and now up came the middle of salmon with a piquant
+sauce accompanying it! God! how delicious it tasted, after all these
+months of bread and cheese! Wine gave him inspiration, and food the
+strength to live up to the role they were allotting to him. He was
+good-looking and knew it; his voice, his bearing, his choice of words,
+were alike distinguished; his experiences were of worlds that were to
+them far-seeming and romantic. He was the sort of hero they had read
+about in novels--a handsome guardsman nonchalantly looking in at a Park
+Lane dance at midnight, or a brilliant attache to an embassy in touch
+with wonderful horizons.
+
+Meanwhile the supply of dainty food continued; a leg of lamb, spinach,
+fat, luscious asparagus, a melon from a Southern clime, a chicken, and
+the juiciest of French lettuces. The hock was of the most delicate, the
+champagne subtle and sparkling. Even so he felt himself sparkling in the
+eyes of the others. He was the lion to whom all this homage was his
+rightful due, holding them fascinated with his wide knowledge of men and
+cities, of social life in European capitals. He drew upon his wanderings
+in by-ways known only of artists; fascinated them with sketches of the
+art life of Rome and Paris. Reminiscences bubbled up of his student
+days, and with them were mingled deft touches of Eton and Oxford, and
+charming cameos of county life; this last developing insensibly into
+discussions of Anglo-Saxon character, its comparison with the Latin,
+relative estimations of intelligence, industry, ambition. Mr. Robinson
+here had many shrewd observations to offer, for they had now wandered
+into the domain of affairs. Wyndham was genuinely interested in his
+host's experiences, in his accounts of unusual men of business from
+strange, even barbarous parts of the world, with whom he had had
+personal relations. They even touched upon financial operations; and
+Wyndham felt perfectly at ease amid complications in which millions were
+bandied about like tennis-balls, and the credit of banks and States was
+pawned as simply and swiftly as he might pawn his own watch. At last,
+over the dessert, there was a perceptible slackening. Wyndham, who so
+far had taken care not to let his eye rest on the many heavy-framed "oil
+paintings" that hung on the walls, for fear some discussion of them
+might thence arise, was now incautious enough to fix his gaze markedly
+on some sheep pasturing just opposite him. But Mr. Robinson seemed to
+welcome the opportunity thus afforded.
+
+"Oh, of course I know you won't find any of _those_ things worth
+glancing at," he threw out with a laugh; and the others chimed in,
+highly amused at the thought of the impression "the things" must be
+making on their guest.
+
+"Oh, some aren't at all half bad," conceded Wyndham politely, his eye
+now promenading freely. "The girl with the mandoline is laid in with
+rather a charming touch, and the fruit-and-flower piece is really
+decorative."
+
+"We always considered those two the best," declared Mr. Robinson. "I
+bought them at an auction in the City, many years ago now--more, in
+fact, than I care to remember."
+
+Wyndham still affected to be examining the collection.
+
+"Now, of course," resumed Mr. Robinson, "that Highland scene is the
+merest pot-boiler--a stream in the middle, a mountain on one side, and a
+cow on the other. I've seen hundreds of them for sale. But it's not
+likely I shall ever be taken in again that way, especially after
+examining the work I saw at your studio, Mr. Wyndham."
+
+Wyndham inclined his head smilingly, and Mr. Robinson duly proceeded to
+describe to the others the great masterpiece which that afternoon he had
+had the privilege of inspecting. His memory of the details proved to be
+extraordinarily minute, and his face glowed all over again with the
+wonder and enthusiasm he had displayed at the studio. "The figures, the
+faces," he wound up, "were simply marvellous. I can't give you the
+faintest idea of how magnificent it all is. I could spend hours looking
+at it."
+
+Wyndham could do no less than suggest that the ladies should come and
+see the picture for themselves, though just then a whiff of unpleasant
+thoughts urged on him again the imprudence of such further social
+developments.
+
+"We shall be only too delighted; it will be a great pleasure," exclaimed
+Mrs. Robinson, and Miss Robinson's eyes shone with unmistakable
+excitement.
+
+"We must really take down that Highland scene, my dear," proceeded Mrs.
+Robinson, addressing her husband. "It is altogether too bad. We ought
+to have something better in its place."
+
+It passed through Wyndham's mind that one of his projected panels would
+do excellently, but of course it was far too below the dignity of the
+brilliant lion to appear to snatch at the opportunity of turning a few
+honest guineas through the grace of his humble entertainers.
+
+"Let us have the Highland scene down by all means," said Mr. Robinson.
+"And I've an idea! If we can induce Mr. Wyndham to paint our Alice's
+portrait, why, then we should have something first-rate to hang in its
+place."
+
+Miss Robinson turned fiery red; the quick glance she flashed at her
+father was the more conspicuous. "How splendid!" she exclaimed
+breathlessly. Her bosom heaved. Wyndham was almost painfully aware of
+the thumping of her heart.
+
+But he himself was caught quite unprepared. True that the unexpected had
+happened again, but that very quality of the event was in this instance
+disconcerting. No doubt they observed his slight hesitation.
+
+"Of course it would be a great privilege for us," interposed Mrs.
+Robinson; "but it seems to me we are counting without Mr. Wyndham's
+authority."
+
+Wyndham inclined his head graciously with a smile; swiftly master of the
+situation again, and improving the occasion with a compliment.
+
+"Oh! I shall be most delighted." He gave his proposed subject the
+professional glance that the occasion authorised. "Miss Robinson will
+afford me the opportunity of a most distinguished piece of portraiture."
+
+Miss Robinson gazed at her plate, nervously peeling a banana. She had
+not spoken much during the dinner, but she had hung on Wyndham's words
+with a naive, unconscious admiration, which, from a prettier and more
+brilliant woman, he would scarcely have passed with so little a sense of
+appreciation.
+
+"Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Wyndham," she said simply. "I am
+afraid the distinction will be due more to your work than to your
+sitter."
+
+"No, indeed, Miss Robinson," he protested, with a suave gravity that
+made his polished assurance the more impressive and charming. "I did not
+intend any compliment--I spoke only as the artist." He was rather
+surprised that a woman should display so little vanity. And, in a subtle
+way, it did not enhance his estimation of her.
+
+Miss Robinson's banana occupied her more earnestly than ever; but her
+mother came to the rescue by raising the important question of costume.
+Wyndham, after further professional consideration of his client,
+preferred to paint Miss Robinson as he saw her now. And with a ready
+sense of detail he saw, too, that certain rings she wore, though he had
+not observed them closely at first, would make excellent spots in a
+scheme of decoration. These rings were unusually chosen, and were more
+artistic than extravagant. The one on her right hand was a small, subtle
+cat's-eye surrounded by fine pearls. On her left hand were an
+aquamarine, and a scarab that shone like the patina of an ancient
+bronze. Almost without a pause he dashed at once at a scheme, which he
+elucidated there and then, much to their overwhelming. He would pose her
+on an Empire chair. In a blue and white Oriental vase on a high stand at
+the side should be arranged three tall arum lilies amid some vivid
+carnation blossoms. Why, the Nankin bowl on the mantelpiece was the very
+thing! The background of the picture should be vague and of an
+olive-grey tone, laid in with free brushwork, against which the masses
+of creamy lace would show deliciously decorative. The great surmounting
+coil of hair would give character to the whole scheme, and the lilies of
+the valley in the velvet band afford a final contrast of lightness and
+graciousness against the intense note of the coiffure.
+
+The parents were radiant with pleasure, though poor Miss Robinson looked
+more and more scared each instant. In her trepidation she could only
+echo stammeringly the elder people's wonder at his great skill and
+cleverness. The scheme unfolded itself before them richly beautiful--not
+one of your dull black portraits, but a canvas glowing with exquisite
+light and colour.
+
+"There, Alice, you ought to be proud of yourself," said her father,
+rallying her good-naturedly as a parting shot, when the women rose to
+retire; and Wyndham attended their exit under the crimson hanging with
+his most engaging air.
+
+Left alone, the men drew their chairs to the fire, and Mr. Robinson
+brought forward boxes of fragrant-smelling cigars, large and rotund. The
+atmosphere of comfort enveloped Wyndham soothingly: the sense of
+unlimited abundance seemed a miracle after his long privation.
+Fortunately he had not been tempted to have his glass filled too often:
+he had appreciated all these good and luscious things with commendable
+moderation, and had been stimulated to brilliancy without losing cool
+command of himself. He lighted his cigar at the little silver smoker's
+lamp that just then came in with the coffee, and, as he puffed, a
+splendid warm feeling of well-being took possession of him. He helped
+himself to cream and sugar with the masterful calm and something of the
+gesture of a stage hero.
+
+Presently Mr. Robinson raised the subject of Wyndham's fee for the
+portrait, approaching the point apologetically.
+
+"Of course, we could hardly discuss this side of the matter before my
+wife and daughter," said the old man. "But I must insist on your
+accepting a fair remuneration for the work--shall we say two hundred
+guineas?"
+
+"To be frank," said Wyndham, "if you had left it to me, I should hardly
+have mentioned so large a sum."
+
+"Naturally a gentleman of your disposition would think more of the
+artistic pleasure of the work than of the money it brought. Still, in
+this life money has to be considered. In all things, sublime or humble,
+the labourer is worthy of his hire. I do not for a moment suggest that
+the sum I have named in any way expresses our appreciation of the work,
+even in anticipation, and certainly not in any way our sense of the
+privilege and honour you are bestowing upon us."
+
+"I shall endeavour to merit your kind words," said Wyndham, not to be
+outdone in polished courtesy, though he conceded that, by force of
+simple sincerity and good feeling, Mr. Robinson seemed a past master in
+the delicate art. "At any rate," he pursued, "the work is developing in
+my mind. The more I dwell upon it, the better and better I like the
+scheme, and I shall work at it enthusiastically from start to finish."
+
+It being thus assumed that two hundred guineas were to be the artist's
+reward, Mr. Robinson seemed by no means loth to wander from a point
+which he had approached with great hesitation and an immense sense of
+its difficult delicacy. As yet Wyndham did not measure the radical
+change in his personal situation; nor did he display any undue elation.
+But his cool demeanour was no mere pose. Indeed, he was surprised
+himself at the ease with which he was accepting the transaction, as if
+it were commonplace in his experience. But he merely supposed that he
+was meeting good fortune with the natural dignity of the artist--to whom
+commissions are due as a matter of right, however long they may be
+deferred.
+
+They did not linger in the dining-room, but joined the ladies after
+their first cigar; though not before Mr. Robinson had sedulously
+inquired as to his liking for the particular brand, which, he assured
+Wyndham, was not readily obtainable in London, and had made, him promise
+to take a box away with him.
+
+In the drawing-room Miss Robinson played to them, at first tremulously,
+but gaining confidence with the experience. She displayed a degree of
+trained taste and a certain individual choice, favouring the tenderer
+and gentler works of Mendelssohn and Mozart. She sang also one or two of
+Heine's love songs in the German with a touch of passion and regret,
+whilst Wyndham accompanied her; and he himself wound up the evening in
+more jovial mood with a rousing student's song from his old Munich days.
+
+Their parting with him had almost a touch of affection; and the final
+understanding was that he was to plan out the arrangements for the
+sittings, and to communicate with them in the morning.
+
+He was forgetting his box of cigars at the end, but Mr. Robinson
+carefully caught it up from the hall table, and brought it after him
+just as the servant was opening the door.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The next morning early Wyndham jumped out of bed with a bewildered sense
+of some change in his life, and it was an instant or two before his
+faculties cleared and he remembered his adventure of the previous
+evening. His next thought was one of pleasure that he had at last
+carried out his resolution of rising early. The autumn had developed
+with unusual severity, but the morning was intensely clear, and the
+studio full of a strong light. He pushed aside the hanging, and looked
+down from the gallery on the familiar scene below. Ordinarily, on
+rising, the sight had filled him with disgust and apathy, but now a
+freshness and vigour pervaded him, a new imperious desire, not merely in
+his mind but in all his limbs and muscles, to enter again on the contest
+with men. As his thought ran back through the past intolerable year or
+two, his inaction and sloth seemed almost incredible. He saw himself
+rising at midday, suffering moral tortures before the work he was
+powerless to begin, letting the barren hours drift away into the deep,
+then regretting them passionately. Was it not all a nightmare from which
+he had been curiously released?
+
+He dressed, and, whilst his little kettle was boiling, took careful
+stock of his professional materials. Colours, brushes, varnishes--all
+needed renewing; there seemed nothing but impracticable odds and ends,
+mere bits of wreckage from his disastrous life's venture. Then, too, the
+filth and disorder all around him struck him brusquely, stung him to
+annoyance. On every surface where dust might accumulate it lay in serene
+possession. Wherever spiders could spin, there the webs hung thick,
+amazing and complicated citadels, prodigious masses and networks.
+
+He felt he could not endure it a day longer. There must be a thorough
+physical cleansing at once. And he must return to the luxury of a daily
+bed-maker. This preoccupation with household things took off the keenest
+edge of one's first energy and enthusiasm; he must reserve himself
+jealously for his high calling.
+
+As he sipped his coffee he mused over the little financial difficulties
+that immediately beset him. Now that at last he had a valid ground for
+appealing to Mary, he felt reluctant; anxious to bring her only the
+sense of his success without alloy. He might explain the situation to
+Mr. Robinson, and ask for money in advance; but that seemed as impolitic
+as it was repugnant in this new rapture of fine upstanding dignity.
+Payment of the quarter's rent that was already due could be easily
+deferred--for the bare humiliation of making the request. But he needed
+something for equipment, and must face the sacrifice of some of the
+older pictures to which he had clung so long, accepting any sum in
+exchange, if only shillings.
+
+He still felt no disposition to invest the accident that had turned the
+tide for him with any touch of superstition or romance. He regarded the
+whole matter in the same dry light as at his first acceptance of it the
+evening before. He had sat waiting for clients, and at last they had
+turned up. But he did not at all dislike the Robinsons: they were very
+much better than the great run of their class--they had evidently
+ideals, and aspired to a higher degree of refinement than they as yet
+possessed, or, perhaps, were capable of possessing. They were neither
+smug nor self-satisfied, and, in giving him this work, they had avoided
+indulging in any semblance of bourgeois patronage, whereas other people
+of their class, even if well meaning, might easily have been gross and
+intolerable.
+
+He had studied his sitter pretty closely. The profile, as is not
+unfrequently the case with "plain" women, had a curious individual
+interest. He felt it offered scope for "construction," and he could
+import subtly into the drawing a certain distinguished sentiment that
+was not really in the original, though somehow it might easily have been
+there, and, in moments of enthusiasm on the part of the observer, might
+even be conceived to be there. Yes, the profile was undoubtedly the
+thing: that way, too, the great coil of hair could be handled the more
+effectively. Indeed, it seemed to him that, taking into consideration
+her dark eye with its soft lashes, and the long shapely arms, and the
+exquisite ivory tones of the old lace dress, the scheme should really
+turn out, as he had so promptly put it to Miss Robinson herself, "a most
+distinguished piece of portraiture." He was shrewd enough to understand
+the essential shyness of her disposition, and he felt he might well
+invest her expression with some suggestion of this, though it should
+come out as a sort of gentle spiritual modesty.
+
+And now his imagination returned to the contemplation of his own
+fortunes, and went soaring skywards. His luck having once changed, who
+could say what might not turn up next? Another sitter might appear, one
+of your great heroines, stately and brilliant--a sort of Lady Betty, in
+fact: he might as well admit he _had_ Lady Betty in mind! Such a
+portrait, appropriately conceived, would form a remarkable pendant to
+this one. Then, too, he might make another dash at his masterpiece! Such
+a display of versatility in the next year's exhibitions must place his
+name on everybody's lips, must surely pave the way to his reputation not
+only as a great decorative portrait painter, but also as a modern of the
+moderns, touched to inspiration by all the stress and striving of his
+age!
+
+This roseate flight was abruptly disturbed by the advent of the postman.
+The rat-tat, one of the double sort, imperiously summoned him to the
+door. Had the "something else" already turned up? He rather prided
+himself on the coolness with which he rose to meet it. The postman
+handed him a packet and a letter. But at a glance he saw that the packet
+was a rejected drawing and the letter Mary's, and he went straight down
+into the depths again. He, however, affected a cheerful good morning to
+the postman; then, no sooner alone, tore open the letter, with the
+bitter taste of yesterday's scene with his sister full in his throat. To
+his astonishment, he pulled out two five-pound Bank of England notes,
+and only a few words accompanied them. "DEAREST," she wrote,--
+"Since you left me to-day I have suffered beyond endurance. That you
+will ever forgive me for my harshness I cannot hope. I am the only soul
+you have to turn to, and yet I struck at you as with a whip. Your face
+as you turned away will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have been
+sobbing and sobbing, feeling my heart must break. I ask you to be good
+to me now, and take this little money. Darling, don't punish me by
+sending it back. Better times are coming presently, and, if God is good,
+this little help now may bring you the best of fortune.--Your loving
+sister, MARY."
+
+Wyndham was unnerved; realising to the full the torture her gentle,
+sympathetic nature was inflicting on her. What it must have cost her to
+gather up her strength for that critical interview he could only
+remotely surmise. Yet it had failed her after all!
+
+However touched he was by her sweetness, however much he was moved to
+respond to this prostration and surrender, he yet saw only too clearly
+that at bottom it _was_ a failure of strength. The idea of using the
+money was singularly distasteful; even though he told himself he would
+have his hand cut off rather than doubt her perfect goodness and
+sincerity in sending it.
+
+This necessity of a difficult decision disturbed the nice cool balance
+with which he had started out to face the day. There was nothing for it
+but to put aside the letter for the present in the hope that counsel
+would come to him later. And in the meanwhile he went on with his
+programme. He tidied his papers, went to hunt out his old charwoman,
+and, ultimately leaving her in possession of the studio, he ran into
+town to get his new materials, and look up the various accessories for
+the scheme of the picture.
+
+His first visit was to a shop in Oxford Street, where he had dealt ever
+since his student days, and where he could order what he needed without
+immediate payment. A burly man in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers
+was making purchases at one of the counters, and his back seemed not
+unfamiliar. Wyndham brought out his list and was going through the
+various items with one of the assistants when a heavy hand was placed on
+his shoulder, and, turning, he beheld the big powerful head and pointed
+beard of one of the old gang of his Latin Quarter days.
+
+"Sadler!" he exclaimed.
+
+The big head was convulsed with laughter, and Wyndham's hand wrung in a
+mighty grip.
+
+"How jolly! I was coming to look you up! I've just ferreted out your
+address; you're still fixed out there at Hampstead?"
+
+"Oh, do come--I shall be delighted," said Wyndham genially. "Have you
+been in London long?"
+
+"Three weeks. After knocking about for five years--what do you think of
+that, my boy? First went all over Spain--made scores of studies. Gee!
+First-rate! Cheapest place in Europe--exchange thirty-five to the
+sovereign--and lots of good eating. Went to see a bit of Velasquez down
+at Madrid. Gee-rusalem! And the Titans, stuck up in a funny little
+room! You never see anything so fine in your life."
+
+"Oh, I've been there," smiled Wyndham.
+
+The vigour and enthusiasm of his old friend, the nasalities of the deep
+voice, had almost a complete freshness for him, after the long interval
+since their last meeting. He was pleased at the encounter--it brought
+him whiffs of old days of happy comradeship. He felt the stirring of the
+war-horse.
+
+"Then I put in a nice couple of years at Munich; saw some Boecklin. Gee!
+He's great!"
+
+"I once saw some wretched things of his, though," said Wyndham. "I
+remember--at a modern exhibition at Venice."
+
+"I grant there are one or two rotten ones," conceded Sadler; "but
+they're interesting, if you take them in the right way--experiments that
+failed, though they were fine as he had them in him. Well--then I did a
+bit of a tour all over the shop--came along through Holland--made
+cart-loads of sketches; and then I came right along here. Been getting
+lots of fun in London; been round with the boys, and had a rattling good
+time. Taking the opportunity, too, of getting some nice suits of
+clothes." And here Sadler turned abruptly from art, and plunged into
+sartorial details. His interest in such matters was astonishing, almost
+touching. He revelled in fancy waistcoats and rioted in tweeds and
+broadcloths. London was the only place in the world where you could get
+the rakish cut. He, Sadler, had never suspected what a lovely figure he
+had, till this latest cutter had revealed him to himself!
+
+He paused at last for breath.
+
+"Anything particular on with you?" he was presently impelled to ask,
+observing that Wyndham was exercising a marked fastidiousness in the
+choice of his canvas.
+
+"A portrait," said Wyndham. "Not a bad little commission."
+
+"Good!" ejaculated Sadler, his face shining enthusiastically. "A lady?"
+
+"Yes," answered Wyndham, "and I've rather a charming scheme."
+
+"Good!" roared Sadler again. "I heard you hadn't been doing much of
+late. They were running your work down--some of the boys, and I said
+they were talking rot. We nearly came to blows about it. I think I
+fairly shut them up."
+
+Wyndham had at first winced a little. Then he felt like shrugging his
+shoulders. After all, the past had to be lived down. Besides, Sadler's
+championship was genuine and influential.
+
+"That was very kind of you. You always did stick up for me."
+
+"Don't you mind 'em a bit, my boy. You just go ahead, and you'll come
+out at the top of the tree."
+
+"I'll do my best," said Wyndham, smiling.
+
+"That'll be good enough, I guess," said Sadler. "Perhaps this portrait
+will open up other things for you."
+
+"How so?" inquired Wyndham.
+
+"It all depends on the crowd you strike--I heard you came a bit of a
+cropper, and I daresay you're not too well off now to despise a job or
+two--you can always put decent work into them. Now there's Jim
+Harley--he struck a rich middle-class lot ten years ago, rotten
+out-and-out Philistines, twenty guineas apiece--and they've been keeping
+him going ever since. Does fifty of 'em a year."
+
+"The prospect hardly tempts me. After all, the main thing is to get back
+to big work."
+
+Sadler smiled. "I guess I should be the first to drag you back
+again--after a while. But Jimmy married young. A boy and girl affair.
+His wife's family weren't satisfied with his financial position, and
+there was a mighty row at the time. Of course the girl had only her
+pretty eyes."
+
+"Ah, you don't approve of idealistic love affairs."
+
+"Not of that kind. I'm forty, and I've seen something in my time."
+
+Wyndham had finished his purchases, and was telling the assistant to
+send the parcel to his studio. As they left the shop presently, Sadler
+pressed Wyndham very hard to lunch with him at a particular restaurant
+he mentioned, and Wyndham could not do otherwise than accept the
+invitation, though he confessed the place was unknown to him. Whereat
+Sadler expressed great astonishment. It was one of the very few places
+in London where the food was fit to eat! Why, the cooking was even
+better than at Lavenue's in the Quarter, and that was saying a great
+deal. He, Sadler, could not endure any other place during his
+sojournings in London. Wyndham let the dear fellow gallop on to his
+heart's content. Sadler was a fine painter, and in the old days Wyndham
+as the junior had sat at his feet, and in the matter of technique had
+been greatly indebted to him. But he had observed with covert amusement
+at a very early stage in the acquaintanceship that Sadler, like so many
+others in the hard-working, hand-to-mouth world of the arts, had an
+amiable weakness for "being in the know" anent the good things of life,
+and affected a lavishness in public that was off-set by a sharp economy
+in the less visible phases of his existence.
+
+At the restaurant Sadler scrutinised the carte with the confident eye of
+a man about town, grumbled a little, held a fussy colloquy with the
+waiter, and finally ordered oysters and chablis to begin upon, the while
+a chateaubriand was being prepared for them.
+
+Over the meal Sadler talked a great deal of old times. He seemed to have
+kept himself well in touch with scores of men they had known in common,
+despite scatterings and vicissitudes. His mind kept leaping across the
+world, beating them all out of their lairs for Wyndham's enlightenment.
+Did he remember Pycherley--the biggest duffer of them all? Well, he had
+married an heiress on the strength of his genius, and was painting awful
+stuff out in California; and Snyders, who had shared his studio, had
+built himself a Moorish house high up on a mountain-side overlooking the
+Gulf of Salerno; a third had settled down to "black-and-white" in a
+queer little creeper-clad house in St. John's Wood; a fourth was
+decorating a municipal building at Toronto. Marlowe was still in the
+avenue du Maine, where the fascinating American actress he had wed had
+since borne him a sheaf of daughters: and the beautiful Mrs. Smith they
+had known at Fontainebleau, the summer they had spent there together,
+had long ago divorced her husband, and married the Italian sculptor, in
+whose studio she had made such sensational progress. She now exhibited
+regularly, and had already received a gold medal of the second class.
+
+And so the conversation continued--for the most part about men who were
+now pretty well getting on into middle life, whose destinies had found
+definite declaration and were visible to all Wyndham expressed his
+pleasure that his own future, on the contrary, still lay wrapped in
+mystery; that, though the curtain was full up, the interest of the drama
+was by no means played out.
+
+"You can afford to talk like that, Wyndham," shouted Sadler. "What are
+you? You're only a boy! But I'm forty, and I tell you I'd give up the
+interest of the drama for a safe income, and think it a damned good
+bargain. I get along, I sell my stuff, but I tell you I sweat and
+groan."
+
+"I admit I should like my old income back again," said Wyndham; "not for
+itself, but for the sake of the splendid freedom to work."
+
+"That's just my point," shouted Sadler. "What the hell do I care about
+money for itself? And I tell you what, my boy, the right thing for an
+artist is to marry a woman with money." He struck the table hard with
+his big fist, making the whole restaurant rattle.
+
+Wyndham almost jumped. "Good gracious! So that's what you were driving
+at! The idea to me is perfectly loathsome."
+
+"That's just what I used to think," exclaimed Sadler. "But you can't go
+on for ever with your head in the clouds."
+
+"The thing's so awfully brutal and sordid," insisted Wyndham, shuddering
+visibly. "It makes my blood run cold."
+
+"You make me tired," snapped Sadler pettishly. "Where's the sordidness?
+I don't say a man ought to run after a fortune--but enough to steady
+things. Taking it all round, we artists have less chance of making money
+for ourselves than other men of the same worth; and since most of us do
+marry some time or other, we ought to look to marriage to help our work,
+and not to drag it down."
+
+Wyndham was unconvinced. "If you take away the poetry out of life, the
+rest of it is too hideous to bother about. If a man marries to make
+himself comfortable, he's no better than a contented pig wallowing in
+muck. Rather than surrender the ideal, I'd give up marriage altogether,
+stand by my guns, and die fighting."
+
+"We artists are a damned sentimental lot," shouted Sadler. He lifted a
+juicy morsel to his mouth. "This chateau's jolly good, isn't it?"
+
+"Excellent," admitted Wyndham.
+
+"Now you see I wasn't exaggerating when I said it's as good here as at
+Lavenue's." Sadler swallowed his mouthful. "We all begin with your
+idyllic ideas--Rossetti, Meredith, and all the rest of it. But I tell
+you it's hell! You dig the work out of yourself with sweat, with blood!"
+The veins began to swell in Sadler's mighty forehead. "And when you're
+not one of the lucky ones, what does the world do to help you to work
+for it?" He had wrought himself up to a tense excitement, and put the
+question with a hoarse shout. "Nothing! It prints your name in the
+papers, it talks about you at dinner parties! Painting is
+starvation--painting is death! By the time you've worried along till
+you're forty, you begin to see a bit straight, my boy. Look around
+you--what do you see on all sides? You see the best of us and the
+luckiest of us fixing up some pretty little nook here in town or in the
+country, and then trying to clear a few hundreds or so by tempting
+somebody to buy it for double what it cost. We begin with ideals, and
+afterwards we are glad to come down to the level of the common
+speculator. Let us have no delusions about it--there's nobody keener for
+necessary money than we artists when we begin to feel the years slipping
+by. I tell you it's hell!" He gulped down a glass of wine and wiped his
+lips.
+
+"I see your point of view," said Wyndham; "but I detest it. Better to
+fight to the end, and stand alone."
+
+"You make me tired," snapped Sadler again. "There are plenty of women of
+the right sort who'd prefer an artist with a name to some damned bore of
+a booby who hasn't an idea in his head. They're not fools, those women,
+I tell you. They know there's no money in the profession; they know you
+can't get everything in life. Life's a compromise. You've got to give
+and take. And when women have money, you'll find they understand these
+things better than when they haven't. A romantic boy runs after a
+rosy-cheeked, bread-and-butter miss with nothing. The chit gives
+herself airs, expects what they call 'an establishment'--the rotten
+Philistines!--and then starts out to please herself in every way, places
+her whims and caprices first, and the happiness of the household
+nowhere. The brute exacts every sacrifice, and if she has to make the
+tiniest concession, it rankles in her all her life."
+
+Wyndham dissented. The same things might happen even if the chit were a
+millionaire.
+
+Sadler dissented in his turn. He insisted that in woman money and good
+sense somehow went together. It was a fact. "Look how much happier
+French marriages are; look how the husband and wife are comrades and
+stick together. I tell you the French system is the best in the world.
+Every girl brings her husband a dowry of some kind, and they both work
+together for the common good. When the time comes it is easier to pass
+on the money to their own daughter in their turn."
+
+Wyndham contended that these things were all a matter of temperament.
+"Even at the best you'd have to keep your mind very elastic as to the
+type of person, whereas, for my own part," he declared, with the Lady
+Betty type in his mind, "I not only hold on to my poetic standpoint, but
+there are certain personal ideals I couldn't possibly surrender."
+
+"If you stick out too much for ideals, you'll never get anywhere at
+all," said Sadler.
+
+"There are things one must stick out for," insisted Wyndham. "For
+instance, I could never marry a woman who wasn't intelligent, and
+certainly never one who wasn't beautiful."
+
+"Intelligent--yes. But what is beauty?" asked Sadler, shrugging his
+shoulders. "And if you get a woman too obviously beautiful, you'll have
+every man a mile round making love to her, like flies round a honey-pot.
+It's a sort of primitive law of the universe, and it'll hold good for
+all time, I suppose."
+
+"Oh, I should chance all that," said Wyndham.
+
+"But what is beauty?" insisted Sadler.
+
+"I know when I see it," laughed Wyndham.
+
+"Give me character," said Sadler. "Unselfishness and loyalty are the
+chief points, and a sort of sweet reasonableness, of course. If a
+woman's features aren't quite classical, it's wonderful what a good
+dressmaker can do to set them off. Waiter! Cigarettes!"
+
+When ultimately the waiter brought the bill, Sadler produced a silver
+sovereign purse, saw with unconcealed horror that it contained only half
+a sovereign, then felt in his pockets for loose silver. "It's rather
+awkward," he said, pulling the longest of faces. "I'm afraid I haven't
+enough left on me after paying for my colours and materials this
+morning. I shall have to ask you to lend me a little."
+
+A flash of surprise, an imperceptible raising of the eyebrows; then
+swiftly Wyndham accepted the situation, and threw down one of Mary's
+banknotes. "Sorry I've nothing smaller," he said, smiling.
+
+"All right, old fellow," said Sadler. "You pay this time, I'll pay next
+time."
+
+By the time the waiter brought Wyndham his change, the conversation had
+passed on to the last exhibition of the New English Art Club.
+
+Wyndham arrived home, after completing all his business calls, late in
+the afternoon, and found that the charwoman had finished her work, and
+was replacing the furniture. A not unpleasant tinge of turpentine
+permeated the atmosphere. The oak presses, newly polished with beeswax,
+shone and glowed even in the shadow of the afternoon. For the first time
+for months the hearth was clear of ashes and cinders, and the stone
+scoured and whitened.
+
+When the woman had gone he devoted a few minutes to wandering about his
+domain, enjoying this new sensation of spotlessness, appreciating the
+professional hand, the skill of which had never before seemed so
+legitimate a theme for admiration. Then he sat down and wrote to Mary as
+follows:--
+
+ "MY DEAR LITTLE MARY,--Your sweet little letter came this morning,
+ and at a moment to be of the greatest service to me. Fortune has
+ already smiled on me again. For the immediate present I have a
+ portrait commission for a couple of hundred guineas! A great
+ fortune--is it not?--after all these seasons of leanness! You will
+ guess that I am now ambitious of getting to grips again with the big
+ picture. I have taken a deep and engrossing look at it again, and I
+ see how to resolve all its difficulties, I daresay, by the spring. I
+ know this letter will make you happy, so, for Heaven's sake, don't
+ give another thought to yesterday afternoon. I have been a great
+ trial to you for so long, and I want to recognise your goodness and
+ kindness in the only way I can, and that is by--succeeding. My heart
+ is in the work, and your belief in me shall find justification.
+
+ "I am keeping your money; it will remove my last anxiety and enable
+ me to work at ease. I want you to come here as soon as I have made
+ some headway with the new work, as I should like you to carry away
+ the impression on your next visit of something real that has been
+ accomplished.
+
+    "Your loving brother,
+
+      "WALTER."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The first sitting was eminently satisfactory. Miss Robinson and her
+mother were punctual to the very stroke of the clock, the new canvas
+stood waiting on the smaller easel, and everything was ready for an
+immediate start. Wyndham had been able to obtain on hire a most lovely
+Empire chair, with swans' heads for armrests, and exquisitely mounted
+with chiselled garlands. It did not take him long to find his
+arrangement, and he saw now how shrewd had been his idea of the Empire
+chair. It was remarkable how Miss Robinson and the chair composed
+together: it gave her distinction, heightened her personality, and the
+profile at once seemed to take precisely the quality which he considered
+essential to his scheme. Her right arm rested lightly along the swan's
+neck, and the subtle cat's-eye, with its border of tiny pearls, showed
+deliciously against the long hand and fingers that emerged from the lace
+lying loosely about the wrist. Her left hand lay on her lap, and here
+the ancient green scarab and the aquamarine made important decorative
+spots amid so great a mass of lace-work. The nankin vase had been sent
+to the studio during the morning, so that Wyndham was practically able
+to build up his picture before him. Indeed, so interesting was the
+result that it promised to lessen by half the labour of creation.
+
+And, now that he had taken the measure of the Robinsons, he was easily
+master of the situation. They were not merely in his hands as clients
+who were availing themselves of his skill; but surrendered as to one
+naturally high above them. In posing Miss Robinson, he had once or twice
+given utterance to his satisfaction in so spontaneous a way that the
+tremulous sitter had no easy task to maintain her immobility. And then
+the kind and condescending explanations with which he accompanied the
+many little changes and refinements in the arrangement from moment to
+moment were so clever and penetrating! It was really wonderful how
+points struck him, and what surprising improvements he accomplished with
+a wave of the hand and imperceptible subtle shiftings of Miss Robinson's
+position. At last, after many scrutinisings of his sitter from varying
+standpoints he suddenly expressed the conviction "Splendid!"
+Then--"Wait; the left hand slightly forward, I think; so as to soften
+the bend of the elbow.... Ah, that's better. Now it couldn't possibly be
+improved upon. Don't you think so, Mrs. Robinson?"
+
+And the mother was as fluttered as her daughter at this sudden appeal.
+"Alice looks lovely," she broke out. "You know so well how to make the
+best of people. I've never seen her so beautiful."
+
+"It's the beautiful accessories that produce the effect," stammered
+Alice.
+
+"They certainly produce some effect," conceded Wyndham. "That is why
+they are there. But it's you I'm painting, Miss Robinson. You are the
+picture, and the picture will be you--and not the surroundings."
+
+He had arranged his palette, and fell to with the brush in earnest,
+bidding her speak the moment she felt fatigued. And, indeed, he insisted
+on her resting frequently, though she struggled bravely to keep the
+spells of work as long as possible, and confessed to cherishing
+ambitions in that direction.
+
+Altogether the ladies were enchanted with their experience. Like Mr.
+Robinson, they had never before visited a studio, and it stirred them
+with a sense of play rather than of work, suggesting to them endless fun
+and merriment. Pleased with the promise of the picture itself, Wyndham
+chatted to them charmingly. Miss Robinson, reassured and encouraged by
+his gracious suavity, soon felt at her ease, and spoke more freely than
+was her wont at any time. A shade of animation came into her features,
+and she was ready to break into a laugh at a jest, or to listen to a
+more serious little disquisition with the intensest absorption. They
+were not infrequent these charming little disquisitions of Wyndham's,
+and his visitors thought it wonderful (and told him so with engaging
+frankness) that he should be able to go on speaking so beautifully, and
+yet never relax his attention from the painting.
+
+He did not prolong the whole sitting beyond two hours, when he expressed
+himself delighted with this beginning, and offered them tea.
+
+They accepted eagerly. "Will you be making it, Mr. Wyndham?" they asked,
+their eyes shining with amusement.
+
+"Oh, I'm an old hand at it," he assured them. He threw open a door which
+they had imagined to indicate a cupboard. "Kitchen, scullery, and every
+kind of domestic office rolled into one," he explained, and promptly
+disappeared inside it. They came peeping in gleefully, fascinated by the
+rough white-washed doll's interior with its miniature dresser, and they
+watched him fill his kettle and put together the tea-things. Then he
+emerged, set the kettle over the fire, spread the table with a fresh
+cloth, and emptied a large bag of cakes on to a fascinating plate of
+old-seeming majolica.
+
+"How nice!" said Miss Robinson, her face shining with make-believe
+gluttony.
+
+"There are some chocolate fingers among them--just the sort you like,"
+said her mother.
+
+"And tiny cream-cakes--just the sort you like, mamma," returned Alice.
+
+"How much tea do you put in the pot?" inquired Mrs. Robinson.
+
+"One spoonful for the pot, and one for each cup," quoted Wyndham
+promptly. "And I am always careful to warm the pot first with a little
+of the hot water, and, in scalding the leaves, I am equally careful to
+catch the water at the exact moment it boils."
+
+"If only our cook were as careful!" sighed Mrs. Robinson.
+
+Wyndham asked them if they would like their tea in the Russian style.
+They didn't quite know what it was, but it sounded interesting, so they
+said they'd certainly like to try it. Whereupon he fished out a large
+lemon, and, cutting it up, put slices into their cups. They were in a
+happy mood. They kept him sternly to the role of host, refusing to spoil
+the fun by moving a finger to help him. And when he had completed all
+the processes, and poured the tea for them, they praised its fragrance
+and delicacy to the skies, and in a trice he was called upon to renew
+the supply. They likewise declared the cakes delicious, and ate them
+with affected greed. Meanwhile he let them see some of his pictures;
+showing off his tall, handsome figure, and occasionally balancing his
+cup to a nicety, as he talked and manipulated the canvasses from his
+point of vantage. And when tea was over, he kept them some little time
+further, whilst he exhibited his overwhelming masterpiece, which he had
+kept to the end with its face turned away from them. As he wheeled the
+big easel round, and the picture came into view, a cry of admiration
+broke from their lips. They were indeed surprised to learn that it was
+"impossibly" unfinished; to them it seemed that, if justice were done,
+it should go straightway into the National Gallery. Their pleasure and
+gratification were extreme: they made not the least attempt to hide
+their sense of the privilege of sitting at his feet.
+
+And, when they rose to depart, they were absurdly grateful for the
+lovely afternoon he had given them. Still staggering under the
+magnificent impression of his brilliancy as an artist, Mrs. Robinson
+summoned her courage, and suggested that, if he hadn't any other
+engagement that evening, he might as well dine with them as dine alone.
+The argument struck him as forcible, and he accepted with an
+unhesitating simplicity that won her heart still further. He was
+thanking her for her kindness, but she raised her hands in horrified
+deprecation to check him.
+
+"Kindness," she cried. "Not at all, Mr. Wyndham. We know we are not
+worthy of the honour you do us."
+
+"Yes, it is very good indeed of you to come," chimed in Miss Robinson,
+as they shook hands. She smiled at him quite frankly now, and her soft
+fingers lingered a friendly moment in his.
+
+He shut the door and turned back into the studio; then, as the thought
+struck him for the first time, his lips murmured almost involuntarily,
+"I do believe Miss Robinson's half in love with me." But he checked
+himself abruptly. "Good heavens! what a caddish thing to say." For, with
+his innate chivalry, he had certainly never been addicted to the habit
+of imagining that this or that woman was immediately enamoured of him.
+
+He returned to the portrait, lingered over it a moment or two, putting
+in here a stroke, there a touch or a smear. And somehow the train of
+"caddish" thought persisted in his mind; mastered his will and desire to
+suppress it. Suppose Miss Robinson should fall in love with him! He
+recognised her worth as a human being, but instinctively he placed her
+beyond a certain pale. It was not with that kind of woman that one
+connected the idea of loving or falling in love; the true type had been
+fixed for him once for all. The person, too, perhaps! As he had all but
+felt in his discussion of the subject with Sadler, matrimony was really
+excluded from his mind. His business in life was work, achievement--his
+spirit was almost one of revenge for the past.
+
+Yet, suppose she _should_ fall in love with him! The speculation
+persisted, and again he tried to brush it aside. Well, he hoped to
+goodness that she would not, and brusquely wielded his paintbrush. In
+any case, it was all in the day's work. Take his own case, for instance!
+Had he not suffered atrociously during all the time he had known Lady
+Betty? In his bitter poverty he had hardly dared say even to himself
+that he had met the woman of his aspirations!
+
+Thus reflecting, he wheeled forward his masterpiece again, and worked on
+it tentatively, though he did not hope to make serious headway till he
+should be able to do some fresh sketches on the spot, and have a few at
+least of the models pose to him over again. But it was a pleasure to
+feel himself so eager-spirited and hopeful. The Academy dare not refuse
+it! The picture must establish his reputation!
+
+He went on till the light failed, then, after reading an hour or two, he
+dressed for his engagement with the Robinsons.
+
+He found the family had in no wise relaxed from the pitch of ceremony to
+which his first acquaintanceship had wrought them up. But he reflected
+that, however indifferent the point might be to him, it was just as well
+they should feel it the right thing to meet him on his own plane--as
+they understood it. Certainly it was not without its amusing side--the
+spectacle of a good honest family stimulated out of their customary
+simplicity merely because a starving artist was to regale himself at
+their table! And fare sumptuously again the artist did with a vengeance!
+
+He ate, too, with the satisfied contemplation of a good day's work
+behind him. He had somehow earned this provender, and the meal had on
+that account an extra subtle relish. Besides, he felt so much more at
+leisure and at ease than on the former occasion. Then, his visit had
+been an uncertain and not over-willing experiment; now, he was
+acclimatised, his impression of everything was cooler. The greater
+self-possession of the family, too, made the evening distinctly less of
+an effort for him. Miss Robinson had largely got the better of her
+distressing shyness, and her personality was more in evidence. In her
+gentle way she was rising to fill her important position as daughter of
+the house.
+
+Wyndham's impression of the Robinsons was thus definite and final; as
+much derived from their surroundings as from themselves. He noticed, for
+example, that the house itself and everything in it was of an extreme
+solidity. Indeed, the substantial walls and solid wood-work were so
+unusual in suburban construction, which was associated in Wyndham's mind
+with jerry-building, that he could not help remarking thereon when he
+and Mr. Robinson were left to their coffee and cigars. The old man was
+greatly pleased at this piece of discernment and observation. He
+explained that he had had the house built for him twenty years before,
+and this solidity represented his dearest philosophy. He hated nothing
+so much as a superficial appearance which affected to be superior to the
+underlying reality. "Soundness and sincerity" had been his motto
+throughout his life, and on that principle his prosperity had been
+founded. Wyndham grew infected with this unmetaphysical philosophy. The
+ground he had trodden these last years seemed hideously unstable to look
+back upon: there was really a wonderful comfort in feeling himself here,
+supported on so sure a flooring, surrounded by these strong walls, and
+seated on this thickly-cut mahogany arm-chair that was framed to last
+three generations. The entire furniture of the house was of the like
+soundness--even the crimson couches of the drawing-room were of a
+massive build, and the grand piano, like this great dining-room table,
+had the fattest of legs, and was resonant of strength and durability.
+
+And in tune with all this solidity was the solid prosperity of Mr.
+Robinson himself: his banking account seemed an embodiment of his
+life-principles, supporting all this substantiality on its imperturbable
+back, like the fabled Buddhistic tortoise nonchalantly supporting the
+world. Wyndham's own existence seemed feeble by contrast, ready to go
+down before the merest puff of wind. He stretched himself luxuriously,
+half incredulous, as if to assure himself it was all no vain imagining;
+permitted Mr. Robinson to recharge his glass with port; and lighted
+another of those fragrant unpurchasable cigars. It was so good to savour
+to the full this sensation of prodigious security! Here one might repose
+one's head: might hear the trump of doom ring out, and pity the rest of
+the universe.
+
+After all, was there not more than a grain of truth in Sadler's gospel?
+In boyhood you could be adventurous; life stretched before you so
+endlessly that you could afford to gamble with it. But, when the years
+were racing by, you longed for a little peace, a little happiness. This
+constant uncertainty of outlook, this perpetual wear of heart and brain,
+how it sapped life at the very foundation!
+
+To be "safe!" To be solidly established! The import and significance of
+the conception sank deep into him. Sadler was an older man, had gone
+through all these phases. "Safety!" No wonder his friend would not
+hesitate to barter romance for all that the magic word doubtless meant
+to him.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+It was this keynote of "safety" that sounded more in his mind, this
+appreciation of the stability and comfort of the house at the corner
+that grew upon him as his visits to the Robinsons continued; for it
+naturally came to be the settled thing that he should dine with the
+Robinsons on most of the evenings that he was not engaged elsewhere or
+otherwise. The argument at first had been the same simple one that he
+might as well join them as dine alone, and there seemed no reason for
+refusing their excellent fare and their admiring society. On the other
+hand, as his ever-insistent pride demanded that they should not suppose
+he was cut off from his own world; and as, too, he felt subtly required
+to live up to the social role which he fancied they as yet attributed to
+him, he was thus stimulated to pick up again some of the old threads of
+his existence. He called on remote aunts in Eaton Square; on retired
+military uncles in South Kensington. And as the winter advanced he began
+to find a pleasure in renewing old acquaintanceships, enjoying
+everybody's surprise at his turning up again, smiling and prosperous.
+It almost amounted to a self-vindication, and he chuckled in secret,
+imagining to himself their confusion.
+
+And since he _was_ emerging from his retirement, there seemed no longer
+any reason why he should not mix again in the art world, and Sadler, who
+had come up to his studio on one or two occasions, induced him to show
+himself at some of the clubs. At the same time he began to cultivate
+again some of the smaller coteries of which he had once been so popular
+a light. Other men, too, began to look him up, and, best of all, an
+editor one day sent him an unhoped-for commission--half-a-dozen drawings
+for a magazine story by a widely-read author.
+
+On the whole he was well satisfied to get back into the world. It
+raised, or rather confirmed, him in his own esteem, and saved him--as he
+put it--from attaching too cheap a price to himself. He was thus able to
+meet the Robinsons from a real plane of vantage, and to purge his mind
+of that slight consciousness of charlatanism which had haunted him at
+the outset.
+
+Were he not taking ultimate success for granted, without a renewal of
+the more bitter side of the struggle, he would scarcely have resumed all
+these old relationships. Yet the precariousness of the future, summon
+his coolness and confidence as he might, was a thing to be actively,
+even desperately, reckoned with. The editor's cheque was a god-send,
+relieving him of immediate anxieties, but he dared not relax his
+efforts. His mornings were entirely devoted to the big canvas now, and
+he rose early to avail himself of every minute of light during these
+short wintry days. He worked with a passion and a concentration that he
+had never yet known. Every fibre of his body bent to the strain; every
+drop of his blood seemed to drain its life into this frenzy to achieve.
+Withal, a delightful sense of emancipation from the old tired vision; a
+splendid consciousness of some rich new store that had gathered in him
+during the long period he had lain fallow!
+
+Yet he shuddered and grew sick at the possibility that the Academy might
+still reject him! In that case, what had he to build upon beyond the
+coming fee for Miss Robinson's portrait? As the weeks went by, something
+of a panic began to overtake him; the future seemed to be bearing down
+on him grim and remorseless.
+
+It was then that the well-garnished atmosphere of the house at the
+corner seemed more and more desirable and alluring. The flow and
+abundance, the great glowing fires in this raw winter, the naive burning
+of incense at his altar--all these things wooed him, wrapped him in a
+certain balm. Ensconced with Mr. Robinson, and sipping his after-dinner
+coffee, he felt the load of his anxieties falling away from him, The
+heavy decanters of cut glass glowed richly at him--the softness of old
+whiskey, the ruby and golden glint of wines, the clear light of cunning
+distillations. The great pineapples, the clusters of grapes, the baskets
+of peaches, all the fragrant store of Nature's bounty set out on a table
+that yet, by no stretch of imagination, could be conceived as
+"groaning"--all seemed to shine fatter and finer than at the houses of
+his society friends. And here, too, his footing was of an unique,
+admirable character. He had his place at the board practically as a
+matter of right. They ranked him as a god; yet felt that the balance of
+debt was heavily against them. Whereas, elsewhere, he was one of a
+crowd, a merely casual figure among others not less important even where
+he had been most intimate. He knew that his own world, despite its
+breeding and traditions, would yet at bottom despise him and his art if
+he could not earn an excellent livelihood by its practice. But the
+Robinsons worshipped him for himself; and money was almost a vulgarity
+sullying the high artistic universe in which he moved and breathed and
+had his being.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Meanwhile the sittings were progressing in a manner to gratify the
+artist beyond his hopes. Miss Robinson seemed to find some mysterious
+inspiration in this decorative scheme, seemed to fuse into it, to lend
+herself to design and draughtmanship. Her face, too, took on subtler
+phases, was touched to a measure of nobility! Her dark eyes shone softly
+under their long lashes; her expression was full of goodness and
+charity. Wyndham prided himself that he had put on the canvas something
+remote from the lines of ordinary portraiture--a simple soul, a gentle
+Lady Bountiful, yet not less dignified in her way than the heroines of
+the grand portraiture.
+
+Mrs. Robinson did not insist on uninterrupted chaperonage of her
+daughter; the ladies evinced little fanaticism on this head. Often they
+brought knitting or needle-work with them, which occupied the mother in
+a peaceful, old-fashioned way that Wyndham even found himself admiring.
+Sometimes Mrs. Robinson would appear only towards the end of the
+sitting, and sometimes she considerately announced that Alice would
+have to come alone for the next occasion as she herself was otherwise
+busy. They both showed a tact and a good taste in the matter which he
+fully recognised, and for which in a way he was grateful.
+
+In the natural resulting intimacy between artist and sitter, Miss
+Robinson expanded, opened out her mind; at first timidly and
+tentatively, ultimately with freedom and confidence. She confessed that
+her experience of life had been nothing at all, since she had always
+lived in quiet shelter. Her unsophisticated simplicity was certainly
+engaging; he could see that she was a sheet entirely unwritten upon,
+that her soul was as naive and trusting as her outward being. She was
+refreshingly a child of nature--no bewildering complexity here--no
+shadow of affectation. She spoke without reserve of the poverty of her
+childhood, and admitted that she had disagreeable qualms of conscience
+about their present riches. Was it right to enjoy so much when one
+thought of the state of the world generally? They debated the subject
+endlessly; considering it elaborately from every conceivable standpoint:
+and his personal authority went far to allay her disquietude. His
+theories, backed up by high philosophy and poetry, fascinated her with
+their harmony and originality; he had such a charming way of arranging
+the order of things into a beautiful artist's scheme, whilst yet his
+sympathies were deep, true, and universal!
+
+Sometimes he was conscious of his sophistry, and felt ashamed of it
+afterwards. Was he playing a comedy of sentiment? he asked himself.
+Well, why not? Men and women made a careful toilette for an evening
+party: why not a spiritual toilette for their sentimental relations?
+
+The last words of his own thought, startled him. Then it _was_ a
+sentimental relation. "By Jove, I must be careful!" he murmured to
+himself. "She's an awfully good soul, and it isn't fair to either of
+us." But the next moment he shrugged his shoulders. Why trouble his mind
+at all? Every relation between a man and a woman who came into such
+close personal touch was in a way sentimental--for the time being! That
+was only the game of life, and everybody had to play at it: the main
+thing was to bow to the rules. Such temporary relations might well be
+made as pleasant as possible; but, when they were at an end, it was
+incumbent on both parties to realise that.
+
+Yet he could not help being increasingly conscious of his power over
+her; it was so pathetically visible. Their conversations were often
+amusingly like those of kindly tutor and obedient, inquiring child; she
+hanging on his words in entire self-surrender, as he discoursed so
+graciously and brought his points so lightly and simply within the
+range of her comprehension. Sometimes, in following up an explanation,
+he would be carried away by the flow of his own ideas and his personal
+interest in the matter, and then he would almost seem to be addressing
+an equal in knowledge and experience. But whenever that happened;
+whenever, for example, he had let himself go too far into the subtle
+mysteries of technique, he would find himself regretting the unchecked
+surrender to impulse, and remain strangely vexed about it long
+afterwards. It was really soaring right outside her limitations! She was
+not a Lady Betty!
+
+Lady Betty was so often in his mind now: she seemed to have established
+herself more definitely there than ever before, as if to keep him up to
+the proper pitch in his judgments of women. He bowed his head low to
+Lady Betty, recognised her as his full intellectual equal--in some
+aspects his superior. She was brains and beauty. She was stateliness
+itself. She was sunshine and sweetness. What was Miss Robinson by the
+side of her? And as he asked himself the question, an impression of Miss
+Robinson, as he had recently come upon her suddenly in the streets,
+blotted out the more dignified version on his own canvas. How plain and
+homely she had seemed in her unobtrusive walking-costume; how
+insignificant her whole meek bearing! Yes, that was the true Miss
+Robinson; caught photographically in the act of being herself, and
+fixed by his vision for always--extinguishing the gorgeously-dressed
+person of these incessant festal evenings no less than his own artistic
+edition of her.
+
+In no respect could she claim to come up to his measure. He appreciated
+all her virtues, recognised her exceptional womanhood: by the side of
+Lady Betty she was insipid, _bourgeoise_, monotonously amiable.
+
+Yet he could never arrive at so harsh a verdict without relenting at a
+rebound. "It is curious," was his thought, "that in proportion as I get
+more friendly with her and really like her, I yet get harder and harder
+on her, poor child! She's a jolly good sort! What a decent world it
+would be if only there were ever so many more women like her!"
+
+And, by way of atonement, his manner at their next meeting would warm
+and soften sensibly; and it came upon him always with a degree of
+surprise that, however he might feel about Miss Robinson theoretically,
+her actual society was always pleasant and comrade-like.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+By mid-December the portrait needed only the finishing touches, and, at
+his invitation, several of his artist-friends came to see it.
+Commendation of the work was general, combined with a certain admiration
+of the unknown sitter. Wyndham could not help feeling that there was
+much speculation as to her identity, and he gave himself all the more
+credit as an artist for the qualities with which he had endowed her, and
+which alone bestowed upon her this interesting individuality.
+
+Wyndham, who made it a point never to have his work interrupted, had so
+arranged these visits that none of his friends had stumbled upon the
+Robinsons. To the not infrequent query of "Who is she?" he usually
+responded, with a half-humorous gleam in his eye, "She might be Brown or
+Jones: as a matter of fact she is Robinson--the daughter of a
+respectable citizen of that ilk." Yet what more, in sober truth, could
+he tell them about her? He might have put it differently, but it was
+the information he supposed they wanted. Yet one day he was to learn
+that this conciseness had been construed as reserve. Sadler lounged in
+one Sunday afternoon, when, as it happened, Wyndham was awaiting his
+sister, whose long-deferred visit had at last been arranged for that
+day. And, in the course of conversation, the visitor soon let slip out a
+word that struck Wyndham like a blow. Sadler had begun by referring to
+Miss Robinson as "your friend;" but, presently, as he still reviewed the
+painting, out came "your _fiancee_."
+
+"My _fiancee_! What the devil----?"
+
+Sadler apologised; a shrewd meaning smile clung about his massive jaws.
+"Of course everybody understands that it's a secret, but when you've
+heard of a thing, it's difficult to keep it from slipping out, don't y'
+know."
+
+"This is all too absurd!" Wyndham was suddenly impelled to laugh.
+
+"What's absurd about it? It seems likely enough to me; else I shouldn't
+have believed it."
+
+"An artist cannot accept a commission without being engaged to his
+sitter?" urged Wyndham indignantly.
+
+"Things have a way of getting about, you know," maintained Sadler.
+
+"They have indeed," said Wyndham.
+
+"Well, what are you so annoyed at?" shouted Sadler. "You make me tired.
+There's nothing discreditable in being engaged by rumour to a wealthy
+and beautiful woman."
+
+Wyndham laughed again. Beautiful! he thought. If only Sadler had met the
+everyday Miss Robinson shopping with her mother in the Finchley Road!
+
+"Seriously, do you consider her beautiful?" he asked in a more genial
+tone, suddenly curious to hear Sadler's real impression.
+
+"What is beauty?" demanded Sadler. "The moment you can define it, it
+ceases to be beauty. Its essence is elusiveness. A touch, a flash--and
+you've got it! The lines here are not classical, but your Miss Robinson
+has distinct individuality. The eyes are fine. She looks the sort that
+would stick to a man. Gee-rusalem! I shouldn't mind having a shot at her
+myself. Look here, old fellow, will you introduce me to her? If there's
+nothing in it for you, give me a chance."
+
+"Goodbye," said Wyndham sweetly. "You won't think me rude, but I've an
+engagement in a minute or two."
+
+"Right!" said Sadler. "I'll be off. Goodbye, Wyndham, old chap. You're a
+real damned old swell. Gee-rusalem! you're just great at getting rid of
+people."
+
+Left alone, Wyndham gave way to annoyance again. It was a fine thing!
+Artists themselves ought to know better than to indulge in
+tittle-tattle of that kind. He worked himself up into a towering rage.
+Then Mary rang the bell, and he had abruptly to recall his graciousness.
+
+It was her first visit to the studio since the new turn of affairs; her
+multifarious duties as worker among the sick and poor after her day's
+teaching leaving her so little freedom. They had of course seen each
+other in the interim; for Wyndham had himself looked in at the
+"Buildings" in Kensington whenever his engagements had taken him that
+way, and he had been fortunate enough just to catch her at home for a
+few moments on several occasions. The poor girl had been overflowing
+with happiness--had not a window on the skies been opened, too, for her?
+And though both had so far delicately avoided all reference to that old
+painful interview, she had yet often been impelled to throw herself at
+his feet in contrition. Only she felt that he, in his great magnanimity,
+would be hurt by such an abasement.
+
+When he brought the picture well into the light, her first exclamation
+was, "Oh, how beautiful!" Then she kissed him impulsively.
+
+The tribute gave him more pleasure than all the professional praise that
+had been showered on the portrait.
+
+"What a charming girl! I should like to know her," were her next words.
+"She has such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit as beautiful as
+you've painted her."
+
+Wyndham's vexation at his rumoured engagement seemed to take wing and be
+off into the airs. He even felt a shy pride in Miss Robinson. "I'm sure
+you'll like her," he said. "Shall I arrange a tea here one of these days
+before Christmas?"
+
+"That would be lovely." Mary's voice was full of enthusiasm. "School
+breaks up in a day or two, and I shall have so much more time to
+myself," she added, still gazing at the picture.
+
+"Any criticism?"
+
+"None," she returned. "You have caught the character with rare genius.
+She is so simple and unaffected; one could repose absolute trust in
+her.... You see," she continued, smiling, "I feel so strong an interest
+in her as being the beginning of your good fortune. I have a sort of
+conviction--don't laugh at me, please--that it has come to stay."
+
+When he poured out her tea, she suddenly laughed, remembering she had a
+message for him which she had forgotten to deliver in the absorption of
+contemplating Miss Robinson; in fact, there was a heap of things she had
+wanted to talk over. The most important, at any rate, was the question
+of his Christmas holiday. Aunt Eleanor wanted Mary to spend the two or
+three weeks with her, but she was anxious that Wyndham, too, should
+join their little party over the New Year--since she now understood that
+he had emerged to some extent from his austere seclusion. A refusal Aunt
+Eleanor would take to heart--she naturally regarded her own home as his,
+as the place to which his mind should spontaneously turn at such a
+season.
+
+Wyndham welcomed the invitation. It was more than two years since he had
+passed any time in Hertfordshire, and the visit itself, which last
+Christmas he had sullenly avoided, would afford him the greatest
+satisfaction. Much as he appreciated the Robinson housekeeping, it was a
+relief to feel definitely that he was not staying the year-end at his
+studio, with no resource save their cordial hospitality.
+
+Mary went off in great elation. "I don't know when I have felt so happy
+as to-day," she declared, as she kissed him. "I leave my best love for
+the work--and for the lady as well," she added, smiling.
+
+It was arranged on the door-step that they should travel down to
+Hertfordshire together, and Mary insisted he must leave her to look up
+the trains, and make all the arrangements.
+
+"It is just the sort of task I enjoy," she assured him. "Looking up
+trains to get into the country always sends me into a sort of happy
+excitement; it is part of the joy of anticipation."
+
+Wyndham was left, somehow, a greater admirer of Miss Robinson. He
+studied her again in his own picture, and accepted her as a far finer
+creature than he had realised--even allowing for this idealisation of
+her in paint. "My feeling against her must be purely morbid, and it's
+really too bad when she likes my society so much!--she has no idea how
+much she shows it." Her unsophistication, hitherto a deficiency, began
+to take on a certain charm. How refreshing this womanly simplicity in a
+world of showy coquettes and chattering, feather-headed females! Even
+Mary, who was so shrewd and fastidious, had been compelled to pay her
+homage. The Robinson family was charming! What fine old-world courtesy
+in the father--many a born aristocrat might well take a lesson from him!
+How unassuming, too, the mother, full of quiet virtues and womanly
+excellencies!
+
+And Mary's significant smile remained with him. Good gracious! was she,
+too, taking the sort of thing for granted? This power of suggestion from
+every side was annoying: still--it would not be right to let that
+prejudice him!
+
+Wyndham paced to and fro feverishly. Why should he not----?
+
+It was the first time he was impelled to put the question to himself in
+clear seeking. Obscure in his mind these last weeks, it crystallised
+itself brusquely--surprised him with its swift definiteness: but he
+broke it off, all unprepared to meet it yet. He had a shamefaced
+remembrance of his matrimonial conversation with Sadler, of the lofty
+convictions he had then expressed.
+
+Well, he had spoken honestly, he argued, and his convictions had changed
+not a jot. "Only now that I am face to face with the actual possibility,
+I see aspects of the case that then escaped me. Till now I have always
+viewed marriage as the great central fact to which the whole of life has
+to converge, from which everything else takes its significance. Hence it
+was a case of the ideal or nothing--there seemed no other choice. But
+now I recognise that matrimony that is not ideal may yet take its place
+as an accessory to life, may be accepted as a good without filling the
+whole horizon."
+
+He resumed his feverish pacing. Well, why should he not seize an
+opportunity which presented itself so favourably? By the loss of his
+money he had become reduced in his own world to the rank of a mere
+"detrimental." Had he not already felt that sufficiently? He laughed
+harshly at the memory. No, no, a Lady Betty he could not hope to marry.
+Such wondrous beings did not grow on every bush; nor did life permit of
+his setting out in search of one. This holding out for the perfect ideal
+only meant humiliation and sadness in the end. The world--the hard world
+of fact--was like that, and you had to take it as you found it. No
+folly could be greater than to forget that life was as it was, and not
+as you thought it ought to be!
+
+Yet he vacillated again. Did he really want to marry at all? Had he not
+decided--wholly, absolutely, irrevocably--that his business in life was
+work? Though he would never have spoken of it to another, he was proud
+in his heart of his sentimental loyalty to Lady Betty, and marriage
+seemed almost an unfaithfulness. Better perhaps to bend himself sternly
+to the task before him!
+
+Yes, but this task before him--unaided, he could never accomplish it.
+Let him confess it now, since he was master again of his full sanity. He
+had been beaten, smashed! But for this timely piece of good fortune all
+would have been at an end by now. The Robinson support once withdrawn,
+he would not be strong enough to stand. He had gauged his powers in the
+great contest, and, in this moment of supreme lucidity, he foresaw he
+must be conquered again. One portrait could not suffice for the
+rebuilding of his future; even on the money side his fee would be
+absorbed immediately. And the finishing of the great picture meant more
+outlay. To try to "fake" it without proper models would be a folly of
+follies--far better to abandon it altogether. His blind optimism at the
+turn of things had certainly been of benefit to him, had stimulated him
+to his best; but with this first piece of work practically
+accomplished, the moment for estimating and facing the situation with
+mathematical exactitude had certainly arrived.
+
+He could not fight the world alone. However he might desire nothing in
+life save self-consecration to work, he could not even achieve that much
+without reinforcing his own strength by means that were unexceptionable
+and honourable.
+
+He came to an abrupt stop as the words swept from his brain. "By Jove,
+that hits the nail pretty square!" he murmured, his lips ashen. Naked
+and ugly, his primary motive stood before him as in a mirror. For one
+clear moment he saw himself brutally, and shuddered. "I am not in love
+with her. If she were dowerless, I should never have worked myself up to
+this stage of appreciation; I should never have dressed up the Robinson
+menage to make it palatable. The portrait would never have come out like
+this. I should have dashed in a brutal modern study of a plain woman,
+full of bravura passages. If I am going in for a thing of this kind, let
+me at least be honest with myself."
+
+And then he laughed with the irony of it all. He, the lover of poesie;
+he, the fastidious gourmet in things of the spirit; who had followed the
+cult of all that was lyrical and exquisite; he planned to mate beneath
+him for the sake of crude money. Faugh! A vulture hovering over a heap
+of carrion!
+
+But the violence of the metaphor brought a reaction. "Rubbish!" he
+murmured, and paced again. The pacing grew into a striding. Up and down
+the length of the studio he stamped, face and eyes working intensely. "I
+am exaggerating. I am morbid about it all; I am rushing to the other
+extreme. When have I ever hidden from myself that the thing would be
+primarily a means to my great impersonal end--I may as well admit it has
+been in my mind all along! What could be a greater degradation than my
+old way of living? Poor Mary! Why, I owe it to her as a duty to put an
+end to all this misery. I'd face anything on earth now to make up to her
+for the past! Besides, the idea is not at all so inhuman as I am trying
+to make out. In a mildish sort of way, of course, I am really fond of
+Miss Robinson. Her virtues _are_ a reality! She is plain, I admit--very
+plain; but my eye has learnt to see her its own way--the way of the
+portrait!"
+
+Brusquely he flung his hesitations from him. Why should he not marry
+Miss Robinson? Even in the driest aspect of the case, the match was not
+inequitable. The "crude money"--yes, let him use the words
+deliberately--the "crude money" on her side; on his a full equivalent in
+his personal self, his no doubt brilliant career once sordid matters
+were disposed of, and a sphere of existence that was obviously
+interesting to her. If he brought no immediate fortune himself, his
+future earnings, once he were free to work without anxiety, might well
+be considerable. What was there in the idea to wound his pride? How
+absurd his metaphor of the vulture!
+
+And then he turned to dwell again with relief at the pleasanter aspects
+of the case. Even if he were not attaining to passionate poetic dreams,
+he would yet be carrying into effect a charming domestic ideal of peace
+and tranquillity. And the very poetry of marriage began to invest Miss
+Robinson with something of its own glamour. He saw her in a bridal veil
+holding a big bouquet. His enthusiasm mounted.
+
+And Mary's voice seemed to echo again in the studio: "What a charming
+girl! She has such a good face, and I'm sure she's every bit as
+beautiful as you've painted her." He almost felt himself blushing in
+embarrassment; it was as if he himself were being commended. "She is so
+simple and unaffected," went on Mary's voice with its unmistakable ring
+of conviction. "One could repose absolute trust in her."
+
+How shrewd and true was his sister's reading of the character! Moreover,
+Mary had confessed to an almost superstitious thrill at gazing on the
+features of the woman who had been the beginning of his good fortune.
+Could he say that he was entirely free from the same sort of
+superstitious sentiment? Alice Robinson had begun his good fortune; why
+should she not complete it? If only that confounded set of fools hadn't
+started their silly tittle-tattle!
+
+Undoubtedly there was a substratum of truth and good sense in the views
+so stoutly and passionately maintained by Sadler; only Sadler imagined
+it was possible to compromise, to step down from the ideal and yet find
+great happiness. He himself would give up the dream of happiness in the
+ideal sense: his would be frankly a case of convenience, though were it
+not for the many virtues of Miss Robinson, his mind would never have
+become reconciled to it. No! not even were she as rich as Croesus. He
+must do that amount of justice to himself. At his age he could
+appreciate the importance of the rarer qualities of character in his
+life's mate--loyalty, modesty, devotion! He would be making a wise
+marriage! not a sordid one. He would be choosing the deep calm of life
+instead of the elusive and often mocking flash of superficial passion
+and beauty.
+
+And, on his part, he was prepared to be the best and most dutiful of
+husbands!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+When, that same evening, Wyndham was ushered into the Robinsons'
+drawing-room, he was mildly surprised to find a sedate gentleman there
+in familiar conversation with the family. The stranger vibrated with
+neuter lights; yet dry, clean lights. Tall spare figure, hair and
+close-trimmed beard, tailed morning coat and sharp-creased trousers,
+brow and visage, air and movement--all a chiaroscuro in grey;
+accentuated curiously, too, against the host's correct black and white,
+and the laces and chiffons and shimmering brilliance of the ladies.
+
+"My friend, Mr. Shanner," said Mr. Robinson, introducing them; and
+Wyndham remembered at once that the Robinsons had mentioned Mr. Shanner
+occasionally as an intimate of the house who was away in the New World
+for the interests of the concern in which he was junior partner.
+
+But Mr. Shanner, though he shook hands cordially, yet gave him a swift
+look up and down that had something of antagonism in it. And in Wyndham,
+too, arose some obscure enmity, likewise masked by the conventional
+friendliness of greeting.
+
+"As I was just telling Mr. Robinson," said Mr. Shanner, with an
+obviously forced smile that yet illumined the man, broke through and
+flashed away the greyness for an instant, "I hadn't the least idea that
+I was going to stumble on an evening party. I feel quite out of it." His
+voice was full of affable vibrations, and he smiled again, with a
+general nod that indicated all this ceremonial get-up around him.
+
+"I am sure we shall do our best to amuse you," returned Wyndham,
+naturally associating himself with the family, but feeling hopelessly
+out of sympathy with the new-comer.
+
+Miss Robinson had reddened as the two men approached each other, but on
+her father's again mentioning that Mr. Shanner was just back from his
+tour in the New World, she came into the conversation bravely, and rose
+above her shade of embarrassment.
+
+"Have _you_ ever crossed to America, Mr. Wyndham?" she asked, smiling at
+him.
+
+"No," he confessed; "though America has largely crossed to me."
+
+Mr. Shanner looked puzzled.
+
+"How do you mean--America has crossed to you, Mr. Wyndham?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I hope I did not seem to suggest that I have been a centre of
+pilgrimage," laughed Wyndham. "Only, in past years, when I was running
+a good deal about the Continent, I often used to live with New York,
+Chicago, and Boston, for considerable periods."
+
+"Mr. Wyndham has often given us charming sketches of the Americans,"
+chimed in Miss Robinson.
+
+"Oh, I don't pretend to be much of a hand at that sort of thing," said
+Mr. Shanner, with pleasant humility. "I can only just give my
+impressions as a plain observer. But then I'm a man of affairs, and
+nothing at all of an artist or a literary man." Wyndham observed how
+careful and honeyed his delivery was; it seemed to advertise a perpetual
+self-consciousness of being a gentleman.
+
+"Mr. Shanner is unduly modest," put in Mr. Robinson. "His descriptions
+are most entertaining."
+
+"Well, of course, I can speak of things within my experience, and make
+myself fairly clear--in my own way, of course. But, from all that you
+people have been telling me, I shouldn't attempt to emulate Mr.
+Wyndham."
+
+Mr. Shanner gave a strange little laugh, full of insincere echoes; which
+failed in its implication of good-fellowship, and only emphasised the
+ill-nature it was meant to cover. Wyndham was not a little bewildered;
+conscious of some suppressed excitement in the man, some ruffling of the
+ashen chiaroscuro. This impression was deepened when dinner was
+announced, and Mr. Shanner made what was perilously like a dart to the
+side of Miss Robinson and offered his arm. Wyndham stepped out of their
+way, bowing as they passed him.
+
+At table Mr. Shanner gave no undue signs of modesty or self-distrust,
+but talked about "things within his experience" with the utmost
+unconstraint. An unmistakable note of assurance animated the honeyed
+voice, which soared away occasionally, yet sedulously recollected
+itself; drew back within bounds, reverted to the lesser pitch and the
+deliberate pace. Mr. Shanner was at pains to let it be seen that he was
+a man of affairs on the grand scale, one to be ranked with diplomatists
+and ambassadors. In the course of business he had come into contact with
+exalted personages of almost every kingdom, and had corresponded
+voluminously with some of them. He carried an assortment of their
+letters in his pocketbook, which lay on the table as a perpetual source
+of illustration. He spoke of some of these great ones of the earth with
+extreme familiarity--he had been closeted with them on confidential
+business, and he flattered himself he had counted for something in
+certain important decisions of policy. And, as he warmed to the
+conversation, far from being "out of it," he was king of the table, his
+honeyed words emerged endlessly. There was a distinct flash of challenge
+in his occasional glances at Wyndham--he was not to be overborne by the
+presence of any aristocrat on earth. And not content with all this
+insistent implication of his personal importance, he even related by way
+of pleasant interlude how, with ear to one private telephone and mouth
+to another, he had smartly seized a sudden opportunity, and, buying an
+incoming cargo through the first telephone and selling it through the
+second, had netted twenty thousand pounds for his firm. Whereas Wyndham
+amused himself trying to measure the depths of Mr. Shanner's contempt
+should he suspect that the sole resources of his vis-a-vis were the
+guineas to be paid him from Mr. Robinson's treasury.
+
+It was evident, too, that Mr. Shanner was more familiarly at home in the
+house than Wyndham. He called its master "Robinson"; most significant of
+all, Miss Robinson was Alice to him. Indeed, his manner, as he sat next
+to her, was almost proprietorial; at any rate it had easy, affectionate
+suggestions about it. She, however, had fallen back into a shy
+constraint; though she emerged at moments, lifting her deep-glancing
+eyes to Wyndham and flashing him the friendliest of messages. Wyndham
+understood by now; knew also that it was clear to Mr. Shanner that they
+were rivals--that a mutual detestation lurked beneath their pleasant
+amenities. He had gathered also that Mr. Shanner meant to show that he
+did not concern himself one jot about the new star that had appeared in
+the firmament during his absence. But Wyndham came off easily the
+victor, displaying for Mr. Shanner a charming deference, and pursuing
+the unruffled tenour of his entertaining conversation without
+manifesting in the slightest degree any of the emotions that the evening
+had raised in his breast. Such perfect unconsciousness of matters
+intensely present, Mr. Shanner could not hope to emulate. It was clear
+he was uneasily alive to the contrast--that he had the growing
+consciousness of defeat. His note of self-emphasis rang louder, though
+smothered continuously.
+
+The war continued after dinner; Mr. Shanner eagerly turning the pages of
+Miss Robinson's music, and so entirely appropriating her that Wyndham
+could scarcely contrive to approach her during the rest of the evening.
+However, Wyndham smilingly kept his place in the background, disdaining
+to assert himself or to enter openly into emulation; though there were
+opportunities he, the socially experienced, might have seized adroitly.
+After all, why annoy this admirable, upright gentleman? Even as it was,
+poor Mr. Shanner was fated to receive one or two sharp slashes; as when,
+in the course of describing the sittings, Mrs. Robinson let it be
+clearly seen that she was not always present to chaperone her daughter
+in the studio. At that moment Mr. Shanner's face was an extraordinary
+face to look upon; although he affected to laugh and smile, and packed
+even more honey into his voice. All of which forced sweetness
+notwithstanding, it began to be evident that the topic of the picture,
+and of Wyndham's work in general, bored him considerably. At last, when
+Mrs. Robinson innocently suggested that Wyndham should ask him to come
+to see the portrait at the studio, he deprecated the idea with some
+degree of vehemence. He really was very busy in the daytime now.
+Besides, he added pleasantly, on principle he never cared to see an
+article whilst yet on order; time enough to examine it when it was
+tendered for delivery. He smiled meaningly at Wyndham as if to
+accentuate that these commercial metaphors were merely by way of
+pleasantry.
+
+"And then it's so extremely difficult for an outsider to get any idea of
+an unfinished picture, and of course I don't profess to be a judge of
+art in any case, though I know what I like."
+
+So, if Mr. Wyndham would excuse him, he added, he would rather wait till
+the portrait had come home, and had been hung in the house.
+
+It was not without difficulty that Wyndham found his opportunity of
+arranging the little tea-party at which the ladies were to meet his
+sister. Miss Robinson was to give him the final sitting on the Tuesday;
+so it was therefore agreed that the tea should take place on that day
+after work was over. The sitter herself crimsoned deeply at learning
+that Mary "had admired her immensely," and her eyes glistened in a way
+that showed her pleasure and rapturous appreciation.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+The definite figure of Mr. Shanner with his magnificent appropriation of
+Miss Robinson merely impelled Wyndham to smash up this rival at once and
+have done with the business. The evening had obscured all the repugnance
+that lay in the depths of him; had stimulated roseate conceivings of
+possible felicity.
+
+On the Tuesday he found his opportunity. Miss Robinson came alone,
+explaining that her mother would not appear till the time fixed for the
+tea-party. The weather was rigorously wintry now, and a biting wind blew
+in as the door was opened. A new layer of snow had fallen during the
+last hour, and Miss Robinson had come across wrapped in a big, heavy
+cloak. He ushered her through the ante-room with a charming air of
+solicitude, to which she vibrated like a struck harp, and gave him the
+softest and tenderest intonations of her voice. He helped her off with
+the cloak, and hung it away carefully, the whilst she stooped and warmed
+her long hands at the lavishly heaped-up fire. Her throat and arms now
+showed at their best, and her face had some strange, almost mystic
+undertone of happiness. As she bent down there before his eyes, she
+completely blotted out the impression of the insignificant plain woman
+whom he had suddenly come upon in the streets; of the everyday Miss
+Robinson that at one time had almost become an obsession. At that moment
+she was well-nigh the idealised figure he had painted. Yet there was
+something even subtler in her which he had missed, and knew that he had
+missed. But, studying his own work again, he saw that that was just as
+well; for the picture existed as a separate creation, a piece of
+painting first and foremost, in which he had exhibited the cleverness of
+his brush. It was paint--distinguished, intellectual paint--more than it
+was human portraiture; in spite of all the significance with which he
+had tried to invest it. As this new truth dawned upon him, he kept
+glancing from sitter to canvas, and from canvas to sitter, with a
+strange, surprised interest. But her hands suddenly arrested his
+attention, and he became aware that, for the first time since he had
+known her, they were absolutely bare of rings.
+
+"You have no rings to-day," he remarked, his voice showing his surprise.
+"I might have wanted to touch up the hands."
+
+Her colour deepened unaccountably. "I thought the hands were finished,"
+she breathed, all of a flutter. "Shall I go back for them?"
+
+"What a goose it is!" he said lightly, and she smiled again, as if
+pleased they were on so charmingly intimate a footing.
+
+"Shall we not need them?" she asked.
+
+"I think not," he answered, studying the hands a little. "You were
+perfectly right; they had best remain as they are."
+
+She took the pose, and for a minute or two he worked silently; she
+maintaining the perfect stillness that had at first been her cherished
+ambition. He was still pondering about her bare hands and her confusion
+at his having observed them, and light came to him. Was it to show him
+that no man--not even Mr. Shanner--had any claim on her? After the close
+attentions he had witnessed the other evening, was she afraid he might
+infer that some understanding existed between herself and Mr.
+Shanner?--that one of these rings, even if not a formal pledge, might be
+his and worn for his sake? Her neglect of such favourite trinkets to-day
+was then to indicate that no one of them had any special sentimental
+interest for her!
+
+"You are sitting perfectly to-day," he presently remarked. "It doesn't
+tire you?"
+
+"What an unkind suggestion! I thought I had got beyond the amateur stage
+long ago."
+
+"I'm sorry. You didn't hear, though, the beginning of my remark."
+
+"I agreed with that," she answered with a sly humour.
+
+"So that it hadn't to be reckoned. Do you know all women are like that?"
+
+She considered. His brush made strokes. "Like what?" she asked at last.
+
+"If you pay them the greatest of tributes, but are incautious enough to
+hint the tiniest of qualifications, the tribute dwindles to nothing, and
+they remain tremendously annoyed at the suggestion of imperfection."
+
+"Am I like that?"
+
+"You were just now."
+
+"I was such a bother and a hindrance to you when we started," she
+explained. "I used to get tired every few minutes. And now at last, just
+when I am flattering myself on my improvement----"
+
+"You take me too seriously," he broke in.
+
+"You _were_ serious," she insisted.
+
+"Serious--yes; in so far as I was afraid you were tired. I didn't even
+mean it as a qualification of my tribute; it was only genuine concern
+for you."
+
+"How stupid of me!" she exclaimed. "I ought to have felt that at once."
+
+There was another spell of silence; he intensely absorbed in his brush,
+she obviously considering.
+
+"I am not really like that," she said at last.
+
+He stood away from the canvas, glanced critically at certain points,
+levelled his mahl-stick at her, took up a rag, and wiped a bit out.
+"Like what?" he asked.
+
+"Like women."
+
+"But you are. You see, it is sticking in your mind." He smiled wickedly.
+
+"You fight too hard," she pleaded.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said remorsefully. "I shall not do it again."
+
+"Oh, I'm not a bit hurt," she protested. "I was only thinking the point
+over."
+
+"I want to hear what you were thinking." His smile and tone were
+meaningly affectionate, as if they would add "little child."
+
+"I meant that I should never really be hurt by qualifications. I have
+never been used to having nice things said to me. I certainly do not
+deserve tributes, but I know I deserve all possible qualifications."
+
+"Oh, if you please! I'll not allow even Miss Robinson to say such
+slanderous things about so valued a friend of mine."
+
+"So I have been slandering a friend of yours! I'm so sorry. Forgive me."
+
+"I suppose I must--though I find it hard--very hard."
+
+"I do believe you are paying me a tribute," she laughed. "Now for the
+qualifications. You shall see how stoical I am."
+
+"Qualifications--none!" He threw down his brushes and palette, as if to
+emphasise the declaration. "I'm tired first," he sang out gaily. "Let
+us rest."
+
+"There!" she exclaimed. "What a triumph for me!"
+
+"But you say it so gently that it is a pleasure to concede you the
+victory. You are an ideal foe."
+
+"Oh, if you please, I don't want to be a foe.... How cold it is!" She
+stooped and held her hands again to the fire.
+
+"No, child," he said gently, "of course we aren't foes. We are very good
+friends indeed, aren't we?" He held out his hand, as if to clench the
+understanding, so clearly and warmly acknowledged.
+
+She was all a-flutter again, though, as was her habit, she covered it up
+with a smile. "Very good friends!" she returned, with conviction, and
+she put her hand in his, and let it linger there. "I have always lived
+reserved and to myself," she added thoughtfully. "You may think it
+strange, but I have never had a friend before--not even a woman friend."
+
+"I can well understand your shrinking away from people. No doubt most
+people would jar on you."
+
+"It would hurt me if I thought that. I should not like to despise
+anybody. I should have loved to have friends: only I have never had the
+gift of making them. Sometimes I am thankful that I am not brilliant--I
+might so easily have become unendurable and full of self-conceit."
+
+"Ah, you are something better than brilliant," he exclaimed. "It needs
+an exceptional spirit to appreciate you. You are so much out of the
+ordinary in every way, in looks----"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted in protest. "I have no looks. I have no
+illusions about that."
+
+"Look at your own portrait," he insisted. "I say it is the kind of
+beauty it needs a gift to appreciate. In beauty--as in everything
+else--the crowd runs after the obvious and the commonplace."
+
+"You are the first that ever thought I possessed good looks. You have
+given them to me."
+
+"I have not even done you justice. I have omitted more than I have
+suggested. My sister thinks you are beautiful; all my artist friends who
+have seen the picture share her opinion."
+
+She was silent, almost distressed; she could not meet his gaze, but
+turned her eyes away.
+
+"It gave me pleasure to hear you appreciated," he continued. "You are
+above conventional compliments. I withdraw what I said before. You are
+_not_ like other women."
+
+Her breath came and went as she listened, but she smiled bravely.
+
+"At any rate I am not like _some_ women. I never could take any of the
+deeper aspects of life in a merely frivolous spirit. With me it is a
+loyal, deep friendship, or nothing."
+
+He took her hand again. "Believe me, dear child, the friendship on my
+part is equally loyal and deep. It is for life."
+
+"For life," she murmured, suddenly grown pale.
+
+He dashed in, determined to strike home.
+
+"I prize you at your full worth, since I am one of those who can measure
+it. I have the deepest affection for you. I believe I could make you
+happy. Don't you understand? I offer you my whole life--that is, if you
+think me worthy."
+
+"Worthy!" she echoed, in dazed distress. "How can you think me worthy of
+you! I have lived in narrow retirement. I am nothing."
+
+He seized both her hands now. "No more of this. I ask for your promise."
+
+"I love you with all my heart and soul. But I am not good enough for
+you."
+
+"I thought we agreed you were not like other women, and yet there is
+this stiff-necked obstinacy." He drew her nearer to him, and kissed her
+on the lips. "It is settled--you are to be my wife."
+
+His domination seemed to hypnotise her. "Yes, I will do my best to make
+you a perfect wife, dear," she murmured, as if bowing to his
+irresistible will.
+
+He held her hands tighter, and looked into her face as if proudly. She
+met his look with glistening eyes: she was deathly pale now, and her
+lips, too, were colourless. Then abruptly she drew her hands from him,
+and, as if impelled on some tide of womanhood that rose in high music
+above all hesitations, above the fluttering timidity of her whole life,
+she threw her arms round his neck, and kissed his lips with a long
+abandonment.
+
+"I am now almost afraid of your sister," she whispered presently. "I
+shall feel on my trial."
+
+"But she has fallen in love with you already," he reassured her again.
+"And Mary is the sweetest and gentlest soul in the world."
+
+"I know I shall love her," she said. Her head hung down a moment in
+meditation. "But let us continue the work now, dear. I know you wish to
+have it finished to-day."
+
+But he had little now to add to it, and he had made his last stroke
+before the dusk of the afternoon overtook him.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Wyndham's career as an engaged man began amid a radiance of enthusiasm.
+When his prospective mother-in-law arrived for the tea-party, she was
+enchanted at the news, declaring, after the first joyous surprise, that
+it was the wish that lay nearest to the hearts of herself and her
+husband. And, presently, when Mary appeared, and was introduced not only
+to "the original of the portrait she had so admired," but also to "a
+very sweet Alice" who was to be her sister, "I guessed it," she broke
+out, kissing Miss Robinson impulsively. "I am so delighted."
+
+Heigh, presto! In a trice the three women were chatting away like a
+group of old neighbours! Wyndham became discreetly busy with tea-things.
+
+Of course the Robinsons insisted on Mary's dining with them, and so
+there was a happy little reunion in the evening. Mr. Robinson thrilled
+visibly with the honour of having Mary at his board, and he
+congratulated Wyndham with pathetic cordiality, his voice husky with
+emotion, his eyes streaming with tears.
+
+Such was the auspicious beginning. But the universe seemed to vibrate to
+white heat as a wider population entered into the jubilation. Mary was
+the first to spread the news, her letters reaching the Hertfordshire
+circle express. In the twinkling of an eye, as it appeared to Wyndham, a
+flood of letters poured through the slit in his door. He had done that
+which makes every man a hero for the moment, and dim figures with whom
+he had been out of touch for endless years started up again on the
+horizon, palpitatingly actual, athrob with goodwill. In the Bohemian
+world, too, confirmation of the former rumour was not slow to be noised
+abroad, and Sadler hastened to Hampstead and burst in upon him, the
+massive head enthusiastically aglow; declaring that he had never for a
+moment taken Wyndham's denial seriously, and roaring out his
+congratulations and envy with an exuberance of virile expletive.
+
+At Aunt Eleanor's the Christmas festivities were struck in a gayer key
+in his honour. Odes of welcome and triumph were in the air. And he was
+glad enough to be among his own world again; living in the way that
+meant civilisation to him, and breathing homage and consideration--
+lionised by his equals! It was as though the fatted calf had been killed
+for him, after his prodigal riot of penury. He expanded in this
+atmosphere of adulation, amid all these manifestations in honour of the
+brilliant artist and the Prince Charming who loved and was loved
+idyllically. His engagement seemed to him now most admirable--the
+world's sanction had invested it with warm and pleasant lights.
+Certainly nobody deprecated or criticised the projected alliance; though
+it was known to be with middle-class people who were not in Society, but
+merely quiet folk of wealth and respectability. Mary's enthusiasm had
+gone a long way in anticipating any possible caste objections, and the
+word of approval went round from one to another in the usual parrot-like
+way in which public opinion has formed itself since creation. There
+seemed in fact to be a very conspiracy of approbation. Wyndham had done
+wisely; and voices dropped impressively to dwell on the Robinson
+millions--with the obvious implication that that is what wealthy
+middle-class people are for--to have the most promising of their kind
+promoted into the upper classes.
+
+But the Robinson fortune, though not inconsiderable, was not the
+romantic one of rumour. Mr. Robinson had already performed his duty of
+writing to Wyndham on the financial aspect of the alliance, and in so
+charming a way that Wyndham had at once paid him the tribute of "jolly
+decent." Since they had not had the opportunity of disposing of the
+subject _viva voce_, had said the old man, he conceived it perhaps to be
+an obligation on his part to do so without delaying further; after
+which these matters would of course pass entirely into the realm of
+Wyndham's private affairs, where he was well content to leave them.
+Alice's fortune, such as it was, had been placed under her own control
+absolutely when she had attained the age of twenty-five, and probably
+now, with certain accumulations, amounted to some thirty thousand
+pounds. She was a wise and prudent child, well capable of controlling
+those money matters that were naturally distasteful to so gifted an
+artist, and in that way he would no doubt find her a most useful
+companion. However, he now left it to him and Alice to plan out their
+future together, and wished them all good luck. At the same time, if
+Wyndham had no objection, he would like to give them as a
+wedding-present any house they might fancy, and his wife desired to
+furnish it or give them a cheque for that purpose.
+
+Wyndham was in reality deeply moved by so much considerate kindness and
+rare delicacy. He wrote Mr. Robinson a charming note of acknowledgment;
+though he touched just briefly on the main theme, diverging into a
+chatty account of his visit, and letting his pen run on and on till he
+had covered several sheets.
+
+Each morning during his visit a letter from Alice awaited him on the
+breakfast-table. For a week or two the chant was timorous, uncertain; of
+a pitch to soothe his self-complacency, to stir no ruffle in his
+holiday mood. But towards the end of his time she found herself--she
+tuned up, and adventured. And then followed Wyndham's awakening; taking
+him with the force of cataclysm, and dashing him out of his drowsy mood
+of contentment. Evidently the poor child was not living in this world.
+If her feet touched earth, her head at any rate was in a heaven of its
+own. She poured herself out with a lyric fervour that was like the song
+of a lark for rapture. All the years of her life she had saved herself
+for this, not frittered her emotions away in flirtations or frivolous
+love-affairs--as the soberer Wyndham now reflected. Her ideals were as
+unsullied as in her childhood. Her spirit soared up with a tremulous
+eager joy--without doubts, without cynicism, with a simple sure faith in
+love's paradise. Reserved, shrinking away from men, her heart yet held
+rich store of treasure, and she poured all out at his feet. Timorousness
+had vanished; the soul that had woven its own music in solitude had been
+translated to a higher universe. There were no barriers now, nothing but
+this joyous, confident life into which her womanhood had passed at that
+moment when, swept onward by the flood, she had thrown her arms around
+him.
+
+"Dearest," she wrote, "my whole past life seems like a half-slumber from
+which I have awakened into a world almost too dazzling with light and
+joy. Yet who am I that this joy should have come to me? When I think of
+the years when I lived alone with my own thoughts, it seems wonderful
+that your love should have been granted to me. The world is full of pale
+ghosts that come and go, not knowing what life is, and it amuses me to
+wonder if any of them will ever turn into real people.
+
+"Oh, my dear love, you are so far, far off. I want you here, here again
+with me, happy that you love me, happy that I love you, wanting no other
+life than this with your arms round me and your heart beating close to
+me. And yet I like to think that you are happy amid your own family, in
+the place where your childhood was spent. I love, dear, to dwell on the
+thought of your childhood, and fancy I see you now, a beautiful child in
+velvet, with a feather in your hat and a toy sword. And I see myself a
+child again, playing with this fairy little prince in the meadows. How
+beautiful if we were children like that! Impossible does it seem? Yet is
+anything impossible in this enchanted world?
+
+"Think of me, dearest, with the deepest and truest love of your heart,
+as I am thinking of you every moment of this wonderful life."
+
+And another time: "It is strange to feel how everything is transformed
+since you came into my life and made me understand what this great
+happiness is. I laugh gaily at nothing; yet tears come into my eyes
+quickly at unhappiness or suffering. It seems as if I were born to love
+you with a yearning and a passion that sometimes frighten me, yet which
+I would rather die than live without. When I first loved you, I did not
+know that this would come, that I should not be able to imagine it to be
+otherwise. The thought is frightful; indeed, if anything were to happen
+to change the present, I think my heart would give one great, great
+throb, and all would be over. I draw my breath hard at the thought;
+there is a deep pain at my breast; my teeth are set. But how morbid I am
+to-day! how ungrateful for this splendid gift of your love that has been
+bestowed upon me! But somehow I feel frightened; I don't believe that
+anybody will be allowed to keep such happiness on this earth. So come to
+me quickly, dearest; you seem so far, far away from me. I kiss your dear
+letters, I wear them near my heart, at night they are under my pillow. I
+love you, I love you."
+
+And this heart-cry broke down all the strong fibre of the man. Poor
+Alice! He must take care of such a child; he must cherish her life and
+make it perfect! Not in the least detail must he fail in his duty. Never
+for a moment must she think that this was--he flinched now before the
+words--an engagement of convenience!
+
+An engagement of convenience! He slipped away to his room--away from the
+rest of the world!--and sat staring into the dusk. He knew now that he
+was face to face with the actuality that lay before him in all its
+horror. An engagement of convenience! He would have given the world to
+recall it. His eyes saw clear again--the enthusiasm that swirled and
+whirled around him had thus far sustained him: vibrations of romance had
+arisen within him, had resounded with a certain music. But these letters
+of Alice, this crescendo series, each soaring beyond the other, had
+illumined the horrible poverty of his own emotion. The freshness of her
+note was a revelation and yet an agony to him. If only he could have
+piped with half the thrill!
+
+He could see at last that in his specious reasonings he had somehow
+assumed a largely passive attitude on her part. Indeed, egotistically
+preoccupied with his own side of the case, he had scarcely bestowed a
+thought on hers. This reality--immense--overpowering--of the romance in
+her heart terrified him. He had given her empty words, and she had given
+him--love! And what else, indeed, but empty words had he to offer her
+now?--had he to offer her in the whole long vista of their future? At
+the best a studied kindness, an acceptance of duty. He had entered on a
+role of mockery, and he knew now he was utterly unfitted to play it. His
+whole nature rose and cried aloud in revolt.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+At the beginning of the New Year Wyndham hastened back to town, and was
+soon at his post striving to adapt himself to the outlook of his life.
+He had tried to steel himself to confess the miserable truth to Alice,
+to lay it before her with a fidelity as unswerving as Nature, merciless
+both to him and to her. But her letters continued to shake him, and he
+had not the strength to face the inevitable wreckage. To break was to
+punish her: to continue was only to punish himself. His course was
+obvious: he must play the game _a outrance_. Yet he sought temporarily
+to escape the actuality by immersing himself desperately in routine.
+
+So, for the present, his days were mapped out simply enough. He was up
+early, for the winter hours of light were precious. Braced for a great
+effort, he found himself drawing on unexpected stores of vitality; he
+flung himself on his masterpiece like a Viking into the melee of battle,
+and had the reward of splendid conquest. This sense of power, this
+subjugation of his material, made his old foiled strivings and strivings
+incomprehensible, incredible!
+
+Meanwhile the domesticity of the house at the corner invaded his studio,
+and surrounded him with comforts and attentions that but threw up the
+more vividly the issues he sought to preclude. But he kept stifling down
+his rebellion; struggling to accept the position unreservedly, though
+sick with the sense of hypocrisy. He laughingly surrendered to Alice a
+duplicate key of the studio in token of their good-fellowship, and she
+and her mother devoted themselves to the loving task of smoothing his
+path, letting no point that might ruffle his inspiration elude their
+vigilance. Their whole life and activities seemed to converge to the
+studio. Mrs. Robinson kept discreetly in the background, though her
+brain planned and her tongue discussed, and she often went joyfully
+a-purchasing. Shortly before one o'clock Alice would march across,
+attended by a servant carrying his lunch, of temptations compact,
+imprisoned in shining caskets; and by the time Wyndham was ready to sit
+down, his table would be nicely set out, and the temptations spread to
+his view.
+
+Many precious minutes were thus saved for him, and his train of ideas
+was luxuriously unbroken. This tact and thoughtfulness was
+characteristic of all the devotion that was cherished on him. Wyndham
+deeply appreciated its quality, and despite the pressure--with
+sending-in day looming barely three months ahead--gratitude no less than
+conscience drove him to acknowledgement, to contrive that the artist
+should not entirely swallow up Miss Robinson's future husband; though
+her expectations were considerately of the slightest. Thus his negative
+policy was answering effectively. With the passage of the days, he found
+himself sliding into a lethargy of acquiescence in the position. The
+mere physical fatigues of his labours dulled the unrest within him, and
+his brain fermented incessantly with the problems of masses and values
+which his great canvas still pressed upon him. He was glad he found it
+possible at last to be accepting all outer things so calmly. He told
+himself repeatedly: "Your revolt is over. You have decided there can be
+no break. So be as decent and affectionate as you can."
+
+Thus his attentions seemed to her gallant and charming, to hold their
+touch of poetry. Flowers and bonbons, a book of verses or a novel were
+frequent tributes: after his work was done they went into town
+occasionally to a concert or a theatre, and if his conversation was of
+the theme with which his mind was most saturated, she did not regard
+that as otherwise than a compliment.
+
+And so these winter days sped, and January was running its course. And
+out of this not unsuccessful routine there came to him the sense that
+his life was very full and singularly complete. Of perturbation or
+unforeseen excitement there was never a thrill. The only moment that
+held a flutter for him was when Mr. Shanner descended on the Robinsons,
+grey, decorous, and austere; congratulated the pair with an ashen smile,
+in the honeyed accents that had charmed so many diplomatists; and
+bestowed solemn formal attentions on the engaged lady throughout the
+evening.
+
+The whole plot of his drama had in verity been revealed, was Wyndham's
+frequent reflection; and with that final comedy-scene the curtain had
+seemed to fall, and he knew all that there was to know.
+
+But his own wretched money affairs were soon to give him food for
+pondering. Alice's portrait had gone home in a splendid frame to find a
+temporary resting-place before being tossed to the Academy; and Mr.
+Robinson, though seeing him face to face almost daily, delicately sent
+his cheque by post. Wyndham grasped it with relief: but it proved merely
+the illumination that accentuated the darkness. For overdue rent and
+many other calls made it melt away with terrifying swiftness; and
+Wyndham had indebted himself to the family jeweller for presents to Miss
+Robinson. Impecuniosity approached him again with no vague menace;
+kicked him brutally out of his ostrich-like attitude. Nevertheless he
+shrank in terror from the definite thought of pressing forward the
+marriage; though, in the clear light of these latter self-communings,
+money was the sole reason why he had sought it. Not only did he fear
+that life of simulation with a sickness immeasurable: but he foresaw
+endless money humiliations at the very outset.
+
+He would fulfil his promise honourably, whatever the spiritual cost of
+it! But he could not face money humiliations in the eyes of his
+inferiors! A thousand times "no"! He must trust, despite all, to his own
+strength and performance!--he would do brilliantly with his pictures in
+the spring!--he would follow up the success and conquer London! He waved
+aside all his past disasters: he saw his good star in the ascendant,
+shining--he fixed his eyes on it fanatically. It was an irony of ironies
+that, after his great surrender, his pride should still flame up
+unconquered. Before the moral tragedy of love yoked to mockery, he might
+bow his head in resignation; but Miss Robinson's fortune loomed up as a
+ridiculous and contemptible complication in a situation already nigh
+impossible.
+
+The metaphor of the vulture was often back in his mind now! The heap of
+carrion!--he had stooped for the sake of it, and it was now even more
+loathsome than his former morbid perception of it. His poverty seemed
+suddenly unbearable. In the past he had endured it. Now, for the first
+time, he was ashamed of it.
+
+So he spoke to the Robinsons of a six months' engagement or
+thereabouts--which, to their ideas, was reputable and in order; and then
+felt he had time before him to fling down the gauntlet to fortune again.
+
+But in estimating his resources he had counted without his new allies.
+Alice whispered into her father's ears her conviction that he might
+easily influence commissions for her _fiance_; and, after thinking about
+it, Mr. Robinson felt he would like to have a try.
+
+A rich, powerful Insurance Corporation had voted a portrait of its
+retiring president for the adornment of its board-room. Mr. Robinson set
+to work astutely, and the commission came to Wyndham. Item, three
+hundred guineas. But, before this new portrait had progressed very far,
+Wyndham had fascinated his subject--a tall, white-bearded merchant
+prince who sat to him with mysterious insignia, and resplendent chains
+and emblems. "A marvellous young fellow," he confided to Mr. Robinson.
+"I must really congratulate you on him--it's a treat to be in his
+society. And gifted! That great picture of Hyde Park Corner is worthy of
+Raphael." And for the pleasure of his company, and out of admiration for
+his talent, this bluff, good-natured president had at once arranged for
+paintings of himself and his wife for his own dining-room.
+
+He generously and spontaneously made the fee seven hundred guineas.
+"There are two of us this time, and why should I get off cheaper than
+the Insurance Company?" he asked genially; in a spirit rare enough in
+the twentieth century, but nothing out of the way in the days of the
+grand patrons. "Besides, you're worth it," he roared out bluffly. "And
+the privilege of going down to posterity in your society can hardly be
+appraised at all."
+
+Wyndham relished the compliment, though wincing inwardly at the thought
+that the wind that blew him good came always from the same quarter: yet
+in view of other important sitters he began to think of a more
+accessible studio.
+
+"Why not a house with the studio?" suggested the Robinsons. "You could
+move in now, and furnish the rooms at your leisure, so as to have them
+ready for the marriage."
+
+Wyndham fell in with the idea. He thought the locality had better be
+Chelsea, somewhere near the Embankment; a long distance from Hampstead,
+it was true, but an ideal situation for an artist. Somehow the sense of
+the distance, as he lingered on it, was not unacceptable. Alice
+flinched. "We could still look after you," she murmured bravely.
+
+"Besides, I could easily cut to and fro in a hansom," put in Wyndham.
+
+So off the old pair started at once on the quest, drawing some renewal
+of zestful youth from its absorbing interest. One day they reported a
+stroke of fortune; they had come upon the ideal thing. The rent was not
+impossible, and the tenant could have the option of purchasing the
+freehold. The next evening they took Wyndham to see it--a charming
+artist's house in Tite Street, with a broad frontage and a luxurious and
+unconventional interior. On the entrance floor--an unusual hall and
+three fine rooms. Above--a great studio and another excellent room.
+Below were the domestic regions with many household refinements, and
+bedrooms for the servants. Wyndham and Alice were enchanted.
+
+Mr. Robinson was anxious to purchase this property outright as his
+promised wedding-gift; but Wyndham, again shrinking inwardly,
+diplomatically deferred the project. So the lease was signed, and the
+removal at once effected. Wyndham's belongings were swiftly installed on
+the upper floor of the house, at the loss of only a single day to him;
+and, leaving him to his labours, the others, in the enjoyment of their
+unlimited leisure, saw that the hall and stairway were made presentable
+for callers.
+
+But at this point Wyndham came to a dead stop with his labour-canvas, to
+which he had of late devoted his mornings entirely, keeping the
+afternoons for his sitters. He saw that it was imperative he should now
+make some fresh sketches on the spot. But to regain his exact vision he
+must have access to the old window in Grosvenor Place. Yet the very
+thought of the house and the memory of those former visits had a
+strange shattering effect on him. And some warning voice rose sternly,
+bade him not renew these old associations.
+
+He reasoned the matter out, and hesitation seemed absurd. For the sake
+of his picture, it was essential he should occupy a certain point of
+view. Though he had let the acquaintanceship lapse entirely ever since
+Lady Betty's marriage, access to that point of view was no doubt a
+simple matter. A mere letter of request, and the old earl would readily
+give his permission. This time he would probably come and go without
+seeing anybody at all.
+
+Wyndham sat down to write the letter, the interest of the composition
+ousting for the time his irrational misgivings. He recalled himself to
+the earl's recollection, explained that the picture for which he had
+made the former sketches had unavoidably been put aside; but now that he
+was at last able to take it up again he desired to make some fresh
+sketches, and begged the use of his old post of vantage for a few
+mornings. He concluded with the hope that the earl was in the best of
+health, and sent his respects and remembrances to his daughter, should
+the earl be seeing her just then.
+
+It was the merest courtesy on his part to show he had not forgotten Lady
+Betty! After all, their lives were so entirely alien now!
+
+He addressed and stamped the letter; then his strong instinct against
+the whole proceeding reasserted itself. He rose and paced about. The
+warning voice said, "Keep away from Grosvenor Place. No good will come
+of it." "But it's absurd," he said aloud. "The thing's an absolute
+necessity--I can't throw over the picture at this stage. My whole
+artistic future depends upon it. What harm can possibly arise from my
+going there? Lady Betty? Why, she's a matron by now! And probably not
+even in England. And if she were, what is she to me now? And at any rate
+I am certainly nothing to her. If I stumbled up against her the very
+first morning I went there, we should still be far as the poles asunder.
+She was certainly a wonderful girl, and I of course fell headlong in
+love with her. Put any impressionable fellow with poetic ideals in the
+way of a lovely, clever girl and I suppose he's bound to feel cut up
+when somebody else marries her. But it's all as dead as King John now.
+I'll go there and do my work and wind up with a letter of thanks."
+
+He put on his hat and coat, and took up the letter. "Don't go there,"
+repeated the voice. "No good will come of it."
+
+"Rubbish!" he said. "I can't chuck up the picture. It's all right."
+
+He went downstairs and out into Tite Street, a little confused by all
+this current of doubt and reasoning, and by no means absolutely sure of
+himself. But, annoyed at realising this, he began to go forward
+sturdily, and flung the letter into the first pillar-box he
+encountered.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+As Wyndham read the reply to his letter, it seemed as if the kind, bluff
+voice of the old earl were itself speaking. "A few mornings! Come along
+and make your nice little sketches for the next half-century. We have
+often thought of you, and wondered what you were up to. I think we may
+say with truth that we've missed you. This is a dull house now, and I
+suppose I'm getting old and dull myself. At any rate I've many a twinge
+in the joints, and am inclined to shut myself up in my library, though
+I'm never much of a reader." Then there was a PS. "Somebody or other
+tells me that you are contemplating matrimony. Well, you're a brave
+young fellow, and I like you for it. I congratulate you, and wish you
+luck."
+
+As the next morning turned out fairly clear, Wyndham took his materials
+with him into a hansom, and rang the bell at Grosvenor Place at about
+ten o'clock. Not only had he decided that his misgivings were entirely
+morbid, but as a matter of course he had been quite open with the
+Robinsons about the arrangement. He had indeed explained to Alice some
+considerable time ago that he should in all likelihood find it necessary
+to make these fresh sketches on the very scene of the picture. It did
+not seem anything out of the way to her; she regarded it as a pure
+matter of work. It was sufficient that she understood his disappearance
+from the studio in the midst of these busy times. And as he had made it
+a point that she should possess a key of the new house just as she had
+had one of the old studio, she and her mother could come and go as they
+pleased in his absence, and proceed with their engrossing business of
+embellishing his hall and stairway.
+
+But as he set foot in the house at Grosvenor Place after this long
+interval of years, Wyndham could not maintain his reasoned conviction of
+the simplicity and insignificance of the occasion.
+
+He had the very real thrill of embarking on some extraordinary
+adventure; even of stepping outside his own existence--that theatre
+where he had been the spectator of his own fate, whose curtain--fire-proof
+--had already fallen on a played-out drama. But here was a strange
+theatre, with a curtain to rise, fascinating with promise of other drama
+to be revealed; yet the stillness and the dim light cast some spell of
+awe upon him.
+
+A hand seemed to clutch at him and pull him back out of the house at the
+last moment. He was penetrating here against the warning of his deeper
+self; his heart beat fast not merely with the consciousness of
+imprudence, but of downright disloyalty to the settled destiny before
+which he had bowed his head so profoundly. The warning voice, too, was
+stern; but the sense of daring, of courting and facing some unknown
+delicious danger, lured him forward.
+
+His lordship had already gone across to his club, the butler informed
+him; but he had half-expected Wyndham and had left orders in case he
+should present himself. As he followed the man up to the room he had
+used of old, he felt, despite the lofty well of the staircase, that the
+air hung heavy in the great house, muffled and silent with gigantic
+hangings, and thick carpets underfoot. Wyndham stood at the well-known
+window a leisurely moment, then arranged a chair or two, and unpacked
+his materials. The butler helped him to open the casement at the side of
+the bay and to rearrange the curtain, then asked if there was anything
+more he could do for him.
+
+"Oh, would you get my hat again?" returned Wyndham, as a current of
+wintry air flowed in. He laughed; having forgotten he could not work
+uncovered.
+
+When finally the man had complied with his request, and left him again,
+Wyndham looked out on the scene before him, his eye lingering for a
+moment on the royal gardens, then trying to catch the exact view he had
+painted. But as yet his mind was in too great a turmoil to concentrate
+itself sternly on the business in hand. "I shall be acclimatised in a
+minute or two," he reassured himself. "The atmosphere of this house is
+so oppressive--it upset me the first moment." He stood gratefully
+inhaling the fresher draught that streamed against his face; and when he
+had calmed down he took a turn or two about the room, observing it with
+interest. He had scarcely received any impression of it yet, but now he
+perceived that it was greatly changed in some respects. A new fireplace,
+and a mantel of a dainty cabinet-like design, replaced the former
+streaked framework of marble that had enshrined a great rococo grate.
+The double leaf door that led to some adjoining room had had its hanging
+stripped away, and the beauty of panelling showed naked and unashamed.
+The former carpet had gone; there were now soft Eastern rugs on the
+floor lying closely side by side, and covering it entirely. But though
+the Chippendale bookcases and the rest of the furniture had been left
+untouched, there was somehow a more intimate personal note about the
+room; accentuated perhaps by the trifles and photographs clustered
+about the mantelshelf. And then Wyndham came to an abrupt stop as if
+some sheet of flame had flashed by and seared him. There in the centre
+of the mantel, next to a tiny clock shaped like a Gothic arch, stood the
+silver easel bearing the framed photograph of his old Academy
+picture--his wedding present to Lady Betty!
+
+Why was it here in this house? he asked himself, trembling. Had she left
+it behind because she esteemed it so lightly? Or was there perhaps some
+special significance in the fact; something his thought groped for
+wildly and blindly as if in panic?
+
+He staggered back to the window, astonished to find how overcome he had
+been. The air revived him, and then a new and sterner spirit came upon
+him. Was he going to waste his whole morning by yielding himself to
+these idle and futile emotions? Resolutely he prepared his palette, and
+bent his mind by force to his task. He was pleased presently to find how
+exactly his eye recovered his scene; he felt he could almost lay the one
+he had painted over this one, and that it would fit like a transfer.
+Slowly and carefully he let the view sink into him, estimating the
+tones, the masses, the spaces; peopling it in his mind with all the
+figures and accessories that went to build up his great symbolic
+representation. Then he set one of the smaller canvasses on his knee,
+and started his note-making. Soon he was absorbed in the work, glad
+that he had forced himself to begin, and that the little wheels of his
+mind were turning so smoothly.
+
+At eleven the butler appeared with wine and sandwiches, moved a little
+table over near Wyndham, and set down the tray within reach of his hand.
+Wyndham was glad of this refreshment; he had been in too uncertain a
+mood to do more than gulp down his coffee at breakfast, and the raw air
+had roused a craving for some sort of sustenance--a desire for
+stimulation rather than a keen hunger. He swallowed a glass of the wine,
+then began to nibble a sandwich slowly; but his mind was still in his
+work. He half-knew that the great folding door at the bottom of the room
+had opened, that somebody had entered. But it was as in a dream, and he
+did not look up. He considered his results, then poured more wine, and
+was in the act of raising it to his lips. God! what was this gracious,
+willowy figure, with the wonderful sheen on the fresh hair, and the
+girlish rounded cheeks! She was smiling at him, her eyes strangely
+alight under their long, soft lashes, her lips half parted; she was
+advancing towards him with outstretched hand. He put back the glass on
+the table and rose hastily, holding his sketch suspended from one hand;
+but his wits left him and he stared as at a ghost.
+
+"Lady Betty!" he stammered.
+
+"I am not an apparition," she reassured him; "but only a simple
+flesh-and-blood creature. Won't you put down your picture?" She smiled
+again at his embarrassment.
+
+He laughed, and stood the sketch on a chair.
+
+"Your presence certainly startled me," he confessed. "I had an idea you
+were thousands of miles away." They took hands--a good, comrade-like
+clasp. "Fortunately the idea was erroneous."
+
+"Fortunately," she echoed, laughingly capping his gallantry.
+
+"Oh, but how stupid I am! Forgive me!" He almost swept the hat from his
+head. "You see how I was scared; how ill prepared to cope with
+apparitions."
+
+She laughed again. "You are to keep your hat on," she commanded. "My
+presence is easily accounted for; out of sheer restlessness of spirit I
+thought I should like to try London again--I had shunned it like the
+plague for ever so long. As all the nice little hotels were full, I
+descended on my father here, and practically appropriated this room."
+
+"I fear I'm an intruder," he stammered.
+
+"You had my permission; it was obtained in due form. Only I insisted my
+name was to be held back. I wanted to play the apparition, and my father
+entered into the whim of the thing. It seems like old times again."
+
+Wyndham tried to transport himself back along the years. "I wonder
+whether there's anything better in life than to repeat the best moments
+of the past," he said pensively; "that is, if we can catch them with all
+the original magic in them." He saw her head drop a little; her
+expression was full of musing, half-sad and tender. Then he remembered
+that things had indeed changed since those old days, that Lady Betty had
+a husband! It was strange, but the apparition, besides the rest of the
+mischief, had momentarily driven the fact from the store of his
+knowledge. He had had absolutely the delusion that this was the
+brilliant Lady Betty, still unwed, to whom no suitor might aspire save
+with yachts and palaces.
+
+"I have been calling you Lady Betty!" he exclaimed. "The delusion of old
+times was very strong."
+
+"Please to keep on with the Lady Betty--I come back to it so easily. It
+quite pleased me when it slipped from your lips. You have stepped out of
+the long ago; I step back to meet you. You must still think of me as
+Lady Betty."
+
+"And Lord Lakeden?" he murmured, though he felt the inquiry was rather a
+belated courtesy.
+
+She stared at him, her cheeks white, her eyes growing unnaturally large.
+
+"Your husband--I hope he is well," he explained, bewildered by this new
+expression that seemed to hold mingled amazement and horror.
+
+"My husband!" She laughed--a weird peal that filled him with a fear as
+of blinding flashes to come. "Did you not know? I thought the whole
+world knew. I have no husband!"
+
+He looked at her. "I don't understand," he stammered.
+
+"I really believe you don't," she said, her face still blanched. "My
+married life was a short one. Lord Lakeden met with an accident on the
+Alps--the summer before last. He went out without a guide. The details
+were in all the papers. It was one of the sensations of the silly
+season." Again a nervous laugh, but more than ever it was full of
+unnatural echoes.
+
+Instinctively Wyndham took off his hat again, and stood with his head
+bowed. "I am sorry. My condolences are late, but they are sincere."
+
+"I somehow expected you would write to me at the time. Hosts and hosts
+wrote to me--till my head went dizzy; but never a word from you." She
+was speaking with greater command of herself now, but he felt in her
+words a world of reproach.
+
+"I was living as a hermit at the time. I saw nobody for--shall I say it
+seemed to me a lifetime--save the poor old woman who came to turn out my
+studio once in every three months perhaps."
+
+"Ah, you were unhappy!" Her face softened, telling of a swift,
+spontaneous sympathy.
+
+"I was nigh starving. I never saw a newspaper unless by chance; my
+pennies were too precious."
+
+"My poor friend!" Her eyes gleamed as if tears were about to come.
+
+"I played the game up to a certain point with all my strength, but
+everything went against me from every quarter. I know there are men that
+would have risen triumphant above all these evils and difficulties. But
+I was not one of those men. I was beaten--smashed--utterly and
+hopelessly. I had not the smallest reserve of power to carry on the
+fight. I lived cut off from the world like a man in a tomb. I am ashamed
+to think that I kept myself alive----"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted, shivering. "I can't bear it."
+
+"I am ashamed that I did not die," he persisted. "It is the truth. It is
+the first time I say it either to myself or to another. In order to live
+I stepped below myself."
+
+She covered her face with her hands. "I know you are misjudging. You are
+harsh with yourself. I hold to my faith in you."
+
+"I lived on the earnings of my sister, who stinted herself in food and
+went shabbily clad that she might foster my work. Yet, for terrible
+months and months, I deceived her. I did no work. My will was dead. As a
+man I seemed to collapse physically and morally."
+
+"You were not responsible. There is a limit to human endurance. You
+needed a delicious rest in some blue sunny place, in one of those
+earthly paradises where the orange-trees are golden in the sun. Your
+sister's love consecrated her sacrifice. She saved you for a great
+future. Her reward is yet to come."
+
+"You see everything in so sweet a light; I can only hope that the issue
+will be as you say. It is on my future work that I have staked the
+redemption of my manhood in my own eyes. My work! That is where my real
+heart lies. Outside of that my life will be a mere appearance."
+
+"But you have somebody else in your life now," she broke in, pale as
+death. "We heard a rumour that you were about to marry. Is it not true?"
+
+He gasped at the bitter reminder. He hung his head. "It is true," he
+breathed.
+
+"Then you have given your affections: you are happy?"
+
+He wavered for a deep instant, the whilst her eyes rested on him
+gravely. "I have given my affections--I am happy." To himself he added:
+"I must be loyal to Alice, if indeed I have not gone too far already.
+But Lady Betty has made me see the truth. I understand now what I felt
+only obscurely--I bartered my life to the Robinsons, kind as they are,
+that I might repair the hurt and wrong to Mary."
+
+"I congratulate you from my heart." She held out her hand again with a
+wan smile. He took it limply; feeling he held it on false pretences,
+that the sudden check he had put on his impulsive outpouring had raised
+a barrier between them.
+
+"But forgive me for my stupid egotism. Here am I, a great strapping
+fellow, pitying myself because of a very ordinary sort of dismal
+failure; more than commonplace by the side of the great sorrow that came
+to you."
+
+"Great sorrow!" Again that wild peal of laughter. "It was a great joy,
+the greatest joy I have ever known. When they brought me the news, I
+went out into the garden of our chalet, and, sure that no eyes were upon
+me, I danced on the green in the sunlight--with the blood pulsing so
+deliciously through my veins. I was free--I was free! The world seemed
+so beautiful! the sky and the mountains so exquisite! Life was such a
+gift! I was free--free!"
+
+She stood up straight, all her muscles tense, her limbs quivering. The
+pallor had gone; her face glowed with an exultation that was almost of
+triumph. He stood spellbound at her revelation, unable to find a word.
+
+"Ah, you don't understand what it is to be free again! Degradation! I
+tasted it to its depths. Yours was no degradation! You know nothing of
+it. I was tied to a brute--no, the brutes are decent and lovable. He was
+lower--he was lower."
+
+Her voice broke in a sob, though no tears came. Wyndham was still
+silent; he would not seek to penetrate her last reserve. "Don't think me
+too horrible," she pleaded. "You are the only living being to whom I
+have bared my soul. You were the one to whom my mind flew as my
+friend--I have waited for this moment. You must not set me down as a
+monster."
+
+"A monster!" he exclaimed. He was thrown off his irksome guard, and the
+instant was fatal! "Oh, no, no! I shall always hold you for what you
+are, for what you have always been to me--a rare princess!"
+
+"I have always been to you--" she echoed, then broke off, her bosom
+heaving, her eyes flashing out with the full comprehension of his almost
+unwitting avowal. Then she went pale to the lips again. "You never
+spoke," she breathed, "and I did not guess."
+
+He realised, half in a daze, that his secret had escaped him; yet--with
+swift change of mood--he was recklessly glad that she understood at
+last: even as, standing before her, he, too, understood at last--reading
+her distress, treasuring her implied reproach for its clear
+significance, though it put him on his defence.
+
+"I was not even on the footing of a guest in this house. The very bread
+that kept me alive was not my own. It is the law of the world."
+
+"You were wrong. There is no law."
+
+"There is the law of pride," he argued. "We men do not stoop to
+happiness, we stoop only to degradation.... And then I feared to break
+the spell," he went on, seeking a lighter strain. "The wonderful
+princess would disappear, and I should be left rubbing my eyes."
+
+"But it was you who disappeared. The princess thought you shunned her,
+and she was left--to weep--"
+
+He hung his head like a broken reed. He had no longer anything to hide;
+he had already sufficiently disclosed to her that his marriage was to be
+a loveless one. She would understand and respect his first desire to
+keep his true relation to Alice sacred from her gaze. But Lady Betty's
+revelation of tragic experience had swept him off his feet. He had
+responded to her great emotion; had confessed his allegiance to her
+through all and despite all. His life seemed linked to hers with a
+mystic, enduring passion. And yet were they not hopelessly sundered?
+
+"'Men must work and women must weep,'" she quoted. "Ah, well! we never
+can win our ideals; life is always a compromise. Perhaps it's a blessing
+to see our clear obligations."
+
+"Yes--if one has the strength to turn one's eyes aside from the dreams;
+but saddening otherwise."
+
+"Saddening otherwise," she echoed pensively. "But I thank you that I am
+still the wonderful princess, even after my terrible confession."
+
+He took a step forward, and seized her hand impulsively.
+
+"Never believe otherwise, no matter what you may hear of me. Whether
+this be the last time I see you or not, whether I fail and be broken
+again, my last breath shall proclaim my allegiance to--the wonderful
+princess! Listen, the woman I am marrying is more than goodness itself.
+I cannot pretend to match her; my manhood falls below her womanhood. But
+into the inner chamber of my life she can never enter. Out of loyalty to
+her I gave you to understand that I had given my affections. That is
+true, but not in the sense I led you to believe. There is no reason why
+I should not be open now; it would be a poor compliment to you after all
+this mutual confidence if I could not bare to you the absolute truth.
+And the absolute truth is--I have sold myself for safety, for the sake
+of my art, and for the sake of my sister. It would be unendurable were
+there not the mitigation of the esteem I have for the woman I am
+marrying, and for the many qualities of kindness and goodness in that
+whole household. But she is not my true mate. Unlimited as is her virtue
+in a hundred ways, she herself is yet limited. My work must find
+inspiration entirely apart from her. May I think of you, princess, as my
+inspiration?"
+
+"She is a good woman. You must be loyal to her."
+
+"It would be no disloyalty; I should be cherishing the ideal."
+
+She was smiling and radiant again. "I can scarcely stop you--I see it
+would certainly be rash to try. Well, goodbye now; I have a thousand
+little neglected things crying to me. And your moments, too, are
+precious. You will be here again one of these mornings?"
+
+"To-morrow," he said. "For the present, we may be friends?"
+
+"Till the tide sweeps us apart."
+
+"The cruel tide!" he murmured. "But you will always be the wonderful
+princess," he insisted again.
+
+"I shall try to be worthy of the title."
+
+She gave him a charming curtsey, flitted away down the room, threw him
+yet a smile, and disappeared behind the panelled door through which she
+had come.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+For some time Wyndham stood with his head still bowed as Lady Betty's
+voice lingered in his ear. Her figure was still there before him, her
+lovely girl's face radiant with the smile with which she had vanished,
+her slender form in all its upright grace; a nymph of whom Botticelli
+had caught a glimpse on a spring morn when the world was rediscovering
+beauty.
+
+He tried to recall the scene that had just been enacted, and dizzily
+held it all in a flash. He and Lady Betty were in love with each other!
+The fact that he had always cherished the thought of her held a deeper
+significance than he had known! Throughout all his sufferings--throughout
+all her sufferings--an ideal friendship for each other had subsisted in
+their minds. He had supposed her as indifferent as she was unattainable;
+that his love was one of those secret, mocking dramas that sometimes
+play themselves out in the souls of men and women. Yet it was to him
+that her deepest thought had turned! She had enshrined him in her
+heart! And he lying the whilst in darkness and misery!
+
+It was precious now--this new sweetness that had come to him. Sweetness!
+His thought broke off at the word. Rather was it a bitter irony! Lady
+Betty and he had been cheated by life. Could he be even sure his eyes
+would behold her again? Was she not the soul of honour and rectitude!
+For a deep instant they had been swept towards each other; but at once
+her attitude towards his marriage had been clear and pronounced, and she
+might even now be bitterly regretting their meeting.
+
+He sat down at last, and took up his work again; but his mind was
+utterly unfitted for concentration on any task. Better to get back again
+to his own studio, he told himself. So he stowed away his materials in a
+corner, and presently slipped downstairs; telling the butler, whom he
+met in the hall, that he would be there again at ten the following day.
+
+At Tite Street men were tacking down a thick green length of Turkey
+carpet on his staircase, and Alice was superintending the operation.
+Here was his comfortable future in active preparation! And already he
+felt the atmosphere swallowing him up, claiming him body and soul.
+
+He stayed a moment on the landing, affecting an interest in the
+proceedings. When he turned into the studio Alice came after him.
+
+"You hardly seem well, dear," she said, observing him anxiously.
+
+"You surprise me," he returned. "I am not conscious of any aches or
+pains," he added, with an implication of gaiety.
+
+She did not seem convinced. "This malarial air must have affected you,"
+she insisted.
+
+"I don't say I find it pleasant." He seized the poker, as if glad to
+make a diversion, and stirred the fire energetically. "I'm a little bit
+disgusted, too; the day wasn't as clear as I hoped--there was a good
+deal of mist about."
+
+"Better luck to-morrow!" she said.
+
+He struck hard at a knob of coal, making a dreadful clatter. "I hope so,
+indeed," he answered, thinking it curious that Alice should now be
+expecting him to go to Grosvenor Place as a matter of course. "At any
+rate," he added, as it struck him Alice might reasonably be hoping for
+some account of his morning's visit, "they were kind to me--just as of
+old. Lady Lakeden sent me refreshments, and afterwards came herself to
+see how things were progressing."
+
+"I suppose Lady Lakeden is a sister of the earl," she conjectured.
+
+"No, his daughter--a mere girl," he explained, with the flicker of a
+laugh. "It was a great surprise. It is only a few years back that I was
+asked to her wedding. After that, I got out of touch with them, and I
+did not know she had lost her husband very soon after the marriage. He
+met with an accident on the Alps."
+
+Alice was blanched. "How terrible!" she whispered.
+
+There was a silence. Wyndham held his hands to the flame he had been at
+such pains to create. He hoped he had satisfied her interest
+sufficiently; for, of course, the whole scene between himself and Lady
+Betty must be kept from her inviolate. Was it not for Alice's own sake
+and happiness?
+
+"It makes me afraid!" said Alice, breaking the silence. "Perhaps nobody
+is allowed to keep too great a happiness."
+
+He winced. "She was always kind to me," he said, evading the train of
+her reflection. "I spent many hours at my post in those ancient times,
+and there were always unobtrusive attentions that made my work the
+easier."
+
+"I should like to know and love her," said Alice pensively.
+
+Wyndham was silent. Her words startled and embarrassed him, since he had
+been taking it for granted that she and Lady Betty would never come into
+contact. Besides, in a way, Alice had given utterance to more of a
+thought than a wish, so that a response hardly seemed necessary. They
+lunched together, and Alice went off soon after, leaving him to receive
+his sitters--the president and his wife, who were both to arrive that
+afternoon.
+
+"Of course, you won't expect me at Hampstead," he reminded her. "You
+remember I put my name down for a club dinner to-night."
+
+"Of course I remember," she said. "But I shall write you a letter
+instead. Please look for it when you come home to-night."
+
+But Wyndham did not dine at the club after all; at the last moment he
+decided to spend the evening alone at his studio. It seemed a long time
+since he had had a few quiet hours all to himself. Moreover, it was
+strangely a boon to hear no other voices for once, and he lay back
+pleasantly in his chair, though conscious of an uncommon degree of
+weariness. And, in the calm and solitude of the studio, intensified by
+the echoing of his occasional movements through the empty rooms beneath
+him, the Robinsons seemed indeed a long way off up at Hampstead there,
+and for the first time it seemed a positive bondage to him, this
+constant duty of journeying across town to dine with them.
+
+The nine o'clock post brought the promised letter from Alice, but from
+amid the little heap in the box he picked out another eagerly. The
+writing was Lady Betty's. He had never seen very much of it in the old
+days, yet he recognised it at once.
+
+He remembered just then a shrewd dictum of Schopenhauer--that, if we
+wished to learn our real attitude towards any person, we should watch
+and estimate our exact emotion at catching sight of the well-known
+handwriting on a letter we are just receiving. He certainly could not
+help observing the contrasting emotions with which he welcomed these two
+letters. Alice's, at his first glimpse of it, had given him a deepened
+sense of the irrevocable. Yet there went with this a kind, affectionate
+thought in which was a world of appreciation. But he knew pretty nearly
+what the letter would contain; it could well be read at leisure.
+
+He tore open Lady Betty's at once, and read it feverishly as he stood
+there in the hall. "MY DEAR FRIEND," it ran--"My father was so
+disappointed when he got home at hearing that you had been, and had
+already flown. He suggests that you should stay to-morrow and join us at
+luncheon, and he asks me to bend your mind well in advance to the
+contemplation of such an ordeal--as he seriously considers it. The
+present cook doesn't meet with his approval, but be reassured! It was
+only a new sauce sent up one day with pride; but that unfortunate sauce
+has since flavoured everything. My father has naturally imagination; at
+his age he has prejudices. Could even a Vatel face the combination?
+
+"And now that I have performed my filial duty, I will add a few lines
+for my own pleasure. I humbly proffer a request. An idea has come to me
+that seems most charming--before we part again! Since you are working
+here, won't you make a small sketch of me?--a tiny, typical thing, hit
+off all in a dash--and give it to me as a souvenir of your work? Nothing
+that would steal much of your time. I understand that every moment is
+precious just now, with the exhibitions so near, and I wish you not to
+do it if you are very pressed. In return I shall have a souvenir to give
+you--a strange, strange thought of mine. Please feel very curious about
+what it is to be, for you are certainly not going to be told till the
+time comes. _Au revoir._ Your friend, BETTY."
+
+Wyndham mounted the stairs again slowly, and in the studio he re-read
+these precious lines, lingering on each individual word, and setting a
+marvellous price on it. He was happy yet terrified at this flash from
+fairyland into his strenuous existence.
+
+But her words, "before we part again," rang in his mind, lurid,
+persistent. Yes, Lady Betty would vanish out of his life soon enough;
+even though her letter confirmed the respite which she had indeed seemed
+to grant that morning, but which nevertheless--anticipating regret--he
+had scarcely ventured to dream of! There could clearly be no question as
+to her attitude towards his marriage; he told himself that even the
+crime (flashing splendidly through his brain) of cutting himself free
+from the Robinsons with one heroic stroke in order to throw his whole
+life into this wonderful romance would be futile. Would Lady Betty ever
+consent to happiness purchased at such a price?--woo her as he might!
+
+But this sweet, dainty dream of her brief companionship--was he called
+upon to turn away from it? Surely, no; else she had been the last to
+dazzle him with it. Her lead could be trusted to be beyond reproach.
+And, however she regarded it in her heart, would there not be for him a
+little of strangely deep happiness; something to remember always, to
+leave a smile on his face at the moment of death?
+
+The charm of the thought won him almost irresistibly. Lady Betty was his
+inspiration for ever; nay, that ideal elusive face would have been his
+inspiration even if he had never encountered her again. The harm--if
+harm there was in their meeting again--had been done irreparably in the
+past!
+
+All would be over soon enough! What could emphasise it more than this
+very letter of hers he held in his hand? Was it not Lady Betty's
+underlying thought in this desire for an exchange of souvenirs?
+
+All would be over soon enough! Life would bear them apart, but the touch
+of sweetness would remain as an illumination. He could never be cheated
+out of that.
+
+What was this souvenir she intended for him--this "strange, strange
+thought" of hers? She had in truth piqued his curiosity, and he foresaw
+her delight at his admitting it. What, indeed, could it be? And,
+occupied now with this fascinating speculation, he languidly took up his
+other letters, his fingers turning them over with an extreme
+indifference. Presently, with a sudden decision, he broke Alice's
+envelope, and began to read her note. Three of the sides out of four
+were exactly as he had anticipated, but towards the end he lighted on a
+passage that unnerved him abruptly. "I have been thinking of your
+friends in Grosvenor Place. My heart goes out to Lady Lakeden. How hers
+must lie broken and bleeding! To lose a husband after only a few months
+of wedded life! I shut my eyes and try to think that such a thing cannot
+happen! And she and her father have always been so kind to you. My love
+for you is so great that I love everybody that spares one little thought
+specially for you."
+
+Wyndham threw the letter down. That was enough; he must sacrifice all to
+the duties he had undertaken. He and Lady Betty must not see each other
+again. Could he not hear her dear voice saying, "Life is always a
+compromise. Perhaps it's a blessing to see our clear obligations." Well,
+he at any rate saw his clear obligations. He would reply to Lady Betty;
+he would enter into the situation in all sincerity. He would paint her
+some little thing for the souvenir, and send it to her, and perhaps she
+might care to send him hers in return. His meeting her to-day and this
+loving exchange of gifts would remain in his thought as the most poetic
+episode of his life; but an episode that must speedily be closed.
+
+She would understand and approve. Was she not the very spirit of
+chivalry, of honour and goodness? Since fate had given its decree, let
+them both bow to it!
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+But the next morning he dressed with care, choosing with fastidiousness
+among his flowing silk ties, and went off to Grosvenor Place, stopping
+only on the way to get a new canvas for Lady Betty's portrait. It was as
+if some great arm had encircled him irresistibly, and hurried him out of
+his studio, and jerked him into a hansom.
+
+The first thing that caught his eye as he entered the usual room was a
+travelling easel opened out at its full length, brass-jointed, proudly
+agleam; and he marked his appreciation of the significance of its
+presence in equally significant fashion--by standing the newly-acquired
+canvas upon it. Then he installed himself at his window, and after a
+little preliminary fumbling he found himself well under weigh. At last
+he had struck the clear, even light he wanted, and he worked rapidly
+with his note-taking till the time the butler appeared with
+refreshments.
+
+He sipped his wine, with one eye on the folding-door and the other
+maintaining some interest in the sketches before him. But the more
+vigilant eye of the two soon found its reward. Lady Betty appeared on
+the very stroke of noon, and came to him all fresh and smiling, in sunny
+contrast to his sense of the dull wintry universe.
+
+"You seem a trifle thoughtful," she observed.
+
+"I was speculating about the mysterious gift you promise."
+
+She laughed merrily. "I observe, then, it is a bargain." She nodded
+towards the easel.
+
+"I have had a charming idea as well," he said. "Could you give me two
+hours a day till the end of the month?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+"I should like to send you to the Salon."
+
+"That is indeed a charming idea. But you must not risk your big work,"
+she reminded him. "That, too, has to be ready in a few weeks."
+
+"I shall have the whole of March for it exclusively. I am finishing my
+portraits this month."
+
+"Your sketches are satisfactory?"
+
+"One or two mornings more, and I shall have as much as I need. My
+difficulty with the picture all these years has been that I have had to
+build it up largely out of my own mind. My actual scene has of course
+never really existed in nature--though once or twice I managed to catch
+something of the kind here on the spot. But that was quite tumultuous
+and indiscriminate, whereas I wanted to catch the essence of the thing."
+
+"You frighten the poor little amateur out of her wits."
+
+They both laughed. "I had to snatch bits as best I could. Whilst
+striving to suggest the tumult and movement, I yet picked my material so
+as to give contrast and symbolism. Then I had to get my workmen and all
+the other kinds of folk to pose separately in the studio. Fortunately my
+old studio opened at the back into a little glass-house, and so I was
+able to pose the model as in the open. Naturally with the work on so
+huge a scale, I was wrestling with almost every drawback that could be
+conceived. It was no doubt a great mistake to have planned it at all,
+but I have learnt lessons I shall never forget."
+
+"But you have conquered at last."
+
+"Honestly, no. But it will succeed. My first idea was that the whole
+scene should be bathed in sunlight. But this, by throwing a vibration
+and glow over everything, would have submerged the social contrast of
+Fashion and Labour--would have made the whole thing primarily a piece of
+pure technique, and weakened its human significance. I did not want the
+sunshine to be the motive of the picture; I wanted the human side to
+stand out first, and speak with its full force. I therefore chose a
+dull light, so that the smartness of Fashion glows in relief against the
+drab tones of Labour. I am afraid though I am exaggerating the contrast
+more than I really like. That, however, will help it with the great
+public."
+
+"I don't think I approve of such sentiments. I want you to strive for
+the highest."
+
+"That is the future. But here it was a question of extricating myself
+from wreckage. As art it is far from perfect. But its success will help
+me to higher things."
+
+"On that ground only we must pass it this time. But I have been
+wondering how you will use these last sketches you have been making."
+She examined them attentively awhile. "To me they are not very
+intelligible, though I have a vague idea of their purpose."
+
+"They are mere notes," he explained. "If you will come here by the
+window and get the point of view, I think I can make them perfectly
+intelligible."
+
+She came and stood by his side, and one by one he took up the little
+canvasses, explaining his tones and masses and relative values. As he
+spoke his words seemed to evoke a strange life from the blurs and brush
+marks. A splash of colour changed before her eyes into an omnibus; a
+darker blob into a brougham; vistas and spaces, buildings and foliage
+stood revealed out of chaos. She listened with a pretty interest, her
+lips daintily parted, her breath coming lightly, yet her features
+composed into a characteristic stateliness--of which catching a sudden
+glimpse as she brushed close to him, he mentally registered the judgment
+"surpassingly fine!" He was glad he had caught that aspect; it summed
+her up in a way so perfectly. There was his Salon picture!
+
+"And while you have been listening I have been studying you," he
+confessed, as he placed the sketches aside.
+
+"I should have thought you knew me by heart."
+
+"You are not so definite and limited. Beauty is always flashing
+surprises on the eye that can see."
+
+"I think I like that," she said gaily. "I must bear it in mind.... It's
+only a toy easel," she flew off as he drew it forward. "In spite of its
+excellent preservation, it is a relic of my childhood: in the family I
+was supposed to have talent, so an aunt gave it to me for a birthday
+present, pegs and all, to take into the country and sketch all sorts of
+pretty bits. There was a little stool that went with it."
+
+"It will serve admirably--without the stool," he added, with a smile. "I
+should like you to stand with the folding-door as a background. I think
+we're lucky to have such an interesting stretch of panelling in the
+room. We must get all the light on it we can."
+
+She tripped down the room gaily, and stood as he indicated. Then he
+manipulated the blinds and the curtain till a clear, soft light, melting
+gradually into the surrounding greyer tones, fell on the wood-work, and
+Lady Betty stood illuminated with a suggestion of airy phantasm.
+
+"The face a shade more to the left," he commanded. "There! Now I have
+caught you again."
+
+He worked with an appearance of rapidity. "A very dream of elusiveness!"
+he exclaimed presently. "I must seize it whilst I'm in form."
+
+"Ah, I was just thinking it over," she said gravely. "I am not sure that
+I am really so pleased at being 'elusive.' If my features are not to be
+seized, how are they to be remembered? Definite women have the best of
+it--they are less easily forgotten, I should say."
+
+"That would be true if one had any desire to remember them," he
+returned. "But no," he corrected himself; "it is not true in any case.
+Where there is only one definite set of features to forget, it is
+forgotten wholly and absolutely, once that point is reached. But the
+woman with the elusive features has so many sides that it would take a
+long time to forget them all. And then a man is always so entrancingly
+occupied calling up her picture. You let all the fleeting phases float
+around you. What more engrossing than to choose among these rival
+gleams of loveliness, yet find them all enchanting and precious?"
+
+"You convince me of the absolute unforgetableness of the elusive woman,"
+she laughed. Then, abruptly, she grew grave again.
+
+When he stopped work for that morning, they both inspected the canvas
+critically. "I think I have made the right beginning--you see the spirit
+of the idea is all there."
+
+"With the help of the lesson you gave me before," she ventured.
+
+"If I continue equally well, we shall find oceans of time before the end
+of the month. Wouldn't it be splendid if the Salon received it!"
+
+She was full of joyous delight at the prospect, but, glancing at the
+clock, gave an exclamation of horror. "We are forgetting lunch!"
+
+A minute or two later Wyndham was shaking hands with the old earl, who
+was gazing into his face with apparently affectionate interest.
+
+"This is very pleasant," said the earl. "Why, bless my soul, I haven't
+caught a glimpse of you for--let me see--three or four years is it? What
+has been amiss? Genius starving in a garret?--eh?"
+
+"Pretty good guess," said Wyndham.
+
+"You look fat enough, and sleek enough," laughed the earl. "On the face
+of things, I should have taken it that you've done very much better than
+I have. Now, if you had had to put up with my scoundrel of a cook----"
+
+"There was only one sauce on one occasion, father."
+
+"So you insist, so you insist. Well, you seem pretty straight on your
+feet again, my boy; so all's well that ends well."
+
+They sat down to table.
+
+"Making lots of nice little pictures?--eh?" recommenced the earl
+genially.
+
+"Oh, the one I am making sketches for here is rather tremendous--the
+size of a wall!"
+
+"The size of a wall!" echoed the earl. "My gracious!"
+
+"And now Mr. Wyndham has started a tiny one of me," put in Lady Betty.
+"I'm going to stand to him an hour or two every morning, and we'll send
+it to the Salon next month."
+
+"Bless my soul! That'll be a very pretty little thing."
+
+"It's only one side of me. Mr. Wyndham thinks I've so many sides, and he
+selected just one of them."
+
+"Mr. Wyndham's a genius, but, with all deference to him, I don't see
+that you've any more sides to you than I have or Mr. Wyndham has. We
+have each two sides and no more." He raised his tumbler of egg-and-milk
+and whiskey, and drank deeply. The others laughed.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Wyndham thinks I'm so many persons rolled into one," explained
+Lady Betty, "and that you can take your choice."
+
+"Many persons rolled into one! You are!" said the earl emphatically,
+setting down his glass. "Only I never _can_ take my choice. If Mr.
+Wyndham has succeeded in doing so, I offer him my congratulations. Oh,
+by the way, talking of congratulations, it is true, I suppose, that you
+are going to be married!"
+
+Lady Betty looked down and manipulated her fish.
+
+"One of these days," said Wyndham lightly. "There is no date fixed yet."
+
+"Ah," said the earl. "How is your _fiancee_?"
+
+"Perfectly well," said Wyndham. "First-rate."
+
+"A Miss--er--Llewellyn--wasn't it?"
+
+"Miss Robinson," corrected Wyndham.
+
+"Oh, ah--Miss Robinson! Yes, yes, that was the name--perfectly!" said
+the earl. "Mind you give her my compliments and respects.... By the way,
+Betty, did I tell you I'm sick of the climate? We shall have thrown out
+the Embankment Bill by the end of the week, and then I can turn my back
+on the House. It'll be Egypt or a voyage to Japan--why, I might meet Mr.
+Wyndham on his honeymoon!--eh?--what? I'll go across to Cockspur Street
+this afternoon, and see what's sailing."
+
+"Shall I come with you, father, and help you to make up your mind?"
+
+"If you'll be so kind," said the earl. "It was my intention to suggest
+that you should accompany me a great deal further than that, but I
+changed my mind just now."
+
+"That is very considerate of you, father."
+
+"Not at all, not at all." The earl made a movement of deprecation. "You
+couldn't come till the end of the month, so I simply make a virtue of
+necessity."
+
+"You horrify me, father. You are making Mr. Wyndham think you are sorry
+I am standing to him."
+
+"It's only my fun, little girl. You don't really suppose I want my own
+daughter trotting behind my tail, and keeping her watchful, charming eye
+on all my doings. No, no, no! I had it in mind to suggest your joining
+me as a matter of form. You might have liked it, and I wanted to do the
+proper thing. But I'm only too glad of the opportunity of having you off
+my hands. Mr. Wyndham was really providential. Meanwhile I shall be
+proud to think of the nice little picture of you--I beg your pardon, of
+one side of you--hanging in the Salon."
+
+"If you take one of the long voyages, I presume you'll be away some
+months," ventured Wyndham.
+
+"Probably till the autumn. I assure you my daughter long since washed
+her hands of me. She carries off her maid and disappears for years at
+the time. When I think she's in Paris, somebody says, 'I saw your
+daughter last week at Baden-Baden. How well she's looking!' When I
+imagine she's in Baden-Baden, somebody says, 'I met your daughter at
+Florence last week. How well she's looking!' Nowadays I never speculate
+as to her whereabouts. I give her absolutely _carte blanche_. I'm
+prepared to hear and believe anything of her, and what's more! to
+approve of it and give her my blessing. On one point, you will observe,
+the testimony is unanimous: 'How well she's looking!' That's the one
+settled thing about her--and the sides of her. For I suppose no two
+people ever do see the same side of her." He scrutinised her beamingly.
+
+"Very well, father. It shall be goodbye till the autumn. We shall part
+friends."
+
+"So far as I see at present. We've to get through the week yet. You'll
+lunch with us these days, Mr. Wyndham?"
+
+Wyndham murmured his acceptance, enchanted at being so cordially
+recognised as a friend of the house.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Wyndham told Alice of the happy chance that had presented itself of a
+dash at Lady Lakeden's portrait, and held out the possibility of the
+Salon's finding a corner for it.
+
+"How delightful!" she exclaimed. "Wouldn't it be brilliant to be in the
+Salon as well as in the Academy?"
+
+"It's just a dainty little study, and of course I'm doing it for the
+pure pleasure of the thing. But the committee may not consider it
+important enough for serious consideration, though that depends on what
+I make of it. In any case I'll present it to her afterwards in
+acknowledgment of all their past kindness."
+
+"It's the nicest acknowledgment you could possibly make them. I am so
+glad you thought of it." Her approval of the idea was generous and
+eager. And she was excitedly interested in the Grosvenor Place
+household. She plied him with questions. Was it an old peerage? Was
+there a great country house? Had Lady Lakeden a brother? Then who was
+the heir to the title?--would it pass to a collateral line? He
+enlightened her on all these matters, sketching out for her the grooves
+which the lives of such people generally occupied. And he threw out the
+reflection that it was lucky indeed the renewal of his relations with
+Grosvenor Place had not been delayed any further. He had gone back there
+in the very nick of time, for the house was going to be shut up; the
+earl leaving in a week or so to take a long sea voyage, whilst Lady
+Lakeden meditated departure as soon as the portrait was done. Alice
+remarked that they seemed to be fond of roaming about a great deal, and
+Wyndham pointed out that Lady Lakeden and her father were exceptionally
+placed, were to a great extent emancipated from the "swim." The earl had
+practically retired from society, and his daughter, as a young widow,
+naturally sought distraction in her own way, though of course she could
+float brilliantly back into the world whenever the mood took her.
+
+Since the portrait was going to the Salon, he was naturally compelled to
+tell Alice about it. But the intense way in which she seemed to be
+fixing her eyes on the Grosvenor Place household disconcerted him beyond
+measure. This fresh interest of his had become her interest too; she had
+fastened on it out of all proportion to its visible importance. At
+uneasy moments he asked himself if she suspected that something lay
+behind this apparently simple and innocent acquaintanceship; for her
+insistent and almost morbid return to the subject on the following days
+indicated its amazing hold of her.
+
+Yet, obviously, it was impossible that she should be cherishing any
+ideas of that kind. He flattered himself that his demeanour towards her,
+in this trying and difficult period, was perfect; that he was as tender
+in all their relations as if his heart were truly hers. Nay, he was
+devoting even more of his leisure to her than ever before. And for the
+very reason that the evening journeys to Hampstead had become
+distasteful, he was the more careful that there should be no falling off
+in his attendance there. In no wise could he have betrayed himself to
+his affianced wife. No, she could not possibly have any suspicion of the
+truth: he was satisfied that her preoccupation with the Grosvenor Place
+household all arose out of womanly sympathy on her part; that Lady
+Lakeden's tragic widowhood had touched the depths of her imagination.
+
+Poor Alice! How simple and trusting her surface reading of the facts!
+How ignorant of the brutal complications, as grotesque as incredible, in
+which Nature often wrapped up human unhappiness!
+
+What a terrible tangle it was for them all! Were he free now, how gladly
+would his princess have placed her hand in his! In the old days the
+possible marriage of the brilliant girl had been hedged around with
+extraordinary limitations--to which he too had bowed as to something in
+the order of nature. But, as a widow, she would naturally be expected to
+please herself when matrimonially inclined. By common social
+understanding, even the noblest and richest of widows may permit herself
+a considerable latitude of choice, and no word of criticism can lie
+against her unless she has travelled rather far out of the conventional
+grooves. A marriage between him and Lady Betty now might raise a flicker
+of interest beyond what was usual--considering his notorious
+poverty--but it could call down nobody's censure.
+
+But all this, alas! was but an idle speculation now. The time sped; the
+earl bade him goodbye; and he realised that the end was fast
+approaching. The few days that remained to him of Lady Betty's
+companionship became trebly precious, to be counted with despair! Though
+only an hour or two out of the twenty-four was spent in her society, his
+whole heart and mind, his whole life, were concentrated there. Each day
+he brought her a bunch of lilies of the valley, which she fixed in her
+bosom and insisted he must include in the picture. And during the
+enchanted time they were together, they talked freely and in perfect
+trust. It was more than a friendship--more than an exchange of
+confidences; it was more than the intimacy of a soul with itself--for
+that is not always honest even at its most courageous moments. In this
+free, splendid realm of communion with her, he stood up in all his
+manhood: rising to that simple truth which is yet of the heavens and the
+spaces; measuring himself against great standards; seeing and regretting
+his egotisms, vanities, self-deceptions; valuing himself humbly. The
+depths of Lady Betty's sympathy were indeed profound. She could enter
+into his life, appreciate motives barely realised by himself, and, with
+charming broad humanity, understand and forgive his actions even when he
+felt ashamed of them as unworthy and discreditable. No comedy of
+sentiment here--no playing of the saint on either side; but a noble
+simplicity, a serene good faith, a spontaneous self-revelation!
+
+He recounted to her, as naturally as everything else, the whole history
+of his acquaintanceship with the Robinsons. He spared himself not a
+detail: how he had first dallied with temptation, his moment of panic,
+his specious reasoning, his ignoble surrender! He laid himself bare as
+with a scalpel. Yet of Alice he spoke always with reverence and loyalty,
+dwelling on her devotion, on the little she needed from him to give her
+happiness. And Lady Betty caught his appreciation of her. "I seem to
+know and understand her well," she said. "She is a delicate, untarnished
+soul. She seems more real to me than people who have lived near me all
+my life. And so her heart has gone out to me! I feel I could never bear
+to meet her--the moment would be too terrible! Ah, why did you not speak
+in the old days?"
+
+"I repeat I had not the right. And then I did not dream I was worth one
+single thought of yours."
+
+"I gave you all my thoughts. You were so serious. You sat with knitted
+brow, sternly in your work, and I hardly dared to come near you. You
+seemed remote from women; grimly devoted to your purpose--to triumph or
+to die! At poor me you scarcely deigned to look. And then you
+disappeared, and I knew you would not return."
+
+"I disappeared. I left happiness behind me, and retired into my living
+tomb."
+
+"My heart bleeds for you." There was a pause. Her eyes were full of
+pain. But presently she broke the silence, as if discovering some crumb
+of comfort. "This time at least you will not be going to privation."
+
+"In my heart of hearts privation is preferable."
+
+"Ah, no. Remember it is the call of duty. It is the sacrifice we must
+make for Alice's sake. She is a good woman. Her life must not be
+broken."
+
+"I promise I shall try to make her happy--whatever the cost. But think
+how happy we should have been together, you and I, darling."
+
+"We should have been happy together," she said in a low voice. "It
+would have been a perfect union. But I say again that life is a
+compromise. Our demands are great; we have to accept the little that is
+granted."
+
+"Yet the door still stands open," he mused. "We may yet take our fate
+into our own hands."
+
+"The door stands open, but we turn our backs upon it."
+
+"We are too strong," he groaned. "I am tempted to pray for weakness."
+
+She drew herself up, her face alight with a noble radiance. "Let us both
+be proud of our strength. We have set right above everything."
+
+"But suppose we are mistaken--" he urged tensely.
+
+"We cannot strike her down! No, no, we must not take away her great
+happiness--you have given it to her! I depute you, if you love me, to
+guard her welfare--on my behalf and on your own. Remember, too, she is
+happy with so little!"
+
+"I shall be a loyal husband. But, in the realms that lie outside her
+penetration, you have promised that I may cherish the thought of you as
+an inspiration."
+
+"To speak to you with my own voice--to help you to the strength that
+cannot falter!"
+
+But the end was close upon them. He could not linger over the picture,
+even had he wished. As the last days slipped by his face saddened
+visibly. Lady Betty begged him to bear up. He was so changed in aspect
+that Alice could not fail to notice it.
+
+"There is no danger," he returned. "She has already spoken of it, and I
+have put it down to fatigue. She has seen how desperately I have been
+working for months on end, and she is satisfied I need rest."
+
+One day, he ventured to question Lady Betty about her plans, but she
+replied that they were vague. She only knew that she would travel for
+the present; she would not make up her mind as to details till the last
+moment.
+
+"But even then I should not tell you," she added, with a wan smile. "Our
+parting must be decisive. I shall read of your career, and my mind shall
+be always with you in your work; but I shall not cross your path again.
+There is one last thing I suggest. When you have finished the picture,
+let us spend the whole of our last day together."
+
+"I shall set it apart. We shall consecrate it with our farewell."
+
+"I shall give you the souvenir I promised. I shall keep it till the end;
+and then it will be goodbye."
+
+"Goodbye?" he breathed. "Oh, it is cruel!"
+
+He was shaken again. Some wild rebellion was rising in him, and vainly
+Lady Betty tried to calm him with pleading--even with tears. But she
+revealed only the more her own anguish.
+
+At last she had command of herself again, and put a stern inflection
+into her voice.
+
+"For Alice's sake you must conquer yourself. No, let it be for my sake.
+I put it as the test of your love for me. Otherwise I shall believe that
+your love is selfish."
+
+"I promise I shall conquer myself, but I must have time."
+
+"You make me terribly afraid--you may wound her by a chance word."
+
+"That is impossible. Her mind is serene--no word of mine shall disturb
+it."
+
+But Lady Betty's fears were by no means allayed. She wrote him long
+letters, imploring him to keep command of himself, else she would regret
+bitterly that they had ever met again. They had both fought this
+terrible battle: they were neither of them emerging unscathed, but their
+wounds and hurt were the price of honourable victory. She was sure of
+herself; but was he--the man!--to shrink back when the supreme moment
+came? The thought of loyal duty accomplished would bring equanimity
+hereafter.
+
+"Ah, if all were only a dream!" he exclaimed sadly, as he lay thinking
+of nights. And then he would try to believe that he had not met Lady
+Betty again, had never even heard of her since her wedding-day. He had
+never made the acquaintance of the Robinsons, had never set foot in
+their great ugly house at the corner. Were not all these things the
+fancies of a disordered imagination, and was he not still here in
+Hampstead, in his narrow iron bed up on the gallery? To-morrow he would
+jump up and make his miserable breakfast as usual, would think of
+working without being able to raise a hand, and would potter away the
+hours. And at six in the evening he would see his prosperous neighbour
+from the City go past with noiseless, gentle step, bearing a plaited
+rush-bag with a skewer thrust through it. Yet what a relief to throw off
+the illusions of these latter days, and find himself again as of old,
+free of all the tangle; even though the problem of bread still faced
+him, and the vista of hopeless days stretched away endlessly!
+
+Alas! the morning light, filling his panelled bedroom and revealing to
+his eyes the many luxuries of these prosperous days, testified only too
+convincingly to the reality of recent developments.
+
+And yet, as he turned up the well-known Hampstead street of an evening
+on his way to the Robinsons, he would still struggle again to recover
+the illusion that the old days were yet. Approaching the house as it
+loomed in the near distance through the wintry mist, he would imagine
+himself supremely unconcerned with it. And then he would stop outside
+his own former door, and fumble in his pocket a moment as if to find the
+key. Like lessons learnt after the mind is set, all these later
+accretions to his existence were ready to drop away, to have a shadowy
+relation to him. It made him realise with astonishment how easily he
+might cut the Robinsons out of his life, and proceed as if he had never
+known them. His bond of obligation was more real to him than the people
+to whom he was bound!
+
+He was shrewd enough to see that in his heart of hearts he was sullenly
+and perpetually angry that so much had come to him from so extraneous a
+source. Where his own strength and gifts had failed, these people from a
+world that was not his world, either in thought or mode, had come in and
+brought him prosperity. This galling sense of absolute dependence on the
+Robinsons seemed the deepest humiliation he had known. They had given
+him food when he was nigh starvation; they had given work when the
+prospect of work had vanished--had showered on him benefits and
+kindnesses innumerable. They had restored him to society and to the
+world of art and letters. He owed them the confidence of his bearing
+before the world, the manly swing of his step, the pride of his glance.
+
+That this should be his destiny was horrible! He rebelled and cried out
+with all his might. Oh! to wield the sceptre of destiny himself!--to
+shape the evolution of a brilliant career and merit the crown of a
+great love by his own power and performance!
+
+And yet at the back of his troubled mind there lay in terrible calm the
+stern determination to stand by his obligations. His promise to Lady
+Betty was in no danger. All this feverish agitation was but as the surf
+beating on a granite shore. He knew that he would bow his head in
+resignation; that, after the parting with Lady Betty, he would settle
+down as the most attentive of husbands; acquiescent of an atmosphere of
+physical well-being, yet paradoxically living from hand to mouth, so far
+as his deeper life was concerned; thankful for any morsel of good each
+day might bring him, and looking not beyond its horizon.
+
+Alice should have her happiness, never guessing what turmoil and torture
+two souls had voluntarily undergone for her.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+In the silence and privacy of her room Alice was sobbing her life away.
+Like an opium eater, she had sought magnificent dreams, had surrendered
+herself to beautiful illusions, had duped herself supremely. But the
+awakening was fraught with fever and suffering.
+
+On that memorable afternoon when her father had brought home the
+wonderful announcement that Wyndham was to follow him, Alice had looked
+at herself in the glass, and though her favourite dress lay ready for
+her, she knew he would not of his own impulse bestow a second glance
+upon her.
+
+The evening had come and passed. As by some enchantment Wyndham had
+appeared, was seated at the same table with herself, engaged in intimate
+conversation with the family, left alone to wine and cigars with her
+father; rejoining them in the drawing-room, listening to her playing,
+singing to her accompaniment! Then, lo, he was gone; and she was left to
+ponder on the swift, surprising turn of events. After all these years of
+emotion, the acquaintanceship was an accomplished fact. She was to
+penetrate within his door at last, to become, for the time being, part
+of the very business of his life!
+
+She retired that night still with the sense of miracle; yet infinitely
+grateful to her father for his charming concession to her whim. And her
+first subtle move had been crowned with success! At least there was work
+where work was needed so sorely; work, too, that brought her so near to
+him, annihilating a distance she had reconciled herself to think of as
+impassable, and opening up potentialities of service which her fertile
+wits would not be slow to seize upon. Would it not be a joy to help him
+to a firm footing again, to raise this gifted life of which she had
+watched the long slow sinking! It was miraculous that this privilege
+should fall to her! But everything must appear to flow naturally to him
+of itself; he should never suspect that the unseen hand at work was
+hers, any more than he should ever know that this was what she, who
+loved him, had for years worked out in fancy.
+
+And she!--she should have no thought but the unselfish desire of serving
+him! What matter if she carried in her heart the cold conviction that he
+could never love her--since all she had dared aspire to had fallen to
+her lot! For who was she to cherish vain hopes? She had not the
+commonest touch of beauty; she was hopelessly out of his sphere. She
+felt herself appallingly ignorant and inexperienced. In her easy shelter
+the years had slipped by in monotonous quiet. In the world outside there
+beat a life that was strenuous, entrancing, dramatic--the struggle of
+the realm of affairs, the pomp and colour of courts and society, the
+important events of politics, the field of view that opened in the
+novels, or lay spread behind the footlights of the theatres. Wyndham
+belonged to all this brilliant universe, had walked with firm tread amid
+it all, breathing its airs with an assurance born of right and nature.
+No poverty could destroy his inalienable privileges, could render him
+less by a hair's breadth; indeed, save for the manifest inconveniences
+of the former, poverty or riches seemed irrelevant on that plane of high
+humanity; where differences of fortune were obscured by the highness of
+the humanity, however fertile in distinctions these differences might be
+in a lower world.
+
+But as the acquaintance ripened, as she tasted of the gracious intimacy
+of the long sittings, his perfect kindness, his chivalry, his constant
+solicitude began to undermine the attitude with which she had embarked
+on the adventure. They had become such good friends, and she could not
+blind herself to the fact that he was pressing his personality on her
+beyond what mere courtesy and friendliness demanded. But she still
+fought to stand firm, and her humility was her strength. It was even
+more than her strength--it read for her his doubts and hesitations.
+
+Not that she crudely supposed that, in his conduct to her, he was swayed
+by ulterior considerations. She saw that he had genuinely an affection
+for her, more kind and brotherly than a lover's affection; she knew that
+he was trying to like her better, to raise her in his estimation far
+higher than the truth. And she conceded that his hesitation was natural,
+that she was no mate for him, that his world would openly despise her.
+No, he must not marry her for the safety her fortune would bring him.
+She would marry only for love, and, as that she could never win, she
+would consequently never marry.
+
+She dreaded now lest the situation should take a more definite turn,
+lest he should begin to woo her in earnest. She wished to be left in
+contentment with her deep secret happiness which could never be effaced
+from her life. She had had her way. It was she who had brought him the
+succour he needed; she--of whose existence he had never dreamed, whom he
+had often met face to face yet never glanced at. It was she who had
+rescued for the world's benefit this splendid genius that the world had
+rejected. This was joy enough. To anything else the end must be
+disillusion.
+
+For awhile she lived in terror lest he might speak. But as the work
+progressed, and he became more and more enthusiastic over her portrait,
+she could not but fall a victim to the subtle implication, and begin to
+believe that he must really think more of her than she had ever dared to
+imagine. It was then that her stern control of herself began to slip
+away. Wilfully she shut her eyes to all that she understood only too
+well, and surrendered herself to the spell and wonder of the vista that
+opened before her. It was the best thing that life had brought her, she
+told herself, and in an impulse of pagan desire she was impelled to
+wring from it the last drop of passionate happiness it could afford her.
+Her love for him reached out into new depths; the dull, despairing,
+impossible love of before became a fever, a frenzy, a great yearning
+passion that must pour itself out or kill her.
+
+Then came the supreme moment in which she let the belief that he loved
+her seize entire possession of her. Must he not have for his mate a
+woman who would love him and make him a perfect wife? He was a being
+apart from his own world, devoted to serener and higher ambitions. Had
+she not seen the glow with which he expounded his ideas and purposes,
+forgetting she was a humble, uninstructed listener, and surrounding her
+soul with the sweet unction of the implied perfect equality? Perhaps it
+had dawned upon him at last that devotion greater than hers the world
+could not hold. In his consecration to his high calling he did not need
+a wife to figure brilliantly amid social pleasures and functions, but a
+helpmeet whom perhaps he could not so easily find in those exalted
+spheres; one who needed no pleasures for herself, no triumphs; who had
+no purposes of her own, no desires, save the supreme end of
+self-sacrifice on the altar of his happiness and achievement. Only a
+woman absolutely capable of such self-effacement could understand the
+perfect bliss of it. If every man could find such faithfulness at his
+own hearth, how the world would thrive and grow blessed! And she thanked
+Heaven for the little fortune she could bring him, for this precious
+money to establish his life on a safe and sure footing.
+
+And when he had spoken at last, she, casting away the last doubt, had
+thrown herself headlong into the dream. With her arms round him, and her
+lips to his, she felt that she had always been destined for this high
+bliss, that rendered by contrast the quiet stream of her life a mockery
+of life.
+
+The joyous period of intoxication was all too short. With the sobering
+of the world to its work again in the new year, she, too, sobered a
+little, and the old questioning revived in her. Was it really the truth
+that he loved her? Where was the note of passion she herself had poured
+out so recklessly? His personal magnetism, his urbane, affectionate
+friendliness, the caressing vibrations of his voice, his delicate and
+considerate dealing with the gaps of ignorance she daily revealed--all
+this held her in an invincible spell. But the deep, irresistible
+conviction for which her heart yearned was unmistakably absent in his
+whole relation to her.
+
+Perhaps some terrible struggle was going on within him. Was he recoiling
+in terror sometimes from the thought of the mate he had chosen? Surely
+at times he was arguing himself into acceptance and contentment. What
+meant the strange, furtive glances he sometimes directed at her?--not
+the soft glances of love, but glances bewildering, baffling! She watched
+him with a supernaturally sensitive insight, appraising his every
+expression, following the imagined see-saw of his doubts and
+reassurances.
+
+Yet when he had told her of his meeting with Lady Lakeden again, and of
+the new portrait he had engaged upon, no shade of jealousy had arisen in
+her. Her sense of the calamity that had befallen Lady Lakeden was so
+infinitely distressing that she could have fallen upon her knees and
+prayed. To lose a dear husband after only a few months of wedded
+happiness!--what more crushing grief could a woman's destiny hold? She
+shut her eyes and shuddered, as she tried to realise the depths of its
+meaning. It seemed to her that no wife with the least spark of womanhood
+could recover from such a blow; that sorrow and weeping must be her
+portion for the rest of her days.
+
+She redoubled her devotion to Wyndham, suddenly full of fear lest she
+should have been betrayed into injustice to him out of mere morbidity.
+And her mind lingered gently on the figure of this other woman whom she
+had never seen, but to whom her heart went out in an impulsive flood of
+love and pity. If only she could know her, and let her understand how
+deeply she realised her grief! But Wyndham had made no response to her
+first involuntary expression of this desire, and she was too diffident
+to recur to the point again. Perhaps if she waited patiently he might
+suggest such a meeting of his own accord. But the days went, and Wyndham
+was silent.
+
+And not only silent, but changed. "Yes, yes. He is changed in a hundred
+ways," she cried, "though he does not know he has shown it."
+
+If, for a moment, she had been willing to take refuge in the belief that
+over-sensitiveness and diffidence had been leading her into distrust of
+the situation, her eyes were suddenly too wide open to allow of any
+further indulgence in comfort of that kind. There was no mistaking this
+unprecedented self-abstraction, the curious, far-away expression that
+was almost stereotyped on his features, the continued inattentiveness to
+her words that often required her to repeat her remarks and not
+unfrequently ignored them, so that she was continually shrinking into
+herself, too wounded to insist again. By the side of this, his former
+attitude, little as it had satisfied her, seemed impulsive and
+passionate!
+
+His face was grave and sad for the most part, but sometimes it shone
+with a rapture which she knew had not been inspired by her! He was not
+himself in any way; his smile and laugh had not the old spontaneous
+charm. Every note of his affection rang false. And yet, in form, his
+solicitude and loving care for her remained the same as always. But this
+could not blind her; she knew he was trying his best, but his heart and
+mind were not with her. Ah, well, if he cared for anybody, it was
+certainly not for her!
+
+"Who has drawn him away from me? Who has robbed me?--who has robbed me?"
+
+For days she had pondered and pondered, her mind faltering, her lips
+dreading to whisper the name. Wyndham was painting Lady Lakeden. She was
+young; she must be interesting and beautiful.
+
+"He is in love with Lady Lakeden!" It escaped from her lips at last, and
+then she remained ashen--trembling.
+
+Nay, surely he had loved Lady Lakeden in the old days--loved her
+secretly and despairingly, seeing her often, but too poor to woo her!
+Moreover, Lady Lakeden had then loved another. "Yes, yes, that is the
+truth--the truth!" she cried; "And now he has been seeing her again
+daily, and the old love has been reborn!"
+
+A pall descended over Alice's spirit. What a cruel situation! Here was
+Wyndham pledged to a woman he could not care for, yet in love with
+another whose whole heart was with the dear husband that had been taken
+from her. "He is struggling bravely to be true to me--I see it all
+now--he is breaking his heart. It is my duty to release him from his
+word--ah! no, no!" She shuddered and covered her face, shaken and
+shaken. "Even if I gave him his freedom," she argued presently, clinging
+on to the wreck with might and main, "it would only be freedom to find
+despair. Lady Lakeden loved her husband. I know she is great and true.
+She knows he is mine. I trust her--I must trust her--I will pray for
+strength to trust her. Heaven help me!--Heaven help me!"
+
+A terrible pang of jealousy smote her. Detesting herself for it, she
+tried hard to repress the flood of bitter hatred she felt rising in her
+against Lady Lakeden. Poor Lady Lakeden! She had suffered enough and was
+blameless. She could not help it if Wyndham loved her.
+
+An overwhelming curiosity to know what manner of woman Lady Lakeden was,
+took possession of her. Of course, she was young and beautiful. But what
+colour were her eyes? Were they large and deep and brilliant? What
+expression had she habitually? What colour was her hair? And was it
+abundant? And how arranged? Was she slim and tall? How did she dress?
+And in what costume was Wyndham painting her? Were not these the
+questions that had been a thousand times on her lips, and yet remained
+unuttered?
+
+And why had she not asked of him these questions as clearly and boldly
+as she had thought them? Had there been some obscure suspicion in her
+mind all along, and she had feared to embarrass her affianced husband?
+
+Poor Wyndham! She told herself she had the most perfect understanding of
+his mind. She held him in honour as a noble gentleman, and knew surely
+that he would fret his heart away rather than wound her by word or deed.
+She would have put her hand in the fire for the certainty that he would
+never withdraw from the compact; that he would go through with the
+marriage, and die rather than relax the effort to simulate perfect
+happiness in their after life.
+
+Could she accept such a sacrifice? Could she spoil his life for him,
+when she had only meant to set it straight, and had asked for no greater
+privilege? Would that she had been able, by some miracle, to help him
+from across the old impassable distance without coming into his life at
+all! It was for her to choose--to keep him and all that the future with
+him might hold, or to tell him frankly that she thought it best to set
+him free and return to the simple paths of her old existence.
+
+But, ah, no, she could not give him up--she could not give him up! She
+had possessed his lips, she had possessed his thought and solicitude.
+The echoes of his voice caressed her. Break with him! She shut her eyes
+and shuddered again; her whole soul grew sick, and she writhed in
+agony.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Calling one day and finding her alone in the drawing-room, Mr. Shanner,
+after some moments of unruffled demeanour and honeyed conversation,
+abruptly launched into a piteous outbreak.
+
+"I tell you, Alice, you've made a fine mistake with that swell of
+yours," he exclaimed, his eyes flashing with resentment.
+
+Alice stared at him in deep distress. Ever since the engagement Mr.
+Shanner had been all decorousness and deference. As he broke now through
+his ashen shell of propriety, his sedate person seemed to relapse, to
+stand limp, a trifle greyer, a trifle less well trimmed.
+
+"Oh," she gasped at last, "you are under some misapprehension."
+
+"Come, come, Alice," he said; "don't you suppose I've two eyes--and
+wide-open ones, too?"
+
+"I don't really understand what you're alluding to, Mr. Shanner," she
+returned as coldly as she could find it in her.
+
+"I am alluding to your engagement, of course," he insisted. His tone
+showed he was determined to force the subject on her. "What do you
+suppose the fellow is going to marry you for? Men of his class do not
+come out of their way to look for a wife amongst people of our class.
+You mustn't mind my not mincing words, but it's clear to me he doesn't
+care a fig about you, and that your money is the attraction. There,
+that's plain!"
+
+Alice felt herself turn scarlet. Mr. Shanner suddenly stood revealed to
+her--of roughness and coarseness unendurable.
+
+"I don't understand you," she exclaimed, feeling she was floundering,
+and with an acute sense of her lack of social skill to meet the
+contingency and cut short the interview.
+
+"Oh, yes you do, Alice. Only you are too proud to say so."
+
+"You are mistaken. My intended husband and I are on the best of terms. I
+am very much surprised to hear this from you."
+
+"You mean that for a snubbing, no doubt. Well, I suppose I brought it on
+myself." He smiled uneasily and bit his lip. "Only I did think that,
+being so old a friend of the family, I had the right to give you a word
+of advice when the happiness of your life is at stake."
+
+"Oh! please, Mr. Shanner--I'm very sorry," she breathed, all gasps and
+palpitations. "But really, truly, you're mistaken."
+
+"I have used my eyes and head. I am not mistaken. Everything's all
+wrong, and you know it, Alice. I have been reading it in your face of
+late--I tell you you show it. Give up the swell before things go to the
+devil."
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Shanner," she said, with all the kindness in her tone
+that she could muster, "but if you will get these extraordinary ideas
+into your head, I certainly am not going to fight them."
+
+He smiled wanly, droopingly. "Another snubbing, I suppose. But you
+needn't take it in such ill part. I don't profess to belong to the
+aristocracy: I do profess to be a friend, one of the sort that's to be
+trusted. And I think you'll come to recognise that in the long run.
+Whatever happens, John Shanner's your friend, and when the time comes,
+you'll find him ready to hand. But I earnestly advise you not to delay.
+Throw up all this business before there's mischief."
+
+Alice smiled bravely. "I repeat that Mr. Wyndham and myself are on the
+happiest of terms, though I am sure you mean your advice for the
+kindest."
+
+She took up her stand behind this simple assertion, so that he could not
+beat down her refusal to be drawn into a deeper discussion. By degrees
+he pulled together his decorum, recovered his frigidity, and ultimately
+retired with the dignified utterance, "Well, I hope you are not going to
+be disillusionised, my child, but I have my doubts. At any rate, as I
+say, I stand by you in any case. Only promise me one thing, that if ever
+you find my warning was not mistaken, you will do me the justice to
+admit it."
+
+She thanked him gravely, and assured him that she fully appreciated his
+kindness, and willingly made the promise. She was glad indeed of the
+chance of winding up the interview thus amicably. Yet, when he had gone,
+she felt panic-stricken at this revelation of how openly she had been
+wearing her heart--as if veritably on her sleeve. How fortunate her
+parents had observed nothing yet! But they, of course, were taking the
+perfection of everything so entirely for granted, and were so happy
+themselves over the beautiful romance which had transformed their
+household and their lives, that it was difficult for any suspicion to
+enter their heads. Certainly they had never read any expression in her
+face save that of rapture and contentment.
+
+She must try to control herself. If only, like other women, she were
+more practised in assuming a surface self that won acceptance, that none
+could penetrate!
+
+But Mr. Shanner was so absolutely in the right. Was it really worth
+while going on as at present? Could anything be more unhappy than all
+this uncertainty and perplexity? Something must be done. Things must
+come soon to a crisis.
+
+And then, one morning, some two or three days before the end of the
+month she received a letter from Wyndham, who had dined with them the
+evening before, announcing that he would be absent from the studio the
+whole day practically, as he had made club engagements for the entire
+afternoon and evening. As, too, he would be lunching out, it would not
+be worth her while to come to the studio at all on that day. He was
+sorry he had forgotten to mention all this when saying goodbye, but he
+was scribbling the note immediately on entry, and in a hurry to catch
+the post.
+
+This letter gave Alice food for reflection. She did not attach any
+significance to the alleged club engagements; she had never grudged him
+the occasional evenings he spent in that way, since it kept him in touch
+with the art-world. But in this present instance there was certainly a
+suggestion of anxiety on his part that she should keep away from the
+studio over the day. "Ah--I understand!" she flashed, clenching her
+fingers; "Lady Lakeden's portrait is to be brought there to-day, and he
+does not wish me to see it! She is beautiful--beautiful!--he fears her
+beauty will sting me to jealousy."
+
+He had never wished her to see the portrait! Had he not always turned
+the conversation whenever she had mentioned it? And only last night, as
+if in anticipation of so natural a desire on her part, he had had to
+confess that it was finished, but had added that it was going straight
+to Paris, as he preferred to feel it was safe there in the hands of his
+agent. He had thus led her to conclude that the picture would not be
+passing through the studio at all; but, with his letter now before her,
+she felt certain that his aim was to get the portrait framed, to touch
+it up, and then send it off without showing it to her.
+
+But she had the right to see it, if she so desired, she told herself
+bitterly. If the Salon accepted it, nothing could prevent her going to
+Paris with her mother; though so enterprising an adventure was quite
+outside the habits of their life--a consideration on which he was
+counting, perhaps. But the Salon might not accept it, and in any case
+two or three months might elapse before such a possible visit, and in
+that time who could say how things might turn?
+
+Entrance to the studio was a privilege that had been freely bestowed
+upon her. He had not forbidden her to come; he had merely tried to stop
+her by suggestion and diplomacy. But she would not be denied.
+
+She would meet strategy with strategy: she would take care to arrive
+late in the evening, so as to be alone there. In the afternoon, or
+earlier in the evening, there was the danger of just catching him
+between his engagements, since he would no doubt come home to change.
+
+She would see the portrait at her leisure; she would at last study the
+features of the woman--the beautiful, brilliant woman--who had
+unwittingly robbed her.
+
+"And I have no beauty," she sobbed; "I am plain and insignificant. I
+have no cleverness, no experience; not one little weapon to fight with,
+to win him back to me!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Wyndham had finished Lady Betty's portrait on the previous morning, and
+had taken it back with him to his studio. To-day the frame, a copy of a
+fine old Venetian model, came early in the morning, and Wyndham had soon
+fixed the canvas within it. He was enchanted with the effect. If the
+Salon had only a corner to spare for it, he was certain they would not
+turn it away. And--entrancing idea!--why should not Lady Betty deign to
+come here on this last day, and snatch a glimpse of herself in this
+charming setting which he had selected with such loving interest. There
+was a long day before them, and he might well seize the mood and the
+auspicious moment.
+
+He lingered before his picture, then brusquely tore himself away from
+it, and sat down and wrote instructions to the frame-maker, who was to
+come and fetch it away on the morrow, and despatch it to Paris
+immediately.
+
+For this was his great day; that was to leave with him for ever the
+memory of gracious companionship and irrevocable farewell! The day on
+which he would live for Lady Betty and forget all else! Then she would
+pass out of his life. He strove to face the stern decree. But only a
+blank met his vision. He turned his eyes away; his thoughts should be of
+the day only.
+
+He had hardly considered what their programme should be. But now, on his
+way, he began to ponder it lazily, dwelling fancifully on possibilities
+rather than arriving at anything rigid or definite. They would roam
+about at random, like two sweethearts of the people; their evening they
+would spend at a theatre, no doubt something out of the way, and they
+would find their meals as the bizarre occasion might offer itself. They
+would invest this everyday London with the romantic light of their own
+spirit; they would wander as through a strange capital, and observe
+humanity with a new eye. And then, of course, he must keep before him
+the possibility of the visit to his own studio, in which Lady Betty had
+never as yet set foot.
+
+At midday he rang the bell at Grosvenor Place, and was shown up into the
+great drawing-room. In a minute or two Lady Betty came tripping in. A
+glance showed she was ready to go out at once; her simple coat and skirt
+formed a costume unobtrusive enough for any expedition, and her hat and
+veil matched the occasion to a nicety.
+
+She was radiant with an unaffected gaiety; he could hardly conceive the
+weight of sadness that must lie at the bottom of her heart.
+
+"We shall have a happy day," she said, smiling at the thought of it;
+"something to remember always."
+
+He was quick to grasp her spirit. They were to have this happiness as if
+the day were one of many days, some past, more to come. They were to
+give themselves up to the joy of each other's companionship in simple
+acceptance of the passing hour; not dilating on the occasion as a
+parting; not letting it be overshadowed by the sense of what they had so
+tragically missed in life. Parting there would be; and then sadness
+would descend swiftly enough. Till that bitter moment--sparkle and
+enjoyment! He had come prepared to talk much of themselves; but he saw
+she was wiser than he, and at once fell in with her mood. There would be
+all the rest of his life to lament in.
+
+"Have you thought of any plan?" he asked.
+
+"None," she replied. "To tell the truth, I rather shrank from anything
+definite. 'The wind bloweth as it listeth.' Let us go on without end or
+purpose. That seems to me the ideal way."
+
+"But we are bound to make a beginning. After that the game may play
+itself."
+
+"Let us get away from the London we know; let us go to a romantic,
+wonderful London that we have never seen." She was almost echoing his
+thought. "We shall glide discreetly among the crowds as if we belonged
+to them."
+
+"Then away!" he laughed. "To horse--or rather, to omnibus! Or is it to
+be hansom?"
+
+"Everything in turn, and nothing long."
+
+It was a cold day, yet though the sky was lightly clouded, the air was
+free from mist. As they stepped into the street a few patches of blue
+were visible, and a wintry sunshine filtered down with a pleasant sense
+of promise. The neighbouring houses were for the most part shuttered and
+silent, but the outlook on the great triangular space before them was
+cheerfully busy.
+
+"How unlike the scene of your painting!" she exclaimed. "There is no
+suggestion of drama here, but just the average feeling of the London
+thoroughfare--busy people going their way, and a procession of omnibuses
+mixed up with carts and hansoms."
+
+"Yet my own scene swims before my eyes--I have lived with it so long."
+
+"You have still to live with it," she reminded him.
+
+"If I do not die of it," he answered pleasantly. "Seriously, I came near
+to doing so."
+
+"This omnibus is marked 'Aldgate,'" she flew off. "Now that makes me
+think of Aldgate Pump. I wonder if it goes near the Pump?"
+
+Wyndham jumped on the foot-board, and put the question to the conductor.
+
+"We pass within a yard of it," was the reply.
+
+"Good," said Wyndham. The omnibus drew up, and Lady Betty mounted the
+stairway, and they seated themselves on the roof.
+
+"Look!" he exclaimed. "The clouds are suddenly breaking; it will be all
+blue and sunshine soon."
+
+"A grey ghostly blue, a cold, charming sunshine."
+
+"Yet the promise is splendid after all this winter."
+
+"The promise is splendid," she echoed; "and we are so happy to-day."
+
+"We are so happy," he repeated.
+
+He let himself lapse into a dreamy mood; he was enchanted to have her so
+near him, to feel the afternoon and evening stretching endlessly before
+them--a veritable lifetime of golden moments. Lady Betty's manner
+offered a marked contrast. Hers was a frank exhilaration, an excited
+gaiety, of which he had the full impression; though she kept it in a low
+key, like love's whisper intended for his ear alone. Soon, as he had
+predicted, the sky grew bluer, the sunshine warmer; the traffic and the
+bustle of the streets were cheerfully pleasant to the eye and the ear in
+the fresh day.
+
+"Even the London we know seems delightful," he remarked.
+
+"London, though sometimes impelling to revolt, is always wonderful--it
+has always the fascination of the unknown."
+
+"And is as supremely problematic as the unknowable of the philosophers."
+
+"But it is solid and real, comes to us through all the five senses. Look
+at that strange old man with the tiger-lilies. I wonder how he comes by
+them at this time of year."
+
+"That is one of the wonders of London," said Wyndham. "One sees the
+flowers of all seasons at every season."
+
+"And sometimes the weather of all seasons at every season. Has Aldgate
+Pump a history?"
+
+He confessed to ignorance, though he had an idea that he had read much
+about it in his boyhood, an epoch when he had been fascinated by all the
+odd monuments of the town. He recalled, however, after a time, that
+there was a legend connected with it, not unlike that of the wandering
+Jew.
+
+"Is it actually a pump?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, it's a real pump," he assured her.
+
+"Because I had a suspicion just now; it struck me it might be a sort of
+old coaching-inn or something of the kind. I've often been deceived like
+that, have gone off to see strange things, and have found a
+coaching-inn."
+
+"At least there is the consolation of refreshment at the inn."
+
+"Not a bad idea," she conceded. "It would be a thing to boast about for
+the rest of one's life--to have refreshed one's self at the Aldgate
+Pump."
+
+Both laughed. The omnibus pursued its way with a steady rumble. They had
+turned out of Piccadilly and passed through Waterloo Place, and soon
+after through Trafalgar Square into the Strand, where the scene proved
+much busier. The pavements were thronged; people were pressing forward
+with an appearance of being very much in earnest. A sprinkling of
+tourists, clearly self-proclaimed by their holiday air and the style of
+their attire and grooming, paraded at leisure or gazed into the
+shop-windows. Here and there a young girl, in a picture frock and a big
+hat, tripped along daintily, holding her skirt with a touch that
+suggested Paris, and swinging her little bag from her free hand.
+
+"Actresses going to rehearsal?" hazarded Wyndham, in response to his
+companion's interrogation.
+
+"How charming they are!" she exclaimed. "And they are most of them
+frightfully poor. They struggle for years, and then drop out gradually.
+Fortunately we women have the gift of living intensely for the day. A
+few weeks' engagement, the guinea or two assured for the time being, and
+see how we bloom."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Wyndham reflectively; "life for them, as for many
+others, is pretty much of a game of roulette. They stake their all on
+the table, fortune fluctuates during a few turns of the wheel, and
+then--everything is swept away."
+
+"Away, please, with these sad reflections! Why look too searchingly at
+things? The world is pleasant; why spoil it by examining it? Why turn
+one's eyes willingly away from the good to see the evil?"
+
+"And at any rate the good is as real as the evil," he agreed.
+
+"We must make things contribute to our happiness while we may. All these
+crowds of people have no idea that they are there for our entertainment;
+they do not know, poor things, that we have willed they should be
+masquerading to please us. They have the delusion they are going about
+their own affairs, and they see only an ordinary omnibus, full on the
+roof--that is, if they cared to look at us. To them what more
+commonplace than a journey on an omnibus from Hyde Park Corner to
+Aldgate Pump? Yet, to us, what a whimsical universe it is!"
+
+The omnibus rattled along with a not unpleasing vibration. They passed
+through the heart of the City, swept alongside St. Paul's, and then the
+humour of country cousins took possession of them. They pretended to be
+roused to excitement by all these guide-book regions and monuments,
+affected to be seeing them for the first time and to be recognising them
+from the engravings. Down Leadenhall Street they clattered at last, and
+presently to their surprise the conductor's head appeared above the
+stairway with the announcement of "Aldgate Pump, sir."
+
+They descended. The omnibus passed on, and they stood hesitating, a
+little lost, but greatly amused.
+
+"Here it is!" she exclaimed. "And a street arab in the very act of
+pumping! Why, it's real water."
+
+They contemplated it for a moment or two. "Well, what do you think of
+it?" he asked.
+
+"Thrilling," she admitted. "All pumps are interesting--in these days of
+universal taps. But look at those warehouses opposite, beyond the
+hoarding. Aren't they fascinating?"
+
+"I believe the river lies beyond." Probably no existence had been less
+intertwined with the City of London than his, but he remembered the
+immediate neighbourhood pretty well from ancient wanderings, and he told
+her as an interesting fact that Mark Lane and Mincing Lane lay
+thereabouts.
+
+"I think I have heard of them." Her face lighted with the pleasure of
+recognition. "Indeed, I'm sure I've seen them mentioned in the
+newspapers."
+
+He tried to plumb her knowledge, but found no deeps. She knitted her
+brows prettily, or at least he imagined she did, under her veil. "A sort
+of Latin Quarter--an artist's colony?" she hazarded. "No, wait a bit,
+there was a wealthy, humdrum sort of man I once met, and everybody
+whispered he came out of Mincing Lane. He was not artistic. I give it
+up."
+
+"He imported tea?"
+
+"That's not unlikely," she agreed.
+
+"That's what Mincing Lane is for. And Mark Lane is for corn and
+produce."
+
+"How useful! What a good world it is! I think I like this part."
+
+"Beyond is Eastcheap, famous for groceries, and beyond that again the
+water-side where all these things are landed."
+
+"Let us come to Eastcheap." She was eager to see all the places he had
+enumerated, so he took her through the famous side-streets.
+
+"I certainly do like this part of the world," she repeated emphatically.
+"And do you know, your talk of tea, and corn, and produce, and
+warehouses has made me very hungry. If we stumble up against a charming
+place, we shall lunch."
+
+And, a minute or two later, as they strolled down Eastcheap, at the
+corner of a narrow winding lane, they came upon a sort of cafe, which
+nice-looking merchants were entering, besides a goodly sprinkling of
+brisk young women. Lady Betty peered in through the door. The place
+seemed pretty full, but a stairway led to regions below. In a box, at
+the head of the stairway, and busily taking the cash, was a charming old
+man of mildest aspect.
+
+Lady Betty declared it all fascinating, especially the part below
+stairs, which had the attraction of the as yet unseen.
+
+Wyndham hesitated. "There is smoking below. You may not like it."
+
+"There are other women going down," she insisted. "I can't resist the
+temptation."
+
+It was an average type of City lunching place, but Lady Betty had never
+before tried the sort of thing, so Wyndham fell in with her whim. Down
+the stairs they went into a spacious cellar, lighted with jets of gas,
+though the sun was still shining outside. Wreaths and clouds of smoke
+floated in the atmosphere, and a clatter of dominoes and crockery
+dominated the buzz of voices that rose from the chaos of people at the
+marble tables. The central tables seemed given up to chess-play, each
+game surrounded by onlookers, all with patient cups of coffee beside
+them. And here and there an exceptional table, laid with a napkin, and
+in possession of vigorous eaters, gave the note of the restaurant.
+Wyndham and Lady Betty found a snug place on one side from which they
+could survey the room; and a neat little waitress, scarcely more than a
+child, came briskly forward to serve them, handing them with a sweet
+professional smile a long slip headed "Bill of Fare." They were glad to
+note that their entrance had attracted no attention. Lady Betty studied
+the bill excitedly. They made their decision, and Wyndham imparted it to
+the waitress.
+
+"Thank you, sir," she said; "And what'll you have to drink, please?"
+
+Again an eager colloquy, with the prosaic result of "two ginger-beers."
+"A true old English beverage," declared Lady Betty, and her approval
+seemed to flash the aesthetic quality into it, to invest it with rank and
+nobility. "Small or large?" persisted the waitress, her tone and
+demeanour of the gravest.
+
+"Oh, large," said Lady Betty, and the girl's face brightened at the
+definiteness of the information.
+
+"Two large ginger-beers--thank you, ma'am," she said, and went off
+sharply, leaving them to their amusement.
+
+Whilst waiting, they surveyed the place at their leisure. "I like it
+here," exclaimed Lady Betty again. "Look at the old chess player there,
+with the bald pate and the eagle's nose. Watch him considering his move,
+with his hand hovering in the air, hesitating, yet ready to swoop down
+to capture a piece."
+
+But the hand did not capture the piece. Instead, the shoulders shrugged,
+an expression of disgust overclouded the face, and the hand descended,
+dashing all the pieces from the board with one sweep. A roar of delight
+broke from the onlookers, and mingling with it from another part of the
+room came a sudden fresh clatter of dominoes, rapidly shuffled.
+
+"What fresh, frank enjoyment! So this is the strenuous commercial life
+of London--gingerbeer and dominoes!"
+
+"A strange set of people!" commented Wyndham. "Study these faces--from
+each shines a different life. I almost want to put my enormous
+accumulation of art theories on the fire, and to paint only human faces
+for the rest of my life."
+
+"Wonderful! There seem at least fifty different races here--to judge
+from the shapes of the skulls and the varying types of features."
+
+"The thought often strikes me as I watch people in the streets or in
+omnibuses," said Wyndham. "No matter how dull or repulsive a human face
+at first sight, I believe it can always be painted so as to be
+interesting, and that without departing from truth."
+
+The waitress reappeared with their lunch which had been simply chosen so
+as to admit of no possible failure, and in their present mood they were
+charmed with it. Lady Betty was enraptured by the experience, and
+chatted in an undertone, every now and then breaking into a spontaneous
+"I am so happy to-day," and flashing him a glance of light and radiance.
+
+They wound up with black coffee, and then the little waitress made out
+the account, which, after leaving her demurely astonished with her big
+silver tip, Wyndham paid to the nice old man in the box at the top of
+the stairs.
+
+"The sun is still shining--look!" she exclaimed.
+
+Wyndham stepped after her into the air gratefully. "It is fresh and
+almost summery. Heaven smiles at us. Shall we stroll down this winding
+lane? I fancy it must lead to the water-side."
+
+"Hurrah for the winding lane!" she said, and stepped out merrily. At the
+bottom they entered a street full of black brick warehouses with cranes
+at work, and huge carts with ponderous horses. "An antediluvian breed!"
+whispered Lady Betty. They strolled along, peering into dim doorways at
+vast interiors where a strange universe of life flourished in the glooms
+amid prodigious collections of barrels and boxes.
+
+"We are almost on Tower Hill," he said suddenly.
+
+"An unexpected fantasy!" she exclaimed, as the Tower of London itself
+came into view at the end of the narrow street, the grey far-stretching
+ramparts looming up ghost-like and romantic. "A mediaeval mirage amid all
+this grimy commerce. I wonder if it will vanish presently! But let us
+try the opposite direction now--are we not vowed to-day to the
+unfamiliar and unknown?"
+
+They retraced their steps, and, ere long, lighted on an iron gate that
+led visibly to the water-side.
+
+"The gate is inviting," she said. "I hope it isn't forbidden."
+
+"Ah, here is a notice. I see we shall not be trespassers."
+
+They entered, and, passing through the preliminary alley, found
+themselves on a broad, open gravelled space beyond which flowed the
+water. Save for a couple of pigeons wandering about, they had the place
+all to themselves.
+
+"This is a discovery," declared Lady Betty. "It is as interesting here
+in its way as the Rialto at Venice."
+
+And indeed they had reason to admire. To the right lay the Bridge of
+Bridges, whose endlessly rolling traffic was at this distance softened
+to an artistic suggestion that by no means disturbed their sense of
+solitude. At the adjoining wharf on the left a Dutch boat was being
+unladen, actively, yet with a strange sense of stillness and calm. And
+over all the river and shipping hung a faint grey-blue mist, muffling
+and enveloping all things out of proportion to its density, and
+absorbing the sunlight into a haze that already seemed to foretell the
+chills of the coming twilight of the winter's day. They saw the sun, a
+large red ball, hanging extraordinarily low in the sky over a long squat
+warehouse with symmetrical rows of windows. And across the river, under
+the shadow of the opposite structures, lay strange families of craft and
+barges, moored in the water, or high on the mud; rusty and silent, some
+half-broken up, some swinging lazily, touched with the mellow decay of
+the centuries.
+
+Lady Betty thought it would be ideal to stay here awhile, so they
+settled down on one of the garden-seats, and sat in quiet happiness,
+unheeding of the sharp touch of the afternoon air. More pigeons flew
+down from neighbouring roofs and walked tamely around them. And from all
+the mighty activity of surrounding London, that beat strenuous,
+feverish, far-reaching, there flowed to them only a serenity, an almost
+phantasmal calm: they were alone, supremely alone--far from their world
+of everyday existence.
+
+The time slipped by deliciously. Their enjoyment was as spontaneous as
+of two children at play. And children they were in the perfect
+simplicity of their happiness. They watched the afternoon deepen, the
+haze of sunshine weaken and yield to greyer moods; they rose, too, and
+moved along the edge of the waters, and examined the shipping and
+barges. They spoke to the pigeons, gave them names, endowed them with
+romances; they spoke to each other endearingly, yet still as the two
+children who had played together always, who had wandered into this
+strange world, and were as enchanted with it as with each other.
+
+At last they realised the light was already fading; the mist on all
+things was ghostlier, and damp in the throat and nostrils. Now and again
+a spasmodic wind caught up dry leaves and swirled them around playfully.
+Lady Betty gave a little shiver.
+
+"Night will soon be on us," she said. "A million points of light will be
+springing up as by magic. It would be enchanting to stay and watch the
+darkness deepen and the river-fog steal down; to sit here through the
+mysterious hours, and study the shadows and silhouettes, and listen to
+all the strange sounds of the night, and watch all those lights glimmer
+on and on, till at last they show yellow in the pale dawn, and life
+again is swarming over the bridges. Must we go back, dear?--we have left
+our world ever so far away--and years ago, was it not, dear?"
+
+A sadness had descended on them both. With the approach of evening, they
+could not but feel the precious time was fleeting; they could no longer
+immerse themselves with such wholeheartedness in the simple appreciation
+of the moment. The terror of the parting to come rose in the hearts of
+both. Yet they made a brave resistance.
+
+"Come, darling," she said at last; "the hours still belong to us. We
+have indulged our day-mood. Let us search for something fresh now; our
+good star shall watch over us and send us happy adventures."
+
+So they passed again into the street, and, absorbed in their talk, were
+scarcely aware whither they were turning. They knew they were in a
+network of by-ways, flanked by warehouses and offices, and sometimes
+they stumbled on terraces of decrepit old dwelling-houses. They were
+vaguely conscious that they were leaving the river far behind, and that
+they must have crossed Eastcheap again at some narrower part without
+recognising it. After some leisurely wandering they came into a more
+important thoroughfare with pretentious edifices, yet with archaic
+touches here and there, the relics of another epoch, worn and decaying,
+yet more suggestive of coming stone buildings to supplant them than of
+the glory of their own century.
+
+At a street-corner, under the light of a lamp that was still pale in the
+gathering dusk, a shivering flower-seller with a red shawl over her
+shoulders stood with a basket of deliciously fresh violets, and Wyndham
+stopped to get a big bunch of them put together for his companion. Lady
+Betty was immensely gratified; she breathed in the odour of the violets
+with rapture, then fastened them in her bosom. She was herself again
+now, overflowing with good fellowship, and amused at every trifle. He
+caught her exhilaration. "We shall fill our evening with a whirl of
+gaiety!" he cried. "Rockets and fireworks; I wonder if the good star you
+spoke of will be kind enough to set down in our path some unheard-of
+theatre."
+
+She suggested they should study the hoardings as they went along, and
+both undertook to keep a look-out. But they were absorbed again in each
+other, having only a vague pleasurable sense of the crowded roads into
+which their steps now took them. Eventually they were in a main
+thoroughfare, with bustling shops brilliantly alight, and endless lines
+of stalls a-blazing; the roadway full of traffic and tram-cars and
+amazingly gigantic hay-carts, the pavements thick with a working
+population pressing forward and forward in multitudes. It was night now,
+absolutely; but it had stolen on them so gradually, they were astonished
+it was so definitely manifest. The hours of light were fresh and vivid
+in their minds, they could almost hear and feel the unending clatter of
+the omnibus that had carried them across the town, and the riverside
+picture was still before them. The change that had come over the world,
+this transition to absolute darkness illumined by street-lamps and
+flaring naphtha, seemed mystic and amazing. And a subtle warmth from
+all this illumination and from all this press and bustle, from all these
+close-packed moving vans and cars and hay-carts, pervaded the wintry
+air; a sense of exhilaration, too; a sense of life in all its unrefined,
+joyous reality, intense and vigorous, accepting itself unquestioningly,
+too sure of the worth of the gift ever to doubt it--even as the hungry
+ploughboy does not speculate metaphysically about the fat pork on his
+plate, but simply falls thereon and devours it.
+
+"Book-stalls!" cried Lady Betty, "and piled up ever and ever so high.
+And look, rusty Wellington boots on the one hand, and rusty tools and
+bits of iron on the other."
+
+They stayed a few minutes, and turned over some of the books, as
+interesting and varied as those in any more pretentious bookman's
+paradise. They both grew selfishly absorbed, each striking out an
+individual path, though remembering the other's existence at moments of
+extraordinary interest. In the end each became the possessor of a
+volume. Wyndham's was a facsimile of the first edition of the "Pilgrim's
+Progress," a fattish octavo with the loveliest of wide margins, and the
+exact reproduction of the original engravings. Lady Betty's treasure was
+an old copy of the Dramatic Poems of Browning. Each paid the same
+one-and-sixpence, and as they bore away their prizes they discovered
+that each had been inspired by the same motive--of giving the other a
+memento of this wonderful day. Laughingly they exchanged their volumes,
+and the presentations thus formally carried out, Wyndham took possession
+of the Bunyan again in the mere capacity of carrier.
+
+At last a hoarding with a great glare of light on it.
+
+Wyndham let his eye roam over the posters. "The very thing," he cried.
+"A fine old-fashioned melodrama!"
+
+"Splendid!" echoed Lady Betty, gazing at the many-coloured scenes that
+promised a generous measure of thrills and emotions.
+
+"We shall have a box to ourselves," said Wyndham. "As you see, it is not
+so very extravagant. Only there is the problem of dining."
+
+"What healthy little children we are!" she laughed.
+
+"Oh, we must dine," he protested.
+
+"I have faith," she declared. "Our good star has served us till now, it
+is not going to desert us. We shall light upon some quaint place
+presently."
+
+The confident prediction justified itself, for, later on, they stopped
+before a Jewish restaurant that proudly announced itself as "kosher."
+And it proved immediately irresistible to the wanderers, who entered
+straightway, and found themselves in a simple sort of room with freshly
+papered walls, full of neatly laid tables, the very antithesis of the
+familiar formal restaurant of ornate intention. The place was empty of
+diners as yet--no doubt it was early for the usual clients; but the
+proprietor, a grave bearded personage in spotless broad-cloth and with
+the air of an ambassador, come forward bowing profoundly, and escorted
+them to a choice corner. Through a half-open door at the back they had a
+glimpse of a neat, comely Jewish woman busy amid pots and pans, whilst a
+boy and a girl, who both looked good and intelligent, were industriously
+doing their lessons at a side-table. The host waited on the adventurers
+in person, taking the dishes from a younger and shyer assistant who
+brought them from behind the scenes.
+
+Despite the magnificent gravity of his presence, their host turned out
+to be an unaffected human being, whom they encouraged to talk of his own
+affairs, and who was pleased at their manifest interest in his homely
+establishment and in his little family. His wife and he worked together,
+and it was her cooking on which they were now being regaled. Their
+favourable verdict gave him an almost naive gratification; a radiance
+and an illumination broke brilliantly across his features. He told them
+the Jewish names of the various dishes, but though they repeated them
+sedulously, the strange, charming words would not remain in their heads
+a moment. Meanwhile the kitchen was being stimulated to a display of
+delicate skill and finesse; the fish was as good, declared Lady Betty,
+as anything she had tasted at the Maison d'Or. A few other clients began
+to appear--a long-bearded Russian, carefully dressed, accompanied by a
+simple, buxom daughter of rosy complexion and deep, serious, aspiring
+eyes; then a middle-aged man, with a leonine mane that was dashed with
+grey and suggested the poor composer of genius; and finally a spectacled
+German in a threadbare cut-away coat, carefully brushed, who suggested
+unrequited scholarship. But all these, after the first distinguished bow
+and salutation on the part of the host, were left to the attentions of
+the assistant; the host himself being magnetised by the unaccustomed
+guests with whom he was deep in conversation. But, though he waited on
+them perfectly, there was yet conveyed in his bearing such a touch of
+distinction and courteous affability that they were sensible as of an
+honour that was being bestowed upon them. And that he was no mere
+small-souled tradesman was abundantly evident when he brought them a
+bottle of claret with the romantic recommendation that it had been grown
+on Palestine soil, and that, in its passage from the wine-press to their
+table here, it had never left the hands of his compatriots. He handled
+the bottle with pride and certainly emotion, and begged them to accept
+of it, and to allow him to fill their glasses. They were touched by the
+invitation, though they were naturally unwilling to accept such a gift
+from a poor man, but he understood their doubts and laughingly explained
+that, as he did not possess a wine licence, he could not possibly accept
+payment; a piece of reasoning which drew them into the laugh and
+disposed of their hesitations.
+
+They made him join them, however, and they drank to the prosperity of
+the Palestine colonies, irrelevantly but charmingly coupling the toast
+with that of their host and hostess, the children and the restaurant.
+The other visitors smiled quietly, and, with conspicuous good breeding,
+scarcely turned their eyes towards this convivial table, the Russian
+conversing in an undertone with his daughter, and the musician with the
+scholar.
+
+And at the end the host did not give himself any false airs, but made
+out their modest reckoning and handed Wyndham the change, all with the
+same courtesy and with a distinction of manner which seemed to lift
+trade to a higher plane than it occupies in Occidental prejudice. And as
+the wife appeared hovering with a shy smile in the kitchen doorway, she
+was invited to join the group, and warmly complimented on her culinary
+skill. Then Lady Betty asked for the children, and presently their
+bright faces were illumining the room with a warmer and sweeter light.
+Wyndham and Lady Betty spoke to them a little, then Lady Betty slipped a
+fragile ring with a single small fine pearl off her finger, and put it
+on the girl's. The little thing blushed and hung down her head. But the
+jewel became the tiny hand immensely. Meanwhile the boy's eyes were
+glued on the books.
+
+"I can see you like books, little man," said Wyndham.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the child, "better than anything else."
+
+"His ambition is to become a scholar," put in his father proudly.
+
+"He is to have the Browning as a memento," said Lady Betty. She handed
+it to the child. "Keep this volume carefully. When you are older, I am
+sure you will love and treasure it." Then she unfastened her big bunch
+of violets and pressed the flowers on his mother, who took them shyly
+but coloured with pleasure.
+
+When they were in the street again they walked on silently for a while.
+Wyndham saw that Lady Betty had been deeply touched; that something
+wonderful had been revealed to her of which, perhaps, she had never
+caught a glimpse in her whole existence. Presently she turned to Wyndham
+with a quiet smile that was the natural reflection of her thought.
+
+"You do forgive me, dear," she asked, "for my arbitrary disposal of
+your Browning, my own present to you!"
+
+"You sacrificed my gift of violets, so we are quits."
+
+"After this we shall scarcely need any memento of the day--who could
+ever forget?" Then with a little thrill of joy: "But I've my Pilgrim all
+the same." She touched the book lovingly as he held it, and he was aware
+of her movement as of a caress. It was his gift to her, and what a world
+of affection in this implication of the value she set on it!
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+They found the theatre easily, and, from their snug box, enjoyed a most
+lurid melodrama, which amply redeemed the promise of the hoarding, and
+was played by a vigorous company who seemed in no wise dismayed by
+yawning spaces and a thin scattering of audience. Nay, the thrills were
+even more than the adventurers had reckoned on, for pistol shots
+suddenly rang out in the third act, and Lady Betty clutched hard at the
+curtain of the box. She presently realised, however, that the iniquitous
+foreign nobleman with the fur overcoat and large moustachios, whose
+veiled hand had directed the remorseless persecution of the good and
+righteous, had at last paid for his misdeeds, and with this passing of
+the villain Lady Betty found that her sense of poetic justice was
+abundantly satisfied; though the luckless heroine, appearing on the
+scene just then, and incautiously picking up the fallen pistol, was at
+once arrested as the manifest murderess. Then the curtain went down, and
+Lady Betty rose.
+
+"We must not stay to the end. Our day is over, and I want to give you
+the promised souvenir of our brief friendship."
+
+There was a catch in her voice, and he understood that the sob had been
+suppressed with difficulty. He felt it was for him now to be strong; to
+set the note of stoic resignation, even as she had led off their
+adventures with a mood that had made this day the most wonderful of all
+his life.
+
+"Ah, your strange, strange souvenir!" he laughed. "You must admit I have
+waited patiently."
+
+"It was very wicked of me," she admitted. "But I shall keep you tortured
+with curiosity till the moment I give it to you. I have it at home. We
+had better drive back all the way, if we can find a vehicle."
+
+They slipped out of the box and along the corridor and into the open
+road. It was a keen night, but very clear. The perspective of street
+lamps stretched endlessly on either hand. There was a plentiful
+sprinkling of people about, and the tram-cars were still passing. At the
+kerb were a few cabs, waiting for possible clients, so they selected the
+smartest of the vehicles; and the driver, who had been standing flinging
+his arms about for warmth, climbed into his seat, stolidly indifferent
+that "fares" from the theatre should wish to go so far afield into the
+regions of the elect.
+
+No doubt the horse was glad to be off, for they started at an
+astonishingly brisk pace. Outside lay the endless road and all the
+shuttered world of streets and houses, over which still hung the romance
+of their splendid day. Quietly they had their last glimpses, as if
+fearing to speak, and yet thrillingly conscious of their proximity to
+each other. Lady Betty was sunk in sadness; as if she recognised now
+that any affectation of cheerfulness was utterly vain. And Wyndham was
+thinking of the definite moment of parting. He had resigned himself to
+saying "goodbye" at the door of her home; not daring to suggest now that
+she should visit his studio, even for the first time and last--since the
+chance had not naturally arisen in the course of the day's wanderings,
+and she had not even expressed the desire for it. Indeed, in all these
+weeks she had thrown out no hint of such a wish, and he had felt that
+she considered the ground as within Alice's absolute sphere, and would
+not intrude on it. No doubt many mingled shades of feeling went to
+create this attitude of hers. Still, Wyndham, having dreamed of her
+coming there on this last day, was to that extent unsatisfied. Time and
+again the suggestion mounted to his lips even at this eleventh hour, but
+he had not the confidence to let the words fall.
+
+Perhaps they had both fallen into reverie, for Wyndham found himself
+saying suddenly, "Why, here is the Bank of England!" And Lady Betty
+started, too, astonished at the stillness and the solitude here in the
+heart of the City.
+
+"The night seems darker now, and how ghostly and silent the lights are!"
+she said. "The sky has clouded. Goodbye, dreamland," she added in
+meditation. "I shall never dare revisit the ground we have covered. I
+don't want to see it again; I couldn't bear it. But I shall always think
+and dream of it."
+
+He dared not answer. The least false note, and she would be unnerved.
+Since the parting had to be, let them grip hands silently for the last
+time, almost without realising it; let them go off as if they were to
+meet again on the morrow--as in so many partings that life itself brings
+about.
+
+And as they were borne westwards, signs of life began to appear again;
+as they approached the Strand they came full upon the torrents of
+population pouring out from their amusements. At Trafalgar Square the
+town was alive with masses of hansoms in motion that broke into jets and
+streams flashing and darting into all the avenues. They seemed to have
+returned into this familiar, dazzling London of the night as from a long
+journey. They were giddy with the impression of it all, and winced as if
+they had long grown disaccustomed to it. But, definitely, they were at
+home again; soon the houses of Grosvenor Place would loom up before
+them, though somehow their everyday universe had taken on some subtle
+quality of unreality since the morning.
+
+And yet how small the distance they had gone afield, how soon
+annihilated! Up St. James's Street went the cab, alongside the Green
+Park, and in a few minutes it had pulled up in Grosvenor Place. Wyndham
+sprang out with a forced alertness, and helped his companion to descend.
+The house was quite dark. Lady Betty led the way to the door-step and
+produced a latch key from her purse. Wyndham stood by, strained and
+nervous.
+
+"You must come in to receive your souvenir," she said. "You have well
+deserved it," she added with a brave smile.
+
+He followed her in as she pushed the door open; then she switched on the
+light. "You had best wait in the dining-room, I shall join you again
+presently."
+
+Wyndham stood alone in the spacious room, with a sense of chill and
+desolation. The thought of his marriage and life to come flashed on him
+with a stroke of terror. Suddenly he shivered. Ah, it was bleak here in
+this deadly, all-pervading stillness. The very lights seemed to flood
+the room mournfully. How tired he was! Everything seemed to swim before
+him.
+
+And then he was aware she was in the room again, smiling at him and
+exhibiting a package. Her presence seemed to revive him.
+
+"At last I am to be enlightened," he murmured.
+
+"I am afraid you are doomed to be disappointed," she said, as she came
+and stood by his side at the table. "I have made such a mystery of it,
+whereas, no doubt, you will find it trivial."
+
+"You said it was a weird idea. I am sure it is a charming one. Whatever
+it is, you know what it will be to me."
+
+"I know, darling," she said, suddenly grave again.
+
+She bade him cut the string and open the package. At last, as he was
+removing the many wrappings, "It is an old door-knocker," she said; "the
+figure of a lovely grotesque old wizard, wrought in bronze. I came
+across it on the door of a fifteenth-century house in Delft a year or
+two ago, and it so fascinated me that I bargained for it with the owner.
+It has ever since remained one of my pet possessions, and I at once
+thought of it for you. Tell me truly what you think of it!"
+
+Wyndham held up the strange bronze man, slim and long, with fantastic
+bearded head, and grasping in one hand a rod that merged into a huge
+serpent that lay coiled round the body. The two legs were welded at the
+bottom into one big foot, the heel of which formed the hammer. It was a
+piece of grotesqueness worthy of the East, finely and subtly modelled,
+and quaint rather than grim in its suggestiveness.
+
+"A masterpiece!" he said at last. "I have never seen anything of the
+kind to match it."
+
+"I should say it is by an artist of at any rate the early renaissance,"
+she ventured, her face agleam, for she had awaited his verdict with
+anxiety. "The modelling is so careful and scientific."
+
+"Those were the days when artists still thought only of their work, and
+so much forgot their own existence that they took no pains to proclaim
+themselves to the world. The work of the so-called dark ages remains,
+the artists lie unknown and unheard of, if indeed they were known to the
+world at any time."
+
+"You will set up my wizard on the door of your house. Every time you
+hear it you will think of me as floating there like a spirit. Isn't that
+weird? I have the idea that if an enemy should touch it, you would
+somehow know at once, and be on your guard. Oh, yes, I was convinced it
+was a magic knocker the moment I saw it."
+
+He was still staring at it gravely, as if he, too, felt some eerie
+quality in it. She looked at him, then broke into laughter. "Aren't we a
+charming pair of children, taking our own make-believe so seriously?"
+
+He laughed, too, though uneasily. "It is good to be children again."
+
+"Like all good things, it is cut short so soon," she responded
+meditatively.
+
+He replaced the old wizard in its wrappings. "It is true," he murmured,
+pale and haggard. "Time is flying."
+
+"Ah, well," she said with a catch in her breath.
+
+They were looking at each other brokenly. The air echoed and echoed with
+the "goodbye" that was not spoken.
+
+He took her hand in his. "Princess," he whispered huskily, "I had
+dreamed of your seeing my studio ere we said goodbye. It would be for
+the first time and last, remember. Won't you come with me now,
+dear?--the merest glimpse--if only to see where your magic knocker is to
+hang--You understand, dear?"
+
+Her eyes glistened. "Yes, I understand, dear. I will come with you."
+
+"This is one of the kindest things that even your life will hold!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+So again they were in the street, and the door swung to behind them.
+Wyndham was carrying his package, unexpectedly heavy, all concentrated
+weight, like a dumb-bell. The point caught her attention, and in a flash
+she changed again, was once more the amused laughing comrade, even
+though the sky was clouded now and tiny specks of rain flew in their
+faces.
+
+"A midnight expedition!" she cried. "Let it be a hansom this time."
+
+At the corner of Knightsbridge they found one, and they were off again
+at a trot; a fact so astonishing that they could hardly grasp it. And
+then, instead of feeling broken with fatigue at the end of a long day,
+they found themselves fresh and spirited, as at the beginning of a new
+adventure.
+
+Soon they were cutting down Sloane Street, and then Wyndham suggested
+they should go the more interesting way round, so as to take in the
+Embankment, and drive into the Tite Street at the river end. It would
+leave a pleasanter impression with her, he argued, and Lady Betty
+readily assented. He gave the man the word, but straightway again the
+pair were deep in conversation, and lost all sense of the outer world.
+
+Some minutes passed. Suddenly their driver gave a shout, the hansom
+jerked violently, and Lady Betty, clutching at Wyndham's hand, saw a
+woman just step back in time from under the horse's head. The driver
+cracked his whip and shouted something angrily, and then the hansom
+moved on again. Wyndham stared out into the night. He saw the line of
+lights gleaming along the parapet of the river, and recognised they were
+within a short distance of Tite Street. But the woman was already lost
+in the gloom.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+At the table that evening, Alice Robinson announced that she was going
+to meet Wyndham immediately after dinner. Had her parents not been
+accustomed to her departure at such summary notice, they might have
+observed the touch of embarrassment that accompanied it. For, although
+the expedition had been planned and considered for twenty-four hours on
+end, Alice found the initial falsehood singularly agitating. Painfully
+conscious of this lack of sangfroid, and fearful of betraying herself,
+she felt she must escape from the house as soon as was plausible. So, a
+little later, she rose in feverish haste from the dinner-table, and went
+to her room to put on her wrappings. No one was to wait up for her, in
+case she might be late, she said; she was taking a latch-key as usual.
+Then she slipped out of the house, and went down the street rapidly.
+
+Some little time had elapsed before she had control of her wits and
+began to reflect. She had been impelled to start far earlier than she
+had calculated, and thus she undoubtedly ran the danger of finding
+Wyndham there, if she went straight to the studio. It was half-past
+eight; by taking various omnibuses she could fill out the time and be
+there by half-past nine. But even that seemed too early--he might be
+only just on the point of going out to his club engagement. No, to be
+absolutely safe, she would not venture actually to intrude till ten
+o'clock.
+
+However, she decided to make the journey at once, and to pass the
+remaining time in that neighbourhood. So she mounted the first omnibus
+that came along, and, once settled down for the long drive, she drew a
+deep breath of relief. Now that she was definitely on the way, some of
+the stress and pressure seemed to leave her, and the expedition seemed
+less terrible. She pictured herself stealing down Tite Street, standing
+nervously on the opposite pavement in the shadow, and looking up to see
+if the studio were illuminated. Even if all were dark, Wyndham might
+still be dressing in the room at the back; for, from the state of the
+hall, nothing could be deduced, as often he would not take the trouble
+to light the oil-lamp on which he at present depended. No, it would be
+certainly more prudent to wait long enough for certainty. Should she
+once break in upon him, she knew he would take good care she should not
+see the picture; for no doubt he had taken measures against such a
+surprise visit.
+
+Immersed in these reflections, Alice was dimly aware of the miles of
+streets through which she was being carried. Indeed, she forgot to
+change omnibuses at Oxford Street, and was borne some distance out of
+her way before she discovered the omission. The whole town seemed to her
+like a dream; the street and the studio at her journey's end were all
+that existed for her. And even when she gazed at the world around her,
+it refused to take on any reality; the people that were abroad, going
+their way and standing out brilliantly in the night wherever a blaze of
+light fell upon them, seemed all strangely irrelevant. The only figures
+that mattered were her affianced husband and the beautiful, sad woman of
+stately presence, whose loveliness and nobility had drawn him from her.
+She knew now she hated Lady Lakeden--definitely, terribly. It was
+shameful, it was wicked--to hate like that! Lady Lakeden was blameless,
+and had not the least idea of all this suffering which her loveliness
+had caused to a fellow-woman, and to Wyndham, too. Yet how good it was
+to let this mad fury against Lady Lakeden develop in her heart!
+
+She pictured the portrait as standing with its face to the wall,
+unobtrusive, even lost, amid the hosts of other canvasses. With what
+terrible eagerness she would dart on it, turn it again, and let the
+light fall on it! At last she should gaze on the face, should satiate
+her consuming curiosity!
+
+At Sloane Square she alighted, deciding to eke out the time by walking
+the rest of the distance. As she plunged into the heart of Chelsea, and
+was so sensibly near her journey's end, her pulse beat faster, her
+breath came irregularly, and again her whole mind was concentrated
+vividly on her goal. The streets through which she passed were almost
+deserted. The old houses, the gardens, the stretches of brand-new
+buildings, the great Hospital itself, were all vague silhouettes; above,
+the stars were keen, but her eyes were fixed rigidly before her.
+
+At the corner of Tite Street she stopped to draw breath, for her heart
+was now thumping painfully. At the same time she felt almost afraid to
+set foot in the street itself. The hesitation was unexpected; she had
+imagined herself going straight to the studio, all of the same impulse.
+But here a sense of wrong-doing came upon her; the underhandedness of
+the whole proceeding stood out in that moment, curiously revealed,
+strangely impressive. A strong temptation assailed her to turn, to run
+off with all her force, to go back home. But she set her teeth, again.
+No, she must not go back without seeing Lady Lakeden's portrait. She
+must not yield to these moments of cowardice. It was stupid. Other women
+dared much greater things; would hesitate at nothing, however false and
+ignoble, to gain their own end!
+
+She crossed to the opposite side, and flitted down the street like a
+shadow. She had so effectively lengthened out her journey that it was at
+last nearly ten o'clock. Wyndham's whole house was dark, and she had
+little doubt but that he was already out. Yet she wanted to be
+absolutely certain, so she moved on again, and sauntered off into a
+network of neighbouring streets. But she was too impatient to go far
+afield, and, after a few minutes, she retraced her steps till once more
+she found herself looking across the street at the silent house that lay
+all in deep shadow. How dark and deserted; how unnaturally still the
+whole quarter! Then tramp, tramp, tramp, came the heavy foot of a
+policeman, and she made him out dimly approaching her. She crossed the
+road, nervous indeed of any human scrutiny, and walked on briskly, only
+venturing to turn back when he had finally passed out of the street.
+Now, she told herself, was the moment.
+
+With every muscle tense, her heart beating now with terrible strokes, so
+that she felt she might fall swooning at any moment, she approached the
+house, and mounted the few steps that led to the doorway. Her key was in
+her little purse-bag, and she extricated it tremblingly. At last she had
+the door open, gave a last, quick, furtive, glance around, and then
+stepped into the hall. For a moment she stood listening, her ears
+intensely on the alert for the least sound in the house. But the sense
+of absolute emptiness was too profound: the measured ticking of the tall
+hall-clock seemed to be sounding a curiously vigorous note. She let the
+door slam behind her, and moved forward a step or two, her feet sinking
+into the deep Turkey carpet that she herself had chosen; then she sank
+on a hard oak chair, and sat there gratefully, trying to master her
+breath, and waiting for her heart to thump itself through sheer
+weariness into a gentler measure. She unfastened her wraps and threw her
+coat open, for from head to foot she was burning. She did not note the
+time that passed, but when she rose again with a start she heard from
+some neighbouring church clock the single stroke of a quarter. She
+hesitated no longer, but determined to go up at once to the studio.
+
+But first she lighted the hall lamp. Now that she was here she intended
+to take possession openly, as was her right. If he should come back
+suddenly, he at least should not imagine that she was there in secret.
+But the cunning of the reasoning gave her a twinge of shame; she knew
+that she was throwing dust in her own eyes in thus spouting of her
+right. Admit at once that this liberal illumination was a piece of
+craft, was intended to maintain the surface of innocence that was the
+cover for woman's guile from time immemorial. Well, so be it! She had
+been a child all her life. If perhaps she had been less truly innocent,
+even she might have kept the man who had slipped from her. She was
+graduating in womanhood now; how splendid it was to be unscrupulous, to
+do absolutely what you wished, yet skilfully maintain the blind belief
+and confidence of those you tricked! What great power, what joy could be
+gathered for yourself that way! Yes, that was the only thing for woman
+in this world; otherwise she was left to rot!
+
+And, as if to emphasise the conviction, she deliberately lighted a
+second spare lamp that stood in the hall, so that the spaces were
+illumined resplendently. Then she mounted the flight of stairs, letting
+her hand trail along the graceful sweep of balustrade, and pushed open
+the door of the studio.
+
+Peering into the darkness, her eyes at first could distinguish nothing
+save the objects in the spaces near her, as some of the light flowed up
+from below. But presently she was able to distinguish the familiar
+furniture, and cautiously felt her way across to the mantelpiece. Soon
+two powerful lamps were in full flame, and she sat down again to rest
+for a minute, whilst her eyes wandered round seeking for the portrait
+that was the object of her pilgrimage. She did not remove her coat and
+wraps, although, spacious as the room was, the atmosphere felt
+oppressive and the slow fire, banked up with ashes, seemed to give out
+an immense heat. Yet she felt singularly at leisure, in full possession
+of her purpose.
+
+Obviously Lady Lakeden's portrait was not on any of the easels; nor
+could she distinguish any fresh unit amid these many canvasses, all
+individually familiar to her--like a card-sharper, she could identify
+any one of them immediately from its apparently featureless back. Her
+first feeling was one of astonished disappointment, and she rose now,
+ready to institute a closer search. The possibility of being baulked of
+her purpose stirred a sudden rage in her. She no longer knew herself. "I
+am mad--mad," was the thought that echoed through her brain. "But if I
+am," she reasoned grimly, "my sufferings all these weeks have made me
+so. I would sooner die than endure this all over again." Then she set
+about examining all the canvasses, turning them one after the other to
+the light, in the vain hope that her too accurate knowledge of them
+might prove in some instance mistaken. But in vain! Was it possible that
+the portrait was already on its way to Paris?
+
+But wait, was there anything behind the screen so carelessly sprawling
+in the corner there under the great window? In a moment she had dashed
+across, and had half-dragged, half-flung it out of its place. Ah! she
+could almost have screamed with fury at Wyndham's cautious
+foresight--this unmistakable provision against an accidental visit from
+her. It was then true; definitely, absolutely true! The man whom she
+loved to madness, who had professed to love her for herself alone,
+belonged heart and soul to another woman!
+
+A mist palpitated in the air before her, and the gold foliage and
+convolutions of the ornate Venetian frame shone through it distorted and
+terrible. But the canvas itself was a vague blur to her. She staggered
+over to the nearer lamp and bore it over to the corner, kneeling so as
+to bring the light full on the picture and her own face opposite Lady
+Lakeden's. And as now she saw this rare princess, bathed in a mystic
+light, this figure, full of a sweet dignity and a stately grace; as her
+eyes rested on the girlish face whose character yet shone out in a
+splendid illumination, though the rounded, youthful features were free
+from any stamp that might have touched the bloom of their spring-tide
+beauty, a cruel knife worked in Alice's heart, a knife that seared as
+well as stabbed. For a long minute she gazed at the portrait, letting it
+burn itself on her vision in its every shade and detail--the fresh sheen
+on the hair, the proud yet sweet tilt of the face, the wonderfully fresh
+and deep violet-grey eyes, the veritable rose-bud mouth that was yet so
+firm and true! This, then, was her rival! How could she, the plainest
+of the plain, hope to struggle against the irresistible might of this
+loveliness! A sense of absolute defeat, of complete hopelessness invaded
+her whole being; it was the same submissive acquiescence with which she
+had contemplated herself in the glass on that momentous evening when
+Wyndham had appeared in her father's house for the first time. But then
+the hope had never been roused; now the joy was literally snatched from
+her lips. But, though her intelligence saw the hopelessness, her heart
+was full of desperation. And while yet her eyes were riveted on the
+picture, fascinated, yet loathing it with a passion that seemed to flame
+and to dominate her as though her real self were too puny to stir
+against it, a wild whirling thought came to her that made her body rock
+and shiver, and she set the lamp on the floor to save it from crashing
+down out of her hand. What if this woman were as guilty as the man?
+
+"I understand now," her lips broke out involuntarily. "They loved each
+other from the beginning, but she married another for convention's sake.
+Now they have resumed their old love, but I am in the way. He will not
+jilt me, because his honour is at stake, but as a man of honour he would
+not think it dishonourable to deceive me." She laughed aloud in
+bitterness. That was it! They would both deceive her, though he would
+never break his word. Had she not seen the point exemplified in a
+hundred books and plays?
+
+Ah, this honour of the fashionable classes! And she had believed Lady
+Lakeden to be true; had, in pity and sympathy, set her on the highest
+pedestal of womanhood. How her belief in her rival's perfect goodness
+had blinded her! What a fool she had been, going through life with such
+simplicity! With a heart so open and trusting! No wonder nothing had
+come to illumine her existence!--that what had seemed to hold the
+promise was a cheat and a delusion!
+
+And, as her mind ran back over the past weeks, a thousand things seemed
+to confirm her new inspiration at every turn. Ah, God! how she had been
+tricked! Was there another woman in the world who would have been so
+trustingly stupid? The blood seemed to surge all to her temples:
+everything before her faded. An impulse to give vent to her fury seized
+her. She longed to tear and rend the canvas, to crush and break it with
+her fingers, to bite it through and through with her teeth. And she
+would have carried the imperious impulse into effect, had not a new
+thought, like a zigzag of lightning, come flashing through her brain.
+Lady Lakeden had no doubt written him letters; there must be a whole
+packet of them somewhere here in the studio! She would read them; they
+would not lie!
+
+Intent on this new end, she darted across to the bureau (of which the
+lid was permanently down and laden with papers and portfolios), and
+scrutinised the pigeon-holes. These were always open to her without
+restriction, but she had never thought of examining the contents, though
+she had often put away papers and receipts for him. She made a quick,
+feverish inspection of them now, not hoping to find the letters she
+sought in a place thus conspicuous, but yet fearful of overlooking them.
+The pigeon-holes yielded in fact nothing to interest her, and then with
+trembling fingers she turned out the little drawers, one at a time,
+replacing the contents of each carefully before proceeding to the next.
+She was reckless now, having no control over itself. She did not fear
+his sudden arrival on the scene; she would face him--she would taunt him
+with the truth!
+
+Suddenly her physical powers seemed to break down, and she clutched at
+the bureau for support. And as soon as she had steadied herself, she was
+glad to drag over a chair, and continue her search with feeble, tired
+movements. And with this abrupt collapse, her crude, violent emotions
+seemed to have blazed themselves out. She felt now a poor forlorn,
+helpless creature; her eyes were wet with tears, and she was choking
+down her sobs. And it seemed to her that she was gulping down an
+infinite bitterness. "I have it," she said suddenly, a momentary
+illumination flitting across her features. He had once shown her in
+this old provincial French bureau a receptacle which he had spoken of as
+his secret drawer, a space neatly stowed away amid the other surrounding
+spaces so that its ingenious existence might remain reasonably
+unsuspected. She immediately stopped her operations, replacing things
+with a movement that was increasingly languid and feeble; and eventually
+opened the principal compartment in the centre which was on a level with
+the writing-lid. Removing all its contents, she inserted her nail in a
+little innocent slit, made the floor of the compartment slide along,
+then thrust her hand into the space revealed.
+
+Clearly a packet of letters was there. She drew it forth--over a dozen
+of them, carefully preserved in their fashionable-looking envelopes and
+tied together with a broad piece of tape. A faint perfume of violets was
+in her nostrils as she handled them. And this packet, too, seemed
+strangely imbued with the personality of their writer, reminiscent of a
+world of dream and books. How remote from her they seemed! How remote
+from her, indeed, all the amazing history of these past months! That,
+too, belonged rather to a world of dream and books. What! these great
+tragic complications and emotions had sprung up in her simple,
+uneventful existence! had related themselves to a brick bow-windowed
+house in the suburbs!
+
+She gazed at the packet again, conscious that her fingers were
+faltering. How mean, low, hateful to read letters that had not been
+meant for others' eyes! And what purpose would be served by her reading
+them? She needed no further proof of the intrigue that had been carried
+on in the shelter of her own credulity and simplicity. Besides, she
+could divine what passionate vows of love were written herein, and to
+pry into them would be to renew her tortures beyond human endurance. She
+feared and turned away from them as from a furnace heated seven times
+hot. The packet dropped amid the masses of papers that encumbered the
+desk. Her tears came anew, and she gave them full vent; a storm of
+hysteric sobbing shook her convulsively.
+
+When eventually the attack had spent itself, she sat there listlessly,
+without the force to stir hand or foot. But her brain was working
+feverishly, definitely recognising that her life was spoilt. She had
+made her great cry of revolt in this mad dash and underhanded search;
+better perhaps to have made it in the silent depths of her heart! Ah,
+God, it was bitter, it was cruel! But what had she expected? Had she not
+known from the beginning that she ought never to accept one so far above
+her?--that she was not the ideal his heart would crave for, but that, at
+the best, a deep secret dissatisfaction would rankle in him all his
+life? Had she not steadily seen this, while yet a shred of sanity
+remained to her? But it had all happened in spite of herself; she had
+been stricken with blindness, and her clear-seeing mind had been
+possessed with inexplicable folly. She--Alice Robinson!--and the thought
+made her laugh out aloud--had wholly believed that this man sincerely
+loved her! She laughed again and again, seized suddenly by the pitifully
+comic spectacle she presented to herself--Alice Robinson, shy, awkward,
+devoid of all the graces, lacking _savoir-faire_, neglected not only by
+men, but even by her own sex: Alice Robinson, the granddaughter of a
+carpenter, seriously beloved by an aristocrat with all the graces and
+culture, an artist, moreover, for whom beauty was always the primal
+appeal! She--Alice Robinson--had been under this wondrous delusion! Was
+there anything more ridiculous since men and women were? Her laughter
+could not be repressed, but it rang out through the studio weirdly, with
+a strange note of hardness and bitterness, and somehow it echoed and
+re-echoed through all the house, coming back to her mockingly from the
+empty rooms beneath her.
+
+Even when her laughter had died away she sat there brooding. And for the
+first time there was mingled in her emotions a touch of pity for
+Wyndham. She was conscious now of a softening, in spite of all. Poor
+Wyndham! Had he not loved Lady Lakeden years before he had set eyes on
+the Robinsons? If only he had not possessed that terrible code of
+honour! He might then have come to her frankly and begged her
+compassion! She would have released him. But he could not break his
+word. His honour only allowed him to carry on an intrigue!
+
+But time was passing, and she told herself she must not stay. She knew
+she was defeated and must accept it: she must leave him to his intrigue,
+whilst she herself stepped back into the old suburban existence!
+
+She replaced the letters in the secret receptacle, and restored
+everything in the bureau as it had been before. Then she dragged back
+the screen before the picture, turning away her eyes resolutely so as
+not to catch sight again of that gracious figure gleaming out in
+exquisite radiance. The lamps were put back as she had found them, then
+carefully extinguished. But the difficulty she had with them revealed to
+her the tense nervous condition under which she was still labouring,
+though she had appeared to herself quiet and resigned now. She stood in
+the dark a moment, conscious of the suffocating closeness of the
+atmosphere. How good it would be to be out in the air again! She would
+walk on the Embankment for a few minutes, and then ingloriously go home
+as fast as possible--in a hansom! having yielded to ignoble impulses and
+played the role of a common spy. But in one way she at least had no
+regret She was enlightened, knew as much of the position as Wyndham.
+
+She descended the stairs, put out the lamps in the hall, and stepped
+into the streets again. The cold air beat in her face deliciously; the
+stars were brilliant in the pure sky. She looked up to them now
+yearningly--their calm and beauty shamed the storm and fever in her own
+mind. The street, too, seemed so exquisitely still in the splendid
+darkness. She let her wraps hang loosely about her, and did not fasten
+her coat. She breathed the air greedily, and it seemed to allay the
+stress at her heart. Then somehow she turned her steps towards the
+river, wondering where Wyndham and Lady Lakeden were passing their
+evening! She could take that for granted now, she felt. How carefully he
+had built up the wall around his romance!
+
+At the bottom of the street the river night-scene, scintillating with
+points of light, burst on her vision, and seemed to draw her into its
+own strange mood of mystery. It was as though a new universe of stars
+had come into being, wafting some fascinating message which baffled her
+reading. And as she stood in the great avenue, under the far-spreading
+arch of foliage, a deeper calm seemed to fall upon her. She went to the
+parapet, and looked over. The long stretch of water, all gleams and
+shadows, lay gently between the two gray bridges that hung suspended
+from their steel network in soft silhouette.
+
+Alice strolled some distance down the bank, then turned and retraced her
+steps. She told herself it was foolish to linger here, that she ought to
+make at once for the busier streets, and take the first vehicle that
+offered itself. But it was so deliciously silent, so majestic, that it
+comforted her to stay here. Besides, somehow, she could not tear herself
+away from the neighbourhood of the studio. She looked at her watch; to
+her surprise it was nearly half-past eleven; she had been at the studio
+a full hour and more! Surely he must be coming home soon. Perhaps,
+indeed, he had returned already!
+
+She found herself instinctively turning up Tite Street again, keeping as
+before to the opposite side of the road. But all was as dark and still
+in the house as when she had left it. Then the idea came to her that she
+would wait and see. It was a mere whim perhaps; but she could not go
+home till she had watched him enter. Still, she could not wait here in
+one fixed spot; she had almost the sense of being observed by she knew
+not whom. Besides, she must be cautious; she did not intend that he
+should suspect she was actually so near to him at that hour of the
+night. It gave her an anguished thrill to think he would pass close by
+her, and yet never give her a thought.
+
+She was, however, loth to move away, for she could not know from which
+end of the street he would come. If she waited too long near one end, he
+might slip by from the other. And this, whether he came on foot or in a
+hansom. Feverishly she paraded the street, stopping here a minute, there
+a minute; keeping well within the shadow, and avoiding the encounter of
+every chance passer-by. Now and again she heard the ring of a hansom,
+the smart trot of a horse, and she held her breath with excitement. And
+there was even a minute when hansoms came dashing into the street one
+after the other; most of them to pass right through it, and only one or
+two to draw up in the street itself.
+
+Midnight sounded, but still no sign of Wyndham. She looked up at the
+sky, but was surprised to find the stars were blotted out. A spot of
+rain fell on her upturned face. Her sense of misery reasserted itself,
+and with it came a sullen resolution to stay out till dawn, if needs be.
+Again she went to the Hospital end of the road and took up a discreet
+point of vantage. But again the tramp of a policeman scared her away,
+and accepting this as a sort of unpropitious omen she definitely decided
+to keep to the other end. She was like a gambler uncertain how to stake,
+but at last abruptly deciding for any irrelevant reason.
+
+The minutes passed, infinitely long to her now impatient mood. The
+spots of rain kept falling. The neighbouring clock boomed out the
+quarters. At last another hansom--coming from the abandoned direction!
+Back she went again into the road, but it had stopped short farther
+down. The studio was still in darkness. Strangely disappointed and
+fatigued almost to the point of falling, she dragged her worn feet once
+more down to the Embankment, keeping her wits alert with a sustained
+effort, that grew harder and harder. This time she did not cross to the
+parapet, but walked under the great red brick houses, noticing idly
+their gates and doorways as they loomed on her. And her eyes were half
+closed in spite of her struggle. The trot of a horse, and the rattle and
+tinkle of a hansom sounded just then, coming smartly along the avenue.
+But she went on more and more as if in a dream, taking one step only
+because she had taken the last. Nearer and nearer came the hansom,
+louder and louder beat the horse's hoofs on the asphalte, but she
+pursued her meaningless way, without paying any heed to it. Her senses
+had almost left her. She opened her eyes suddenly, and, looking towards
+the river, saw that a greyish mist hung over it, that the pavements were
+wet and glistening. Ah, yes, the water lay below, dark and soft, full of
+an eternal peace. The message that had baffled her!--she understood it
+now! She had nothing to live for! In a flash all would be finished.
+Impulsively she stepped into the roadway to cross to the parapet.
+
+"Hallo, hallo!" The horse's head was almost on her, and she drew back
+with a natural unreasoned movement. The driver shook his whip and
+shouted angrily, then went onwards. But a moment's vision had burnt
+itself on her consciousness as deep as that first sight of the portrait
+of Lady Lakeden. Wyndham was seated in the vehicle side by side with
+Lady Lakeden, his face turned towards her, whilst her hand clutched his
+convulsively. And in that same swift moment Alice had felt Lady
+Lakeden's face encounter hers with mutual intensity. The sudden backward
+movement had almost paralysed her muscles; an agonising pain racked her
+at her knees and ankles. She dragged herself to the nearest wall and
+leaned against it. The picture of those two side by side was always with
+her: of Lady Lakeden's eyes flashing full on her own.
+
+She knew not how many minutes had passed when she was called to herself
+by the inexorable clock that had sounded its notes throughout this
+strange evening, and that now seemed to fling its boom through all the
+spaces of the night. Was the universe resounding with a peal of
+mockery?--disproportionately Titanic for so humble a soul as hers, so
+paltry a destiny? Ah, she remembered now her frustrated purpose; the
+instant when death had beckoned her imperiously and she had responded
+with every fibre of her soul and body. Why, then, had she not let the
+wheels crush her?
+
+But she shuddered. Ah, no, no! Thank Heaven she had been inspired to
+save herself. How his life would have been saddened and embittered by so
+ironic an accident! She had meant only to help him; never to be a cause
+of grief to him! Since apparently it had been thus fated, better perhaps
+to live on. "I have others as well to think of--father and mother!" she
+murmured. "How wicked it was of me to forget them! Besides, as I never
+expected anything in life, why should I be disappointed now at getting
+nothing?" The argument seemed convincing, so painfully she began to
+hobble along the Embankment, moving again towards the familiar street,
+why she knew not. But her lips kept muttering, to herself. "She has gone
+with him alone to his studio. She is a wicked woman."
+
+And opposite the house, that had held her brilliant hopes of love and
+wonderful happiness for so brief a period, she stood still again, and
+looked up to the great window of the studio that was now illumined with
+a warm light, though everywhere else the house was dark. She saw a
+shadow flit across the blind, and then another shadow. They were there
+together.
+
+How they would stare if she boldly used her key and intruded upon them!
+How they would tremble if they knew she was there, straining for a
+glimpse of their shadows!
+
+But she had no impulse now to disturb them. The game had been played,
+and she had been thrown out.
+
+With a sigh she moved away, turning her painful steps up the street,
+more instinctively than consciously. She walked and walked mechanically,
+retracing the route she had taken on her way there. The rain descended
+in thin, sharp lines, but she took no heed. But suddenly an arm was
+thrust through hers, and she looked round with a terrible start. A burly
+flush-faced man with a ruffled silk hat was holding an umbrella over
+her, was speaking to her. Her eye noticed irrelevantly they were just by
+a closed dark public-house whose nickel reflectors caught the light from
+an adjoining street-lamp.
+
+"Hadn't you better take me home with you, my dear?"
+
+For a second she stared at him, then, with a hoarse cry, she shook
+herself free, and with a supreme effort rushed off like a frightened
+fawn. As she turned into another street she overtook a hansom going at a
+snail's pace.
+
+"Where to?" asked the man through the roof, after she had got in.
+
+"Straight home as fast as you can," was her strange answer.
+
+The man looked down upon her. "Where's that?" he asked good-humouredly.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, vainly attempting to control her
+breath. She gave him the address, and off they went.
+
+At the end of the journey she paid him profusely, and he thanked her
+with as profuse a civility. She let herself in with her key, went up at
+once to her room, and threw herself across her bed. Her sobs broke out
+afresh. "Darling," she called; "I want you back again to be mine, and
+mine only."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Lady Betty did not let go the hand which she had clutched in terror, and
+her companion responded with a touch of caressing reassurance.
+
+"My heart is still beating," she said, as they turned off the river bank
+into Tite Street. "Suppose we had crushed that poor creature. What a
+terrible memory it would have left with us!"
+
+"Happily she wasn't in the least hurt," he replied. "She must have been
+in a fit of abstraction."
+
+"I caught sight of her face," said Lady Betty; "and I shall not easily
+forget it. Such a wild, haggard look I have seldom seen. She must have
+been labouring under some terrible stress of emotion." She gently
+withdrew her hand, and appeared lost in thought. "I hope, dear," she
+exclaimed suddenly, "that there is nothing horrible happening."
+
+"No, indeed! The thing has got a little bit on your nerves."
+
+"You did not see her," she insisted. "She came full into the light of
+our lamp, though it was barely for an instant. My face was turned that
+way and yours away from hers."
+
+"Naturally she was startled at the moment!" he ventured. He was certain
+Lady Betty's nervous imagination had deceived her, and that her alarm
+was groundless.
+
+"It was not a startled look. It was a set look, something like the
+desperation of a hunted animal. Some man has treated her badly. Darling,
+you don't think she was going to throw herself into the river?"
+
+"Seriously--I don't think anything of the kind. If she had wanted to
+take her life, would she have stepped back so promptly?" he argued.
+
+"I daresay you are right," she conceded, though her tone was not wholly
+one of conviction.
+
+The hansom pulled up, and he helped her down. They mounted the
+house-steps in silence, she unusually engrossed in thought, and with an
+unmistakable air of sadness, as if her mind still lingered on this
+woman's figure that had flashed on them out of the darkness.
+
+They entered the hall, and after some searching and fumbling he lighted
+one of the lamps. His companion shook herself out of her abstraction,
+and surveyed the place with affectionate interest. He was anxious she
+should take away with her a very definite impression of his future
+home, and threw open the various rooms, and led the way into them, as he
+held the lamp aloft. They went, too, below stairs, and here Lady Betty's
+eyes beheld the many evidences of domestic comfort and foresight that
+the Robinsons had established in these regions where they had reigned
+supreme. Her face lighted in comprehension, though her thought remained
+unexpressed. At last, after they had completely explored the rest of the
+house, he led the way up to the studio, and soon had it brilliantly
+illuminated. Lady Betty refused the chair he wheeled forward for her.
+She preferred to be moving about, to be examining everything at
+leisure--his bureau, his great oak worm-eaten armoires, his long, low
+chests on whose panels Gothic Church dignitaries stood solemnly in high
+relief, his wonderful easels, his model's throne, his draperies and
+costumes, and, so far as it was possible by this lamp-light, his old
+canvasses. She did not ask for Miss Robinson's portrait, as she knew it
+was at the house in Hampstead, and would remain there till its despatch
+to the Academy. She saw, however, the large picture; and although she
+did not love it (for she knew at what a cost it had been brought up to
+its present pitch, and felt, moreover, that it was too sensational a bid
+for public attention), she yet recognised that there was much excellence
+in it, and that it would probably bring him the actual success which was
+of importance even to genius. Her ideal for him, she repeated, would
+have been the most absolute "no compromise." "But I agree that we must
+take a strictly practical view of the situation. It is not really
+compromise," she added, "but only a surer grasping of the ideal in the
+future. The idealist who does not know when to make his concessions in
+practice is just the one who loses his ideal altogether, and never comes
+down from the realm of abstractions."
+
+He seized a favourable moment, whilst her attention was otherwise
+engaged, to fetch her own portrait from behind the screen and arrange it
+on one of the smaller easels. Then she turned with some curiosity to see
+what he had prepared for her, and gave a little cry of delight.
+
+"You are pleased with it?" he asked, gratified.
+
+"And touched--deeply," she answered. "You have chosen the setting with
+excellent judgment. But what pleases me most is the absolutely fresh
+impression I now get of the picture itself. Though I have seen it grow,
+and have lived with it every day, I am really seeing it for the first
+time. It is a beautiful piece of work--I speak for the moment as if I
+were entirely unconnected with it." She stood examining it in silence,
+and he watched her face and every shade of expression that declared
+itself.
+
+"And this truly is your personal impression of me?" she asked, with a
+new flash of the joyous, eager comrade.
+
+"My everyday impression of you! I have another which I keep for
+Sundays--something with more of the stateliness of an olden time, with a
+far graver outlook and a deeper thoughtfulness."
+
+"But this one is thoughtful and dignified, too, is it not?"
+
+"Most decidedly. But it is a real warm human being as well. To tell the
+truth, I stand a little bit in awe of the other one."
+
+"Poor me!" she laughed. She stood yet a moment contemplating the
+portrait, then turned her eyes away. "Oh, well," she said. "It will be a
+happiness to possess it, but a greater one to feel that, in some
+measure, it has helped to gain you the recognition that must be yours--a
+little sooner, a little later, signifies nothing. But I leave you in
+perfect confidence as to your career."
+
+He bowed his head. "I shall not dare to disappoint your confidence. To
+justify it is what I shall live for before all things."
+
+"I am content," she said. "I ask for nothing better than that our hopes
+shall be realised. I am glad you have chosen so charming a home for your
+labours. I hope you will be happy here."
+
+He did not reply at once, not trusting himself to speak. Lady Betty,
+too, looked sadly down.
+
+"Ah, yes," he conceded at last. "It is an ideal home for an artist!"
+
+There were bitter implications in his tone, and she made no pretence of
+not perceiving them.
+
+"Darling," she said, "you know it would be the dream of my life to help
+you. That is the only meaning happiness would have for me--to live by
+your side and help your work and your life. Before everything else, I am
+not the solemn, dignified being--the thought of me you keep for Sunday,"
+she interposed smilingly--"but a mere human being, a simple woman, for
+whom the love of the right man, once she has found him, is the principal
+thing in life."
+
+"I can't realise that you are going away," he broke out. "I want to keep
+you with me always. Don't leave me, darling! Let us begin our life
+anew--now, this minute! An ideal home here! I hate and loathe it. Let us
+make a home together--a home of our very own--far away from all these
+associations. Let us laugh at all else. I am strong enough to throw over
+everything, to fight!"
+
+She read the passion in his vivid face, in his terrible movement towards
+her. She stepped back, and held up her hands to check him.
+
+"It cannot be," she said. "Perhaps we are to blame for delaying our
+parting. Believe me, I thought and thought about it after our first
+meeting till I feared I should go mad. I felt I had already made my
+great blunder--I had revealed the awful secret of my life. I had till
+then nursed it all alone, but when I saw you again, after those
+miserable years, I had to pour it out. I did so recklessly,
+unthinkingly; it was such a joy to feel there was one friend in the
+world to whom such things could be said, and I put no curb on myself.
+And afterwards I was bitterly sorry."
+
+"No, no, darling," he interposed. "You hurt me."
+
+"Don't misunderstand, please. It was splendid to think that you shared
+my confidence; above all that you had cared for me as I had cared for
+you in the old days. But yet I was tortured incessantly. You had
+contracted other ties; there were your duties to others, and the tangle
+was horrible! After I left you on that first day I was determined that,
+if I was to be an influence in your life at all, I must be the first to
+keep you true to your duties. You and I are enlightened, you see. We
+have the advantage over these simpler souls. Therefore we must efface
+ourselves to leave them their simple rights."
+
+He stood humbly; silent before her gentle and unanswerable rebuke.
+
+"I struggled terribly with myself. I felt it would hardly be right to
+see you even a second time, and I was almost on the point of leaving
+London at once, perhaps without sending you a single line of adieu. But
+then the thought came to me that that perhaps would be a worse blunder
+than the first. My intrusion into your life might in that case have
+disturbed it to no purpose. I thought my sudden departure might leave a
+bitter memory for years. So I determined to stay long enough to soften
+the parting for both of us--for me as well as for you. And during all
+the time I meant to influence you to be loyal to your engagements. I had
+made the first mistake; on me lay the obligation of mending things. I
+stayed only to mend them! That was my sincere motive in asking you to do
+the sketch. I know I have had my moments of weakness; it is hard to live
+with one's hand in the fire without flinching now and again. Darling, I
+must go--far away from you, and you must not follow me. Your honour,
+dearest, is precious to me. The thought of your perfect loyalty to Alice
+will help me. I only ask you to remember the high standard I have set
+for you. Strive for the best; let your watchword be 'No compromise!' You
+will let me go now, darling. Say you understand my motives, and forgive
+me if they were mistaken. Perhaps, instead of mending things, I have
+only added mischief to mischief. I throw myself on your generosity and
+magnanimity. Promise me you will be the truest husband to her, that you
+will do everything in your power to promote her happiness."
+
+He seized her hands; his flesh burnt hers. "I love you, darling, I love
+you," he cried hoarsely. "I cannot let you go."
+
+She looked him frankly and firmly in the face. "Don't break my heart,
+dear," she said gently. "It is as hard for me as it is for you. Think,
+darling, what it might be, if you gave her up. If she were to kill
+herself, our love would be a curse to us. Dearest, the face of that
+woman we saw on the Embankment still haunts me. It was the face of a
+woman whose heart had been broken. I tell you, dear, that if I had not
+of myself the strength to part from you to-night, the awful glimpse I
+had of her face would have given it to me. I have always seen where our
+duty lay; yet I read it in that poor face a thousand times more.
+Darling, it must now be goodbye. I shall often think of you here, and of
+this evening--and of our whole glorious day," she added, smiling. "Come,
+you do promise all that I ask of you?"
+
+Her smile and her cheerful note won his surrender. "I promise," he said
+slowly and solemnly, yet with distinct decision. "All that you have
+urged on me shall be sacred, shall be the principle of my life."
+
+"Thank you, darling," she said simply. "I believe you, and I trust you
+absolutely."
+
+They gripped hands, looking each other full in the face. The
+neighbouring church clock sounded its preliminary change, then struck
+two sonorous notes. It recalled them to the sense of the night and the
+silent world without. "Come," he said at last. "I will escort you back."
+
+They went down, and out into the street again. "The clouds and the rain
+have vanished. It is a beautiful night again," she said. "Even that
+helps to soften the moment."
+
+He strolled along by her side; they spoke now of matter-of-fact points.
+If the picture were accepted by the Salon he was to send it eventually
+to her father's country-house in the North. She hoped, too, he would not
+entirely forget her father, but that he and his wife would call and see
+him at Grosvenor Place--they could count on finding him there most years
+during the height of the London season. And, by the way, she was curious
+to know how the picture would fare when it got to Paris. Was the Salon
+so considerate to foreigners that it took the trouble to open
+packing-cases and take care of them? Wyndham gravely explained that
+pictures were usually consigned to the good offices of a French
+frame-maker who unpacked and delivered them to the Salon, afterwards
+collecting them and sending them back to England when the show was over.
+Some of these people had a large foreign clientele, and put only a
+moderate value on their services. Thus chatting in this trivial fashion,
+they were fortunate to meet a hansom, though they had abandoned the hope
+of one at that hour, and were prepared to stroll all the way.
+
+"Let us say goodbye here," she insisted. "It is simpler, and perhaps
+easier. We part just as two friends who have met casually."
+
+"Goodbye, then," he said huskily. "I wish you many happy days and dreams
+in your wanderings in the sun-lands."
+
+"And I wish you the power to be as great in your life as I am sure you
+will be in your work." She held his hand with a gentle pressure. "You
+will be loyal to her," was her last wistful whisper. Then she gave him a
+parting smile, full of sweetness and affection, and he heard the driver
+crack his whip, and the horse started off briskly.
+
+Wyndham was left standing on the pavement, his head bowed. For a long
+minute he did not stir, and when he roused himself again to look after
+the hansom, it was already in the distance, though the trot, trot, of
+the horse came sharply to him. He watched it till it was out of sight,
+then turned slowly and gently homewards.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+"Father," said Alice Robinson the next morning at the breakfast-table,
+"I want you to find some more portraits for us. This whole month has to
+be given up to the big thing for the Academy, and then we shall come to
+a stop for the present, at any rate so far as immediately remunerative
+work is concerned, and you must not forget we have a heavy rent to pay
+now."
+
+"I shall certainly keep my weather eye open," declared Mr. Robinson,
+"and my ears too. Portraits in oils are rather the thing just now in the
+City, and I daresay we shall be able to find something for you."
+
+"That is nice of you, father. I think I am just beginning to like you."
+
+Mr. Robinson smiled, and looked across at her affectionately. "You know
+it is my greatest pleasure to work for you both," he said.
+
+Alice bore his gaze heroically, sustained by the curious satisfaction
+she felt at having thus set the never-failing machinery in motion. But
+his trusting belief that all was well touched the tenderest chords of
+her nature. She longed to throw herself into his arms, to tell him the
+terrible truth. But why cause him suffering when she still hoped to
+avert it from everybody, and let the whole burden rest on her shoulders
+alone? She must do nothing abrupt, nothing to cause any trouble or
+scandal; above all, she must pay the most watchful regard to the peace
+of those around her.
+
+For she had seen the quietest and simplest solution of the tangle;
+nobody but herself need suffer a single pang! Since she had endured so
+much, she might now as well offer herself for the sake of everybody
+else's happiness.
+
+Such had been her dominating thought, as she had lain thinking through
+the night. And the moment had come when she held the solution clear in
+her mind. How glad she was that she had decided to live! Her parents had
+been spared a cruel grief, and her affianced husband would be left to
+his happiness without any alloy of remorse or tragic memories.
+
+There was only one worthy and rational path before her. She must break
+with Wyndham and leave him free. Mr. Shanner wanted her; she would give
+herself to Mr. Shanner. His ashen figure, gray-clad, rose before her,
+wistful, pleading, pathetic. She remembered his touch of sentiment, his
+hint of deeper feeling--how he would have treasured her promise; how he
+would have looked forward to "the new light to shine in his household."
+He was good and honourable; full of kind actions. She knew that Mr.
+Shanner had not found felicity in his first marriage. After all, if she
+could bring somebody a little happiness she might as well do so; and she
+could make this ostensibly the ground for her action. She and Wyndham
+were unsuited to each other--could anything be truer? She had made a
+mistake, since she now found she cared for Mr. Shanner, who reciprocated
+the sentiment, and for whom, as regards upbringing and ideas, she would
+make so much more suitable a wife. That was less true, and, after her
+surrender of the evening before to her ignobler side, she now loathed
+the idea of playing a further part. But the fiction that she cared for
+Mr. Shanner, and her actual marriage with him, constituted in essence
+the sacrifice that the position demanded of her. To Mr. Shanner she
+could atone by incessant devotion--she would illumine the light in his
+household he had spoken of so yearningly; her parents would be spared
+all but the first painful surprise; to Wyndham the break would come as a
+splendid release. It would restore to him his honour and self-respect,
+since in his eyes, and in the world's eyes, she would be taking all the
+blame for his freedom.
+
+Wyndham had told her that Lady Lakeden was leaving England indefinitely,
+and that he did not know when he was likely to see her again. But Alice
+now did not believe that. That was part of the wall he had been building
+behind which to pursue his romance; she had tested things far enough to
+feel sure of it. And even if Lady Lakeden was really going to travel for
+a time, there would be correspondence between them, and their relations
+would be renewed on her return. Since he loved this woman he should be
+free to love her openly.
+
+And all the world would be left at peace!
+
+In the days before she had come into his consciousness, had she not
+longed and prayed in vain for the joy of helping him to rise again; had
+she not dreamed of stretching out a helping hand across the abyss that
+separated them, telling herself that that alone would mean supreme
+happiness for her? It now came strongly upon her that that mission had
+been granted her, and the knowledge that she had achieved it should help
+her to be strong! Had not her love for him held a perfect unselfishness?
+Was not her goal his happiness before everything? Ah, there was far too
+much self in the earthly love of woman for man. This note of self, at
+first so carefully suppressed, had yet asserted itself insidiously. Yes,
+that had been the cause of all her suffering--poignant, shattering,
+almost beyond human endurance. It had been wrong of her; she ought to
+have kept closer watch over herself. She had not meant to be a source of
+pain and embarrassment to him. To burden his life with a marriage
+against his heart and true self were hate, not love. Let him mate with
+this brilliant, beautiful woman of his own world, who could tranquilly
+breathe the air of the great heights--of Society, of Art--in which his
+destiny had placed him. What more could she wish him than that he should
+find in life all that he desired?--all the joy, all the achievement, all
+the love! Was not this the supreme self-sacrifice of love?
+
+And she must be content with the privilege of the high mission that had
+been hers, nay, she must be proud of it--to have entered into his life
+at his moment of blackest despair, and set him on the road to heaven!
+Let her go back into the darkness now with the ecstasy of sacrifice for
+a great love, keeping herself for such service to others as she might
+find to her hand.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+But her mission was not yet complete. She thought of his inadequate
+resources, of the uncertainty of the future, if his exhibition pictures
+were not successful with the Press and the public. She wished to see him
+embarked on the full tide of success before she retired, so that all joy
+should flow to him at once. Her retirement must cause him some little
+emotion, but the intoxication of success would soon thrust that aside,
+and the lapse of a day would find him in full appreciation of his
+freedom. The projected period of their engagement had of itself three
+full months to run; there was time to withdraw at any moment she chose.
+And these months that remained should be devoted to her finding more
+work for him, so that he should be left with a substantial balance at
+his bankers.
+
+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 role 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.
+
+Thus the month flew away with almost unprecedented rapidity. Show Sunday
+arrived, and the great picture (on which he had worked till the last
+moment) was revealed to the world at large. The house was thrown open,
+the empty dining-room improvised into a commodious buffet, and the great
+studio arranged as a gallery, with the new portraits and the best of the
+old work all brilliantly framed and lining the walls. Alice's portrait,
+which had been brought across for the occasion, occupied a central place
+of honour immediately facing the masterpiece.
+
+The function was eminently successful, and a great many people of the
+very pink of fashion came to lend it the light of their countenances.
+The Robinsons had worked hard the previous fortnight preparing for it,
+and had arranged the house and buffet, and had seen to the framing of
+the pictures, and attended to the catering arrangements, without taking
+a moment of the precious time away from Wyndham. Everybody said the
+house was charming and the pictures works of genius. People could be
+overheard asking each other, "Well, what do you think of it all?" and
+then eyes would be turned up in ecstasy, and faces would glow with
+enthusiasm, and the long-drawn "Beautiful," full of conviction, was the
+epithet most largely utilised. There was in the air the dominant note of
+triumph, the unmistakable feeling of Success. Alice, who flitted about
+quietly, showing herself as much as good taste demanded, yet by no means
+in the centre of the world's eye, was keenly sensitive to the prevailing
+spirit of the afternoon, feeling closely the pulse of the assembly, and
+she knew at last that Wyndham's barque was to sail in full career.
+
+Mary, too, was there, immensely important as the host's sister,
+conducting special friends of her own round the walls, and talking
+ubiquitously in an unusual glow of zest and animation. If for Alice the
+occasion happily revealed the future, for Mary that future had
+emphatically arrived already!
+
+And in the midst of all the crush Sadler arrived, extraordinarily smart
+in an immaculate frock-coat and a beautifully embroidered tie, his big
+powerful face shining with friendliness. "Gee! What a swell affair
+you've got on!" he shouted in Wyndham's ear. "I thought there'd be
+something of the kind, you old brute, so I rigged myself out."
+
+"You are certainly fascinating," smiled Wyndham.
+
+"Yes, it's a jolly good coat!" declared Sadler, glancing down at
+himself. "I gave the tailor hell over it. Gee! you've fetched them this
+time! We shan't be able to squeeze past your damned picture at the
+Academy!"
+
+The crowd still kept surging up the stairs, and Sadler was swept aside.
+But Wyndham was not only receiving his visitors; with great address he
+was here and there, pointing out his Exhibition pictures, explaining his
+ideas and motives, accepting choruses of laudation. He had good reason
+to be elated with this afternoon of tribute and foreshadowing!
+
+In the last two or three weeks, moreover, Mr. Robinson had been drumming
+up the further commission for which his daughter had enlisted his good
+services. He had heard that one of the great joint-stock banks meditated
+presenting their retiring general manager with his portrait; the gift to
+be made with full ceremonial at the next meeting of the shareholders.
+Mr. Robinson was himself an important shareholder, and two of the
+directors were his personal friends, but although they worked strongly
+on his side, he had a far more difficult task than usual in achieving
+his purpose. He was forced to expend his choicest diplomacy and pull
+enough strings for a piece of international politics, but the majority
+of the directors, who knew what was appropriate to the dignity of the
+bank, wanted a full-blown Royal Academician, and were strongly in favour
+of following the lead of another great institution, which, under the
+like circumstances, had approached one of the most learned of the body
+Academic, and had honoured him and themselves with their command. There
+were dissensions at several board meetings, but the opposition,
+sedulously fanned by Mr. Robinson, could not be beaten down.
+Academicians, they argued, sometimes went down wofully in the sale-room
+only a few years after their demise. Surely it was better to choose a
+genius, the connection with whom would be everlastingly honourable to
+the bank, whose insight might become historic. In the end a small
+sub-committee was appointed to investigate and report on the matter. The
+members of this sub-committee were invited to Tite Street for Show
+Sunday, arrived together, were received by Wyndham with charming
+urbanity, had every attention showered on them, and were greatly
+impressed by this society gathering. They were enchanted at their
+reception, and, being kept and marshalled together, stimulated each
+other's enthusiasm. This great display of Wyndham's work astonished and
+dazzled them. Above all, the amazing _piece de resistance_ of the
+afternoon won their obeisance to the genius. They stared at the vast
+canvas in wonder, at once conquered by this crowd of tattered labour
+intermingled with the silk hats and frock-coats of Bond Street, the
+smart brougham rolling along with its aristocratic occupant and her
+poodle, the pillared structure in the background, the vista of roadway,
+the trees and the foliage. At the buffet they talked it over among
+themselves, and presently Wyndham himself appeared again, and with a
+discreet introduction here and there to people of social importance, he
+quietly and swiftly sealed his victory. Such civility indeed was the
+only part that had fallen on him in the matter, and the commission was
+well obtained at that outlay of trouble, he told himself, since, with so
+fairly an expensive place on his hands, he could not yet despise so
+solid a piece of business. But with the new little heap of guineas to
+accrue from the month's work or thereabouts that would be involved, he
+felt he could face marriage and the beginnings of housekeeping with
+dignity, and yet carry out any artistic schemes he might next conceive.
+And he welcomed the work, too, as likely to keep him busily occupied
+during the time his great picture was in the balance at the Academy.
+
+When Alice reached home after the reception, with the full confidence of
+his success in her heart, she realised the end was now fast approaching.
+The afternoon had excited and unnerved her again, and she had once more
+to reassure herself that she had the strength to go through with the
+coming breach. Since her memorable secret visit to the studio she had
+borne up with firm strength, but to-night she felt frail and broken! A
+storm of sobbing shook her, but when at last she had controlled herself
+she knew that she would never weep again for her lost dream of
+happiness.
+
+And now all things began to go incredibly well with Wyndham. No sooner
+was he flourishing and doing work that was well paid for, than every
+other horizon opened out before him. The Academy received both his
+portrait of Miss Robinson and his great piece of allegory; and a couple
+of the other paid portraits found a niche in the New Gallery. The Salon,
+too, presently notified him of their acceptance of Lady Betty's
+portrait, but that he had really been counting on with an almost
+fatalistic confidence.
+
+On varnishing day he was delighted that both his Academy exhibits were
+hung on the line. His Press, too, was unmistakably good; the critics
+seemed all to conspire to hail him as the man of the year. At the clubs
+those who knew him accosted him enthusiastically, came thronging round
+and pressing hospitality upon him. There were so many anxious to "get"
+him for this and that occasion, to take possession of him, and have the
+honour of dragging him here and there. New names and faces bombarded
+him, and even his own special coterie were anxious to intensify their
+various degrees of intimacy with him, contending for the privilege of
+entertaining him, of being able to boast of an almost proprietorial
+friendship. In Society, too, he felt himself the object of a curious
+_empressement_; on all sides he was courted and flattered, and rival
+dealers were inquiring the price he set on his wares. It was the
+stampede of the world to acclaim Success!
+
+Well might his eyes be dazzled by all this glare of sunshine! Was not
+this success as persistent as the failure that had been his lot
+previously? It made him think of the run of red that sometimes followed
+a run of black at roulette. He was indeed a public personage now! And
+rolling in prosperity to boot!
+
+A touch of worldly bitterness indeed lingered with him; there was the
+remembrance of the lean years behind him. But his nature was too
+mercurial, too affable and genial, to dwell on that aspect of his career
+for long. He took all this homage very seriously, and thought
+tremendously well of himself as an artist, walking through the world
+with elastic step and as one of the elect of the earth.
+
+Yet in the still moments when he sat alone at night with his lamp for
+sole company, he would lose himself in reverie; and then he would feel
+saddened ineffably by the ironic side of the case, since the more
+brilliant the success that came to him, the deeper his sense of the
+mockery of things! How splendid if the woman he loved were by his side
+to share it all with him! How near too he had come to attainment, yet
+destiny had played him this shameful, this merciless trick!
+
+And just as his absorption in work had helped him hitherto in the
+situation, so now this new excitement of business and the world coloured
+his everyday demeanour and conversation; wrapped the Robinsons, too, in
+the whirl of busy interests, and carried him safely towards the
+inevitable time when he must seriously discuss the date of the wedding.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+One morning early, towards the end of May, Alice sat down at her desk,
+and wrote the following brief letter to Mr. Shanner.
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,--I owe you an acknowledgment. When you ventured
+to raise the question of the wisdom of my engagement to Mr. Wyndham, you
+were right in one respect. He is in every way a man of honour, and I
+have nothing against him. But, as the time goes by, it grows upon me
+more and more that he and I have made a mistake, as you were first to
+see, and that we are not suited to each other. His world and his ideas
+of life are not mine, and I have decided that it is wiser for me not to
+attempt to adapt myself to them. I recognise this before it is too late,
+and I have determined, not lightly, but after full and serious
+consideration, to draw back. I promised you that I should let you know
+if ever I arrived at such a conclusion. I now carry out my promise."
+
+
+She directed it to his office, carefully marking it "Personal and
+Confidential." Shortly after noon she was startled by the rat-tat of a
+telegraph boy. "Approve of your decision with all my heart. Please
+remember that I am the first applicant for the privilege." Such was the
+answer he had flashed back the moment her letter had reached him, and
+the perusal of it gave her the satisfaction that accompanies the
+realisation step by step of an elaborate purpose. "So be it," she
+exclaimed. "To-day I shall ask for my release."
+
+Wyndham was expecting her to join him at the studio. They were to dine
+together, then go to a Paderewski recital. But now she decided she would
+not go. What good to face him personally? Besides, it was easier to feel
+that she had already seen him for the last time. She went back to her
+desk, and began the laborious composition of a long letter. On and on
+she wrote, breaking off only to join her mother at lunch, and returning
+to her desk at the earliest moment. She had covered several sheets, when
+brusquely she changed her mind. Perhaps this was not really fair to him,
+and, besides, he might feel he ought to come to the house to see her
+again. Surely they might at least shake hands and part as friends. So
+she tore up the letter, and went to prepare herself for the journey to
+Chelsea. "I have been brave all through," she murmured; "and I mustn't
+spoil it at the end by turning coward. I am taking all the blame--let me
+be strong enough to take it face to face with him."
+
+And now she was impatient to have done with it all. Her mission was
+ended. So, although he would not be looking for her yet, she would
+descend on him, even at the risk of disturbing him. The commission from
+the bank had already been completed, and at present he was making
+cartoons and sketches for new pictures. But he would be all the more
+grateful afterwards that she had not delayed her coup.
+
+She got into a hansom, which, choosing its route through unobstructed
+back streets, arrived at her goal wonderfully soon. She got down firmly,
+paid the driver, and walked up the steps unfalteringly. She felt her
+calm and self-control as a great blessing; she had so long schooled
+herself for this moment, and it was splendid to feel how actual a fact
+was her resignation, how completely ingrained in her this acceptance of
+the inevitable.
+
+She let herself in with her key for the last time, and put it on the
+hall table lest she should forget to leave it afterwards. Then she went
+upstairs, and tapped gently at the door of the studio, though it stood
+half open. She found Wyndham in a mood that was even a shade more
+affable than usual. Indeed, he seemed almost light-hearted to-day as he
+came forward with a friendly alertness to greet her, and pressed his
+lips affectionately to her forehead, and wheeled forward a chair for
+her. She was in a close-fitting coat and skirt, of a heliotrope shade,
+and there were roses in her hat. But, in spite of this burst of spring
+gaiety, her face retained the marked pallor that had characterised it of
+late. He indeed observed it for the first time.
+
+"You must have a little of this light Chambery," he said. "It clears the
+head and nerves. I remembered I used to have a glass at the Cafe des
+Lilas in the old days whenever I felt done up, so I laid in a few
+bottles."
+
+"Do I seem so unusually flurried?" she asked.
+
+She smiled, but he saw at once that the note was forced, and began to
+suspect that something was amiss.
+
+"It's rather close to-day--the heat has come upon us all of a rush. It's
+sure to be crowded and stuffy at the concert to-night. Now do try my
+remedy, child."
+
+"If you don't mind, we'll not go to the concert."
+
+"By all means," he agreed. "We'll dine early, take a stroll on the
+Embankment, and if there's a boat going up or down, it doesn't matter
+which, we'll get on, and see where it takes us. Not a bad idea, little
+girl, eh?"
+
+"I'm sorry," she said, "but I meant that we were not to pass the evening
+together at all. I came now, instead of later on, to see you and talk to
+you."
+
+He looked at her hard. "You rather mystify me."
+
+"I'm sorry," she said again. "I sat down to write you a long letter
+to-day," she resumed, after an almost imperceptible hesitation. "In
+fact, I really began it, or rather I wrote a good many pages, and then I
+thought it would be fairer and braver to come here to you at once
+instead."
+
+He leaned up against the table for support. "My dear child, I don't in
+the least understand your drift--I am bewildered."
+
+She smiled wanly; yet the smile of one about to set forth in a cool,
+reasonable way a case that needed exposition, and that necessarily must
+carry conviction. "I was writing to ask you a favour. Now I have come to
+ask for it in person."
+
+"It is yours to command." He inclined his head graciously and gallantly.
+
+"You are sweet to me, as always," she returned. "But, as you will see, I
+am quite undeserving of your graciousness on this present occasion."
+
+He laughed. "Modest as usual, my dear child! I'm afraid it's going to be
+one of the tasks of my life to impress you with a sense of your own
+merits."
+
+"Please don't say any more nice things to me," she implored. "Your
+kindness hurts me."
+
+He looked hard at her again, then passed his hand across his face. "Let
+me see," he said; "where were we? I confess I'm rather confused. Ah,
+yes, you said you preferred that we shouldn't go to the concert."
+
+She drew her breath hard; her bosom palpitated. "Because I want you to
+set me free altogether." Her face was suddenly on fire, but an
+exultation thrilled through her. At last the words had been spoken; she
+was near the end.
+
+But she felt his eyes upon her; she saw his face set in a strange
+expression, half-vacant, half-surprised. "To set you free?" he murmured.
+
+"To break off our engagement," she launched out. "Oh, I know it is
+horrible of me," she went on quickly, feeling herself giving way at this
+moment of trial, despite all her fortitude and all her schooling. She
+saw that his lips made as if he were about to speak, but, dreading to
+hear him yet, she gathered up her force and hurried on piteously.
+"Please don't think that I have anything against you, that you are in
+the least to blame. You have been chivalrous and kind throughout. The
+responsibility must all rest on my shoulders."
+
+He winced at the pain she was visibly enduring, the expression of her
+eyes, the convulsive catch of her breath.
+
+"But what on earth has come between us?" he exclaimed, in a sort of dull
+despair. He felt no joyous glow at the return of his liberty. The
+occasion seemed too miserably tragic, and his human association with
+her had made him care for her enough to be deeply distressed at the
+agony under which she was labouring. Even now, if it could have made her
+happy, if it could have induced her to withdraw all she had said, he
+would have taken her hand tenderly, and melted away every cloud between
+them. "Yesterday all was well, and to-day----" He gave a gesture of
+blank bewilderment.
+
+"I have arrived at the conviction that we are not suited for each other,
+that I am not the sort of woman to make your life all that it should
+be."
+
+"Oh, come," he said. "I am surprised to find such morbid nonsense
+running in your head."
+
+She was taken aback at this resistance on his part; and she rightly set
+it down to pure fraternal consideration for her. She let herself go now;
+best to give her explanation at full length.
+
+"It is not a sudden impulse I have yielded to, or a passing wave of
+depression," she urged, trying to conjure up the ghost of a smile again.
+"Believe me, I have seen the right path before me only after the deepest
+consideration."
+
+He interrupted her with a gesture.
+
+"But what has come between us?" he insisted again. "You do not say you
+have ceased to love me."
+
+With a great effort she looked straight at him. "Yes," she said with
+steady voice, and no physical flinching. "I have ceased to love you. I
+searched into my heart before it was too late, and I found my affections
+had gone to another."
+
+A flash of understanding seemed to come to him. "Mr. Shanner!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+She averted her eyes. "He was my friend before I knew you," she pleaded,
+as if driven to defence.
+
+"I see now you are perfectly serious," he murmured, hurt at last, and
+firmly believing her. "Does love come and go in women with such
+momentary capriciousness?"
+
+"Perhaps," she said with a weird dreaminess. "It comes and goes like the
+blossoming of a flower in the sunlight--beautiful for the day or two it
+lives. My love for you is dead. I should not be happy with you, so why
+make the pretence? I should not ask you to forgive me, only I am not
+worth your remembrance for any reason. Let us shake hands and part not
+too bitterly."
+
+He stood silent, his head bowed. There was no thought in his mind, only
+a sense of shame and of poignant regret.
+
+"Believe me, it is for the best," she resumed, trying to smile. "And be
+assured, the guilty party alone shall be condemned, should the world
+discuss us!" She held out her hand. He took it and held it gently, in
+sign that he bore her no ill-will.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+In the first profound depression into which this unforeseen occurrence
+had plunged him, Wyndham remained totally indifferent to his freedom.
+His thought in a feeble way reached out, recalling her words, lingering
+on her crowning confession. Suddenly he laughed out aloud. How much
+greater the irony of his life than even he had imagined! For the second
+time he and Lady Betty had come together, only voluntarily to part that
+they might not disturb the happiness of this other life! How they had
+tortured themselves; how Lady Betty had sought deliberate martyrdom,
+staying near him only long enough to school him to perfect loyalty to
+Alice! "Whilst I was fretting my heart away," his lips murmured, "lest I
+should wound her with a chance word, she was vibrating again towards her
+own kind, and was planning her retreat. Surely the gods are pulling the
+strings and making us poor puppets dance for their amusement!"
+
+And then he thought of the Hampstead street miles away, where he had
+passed so many years of his life in suffering and degradation; and the
+sense of its distance helped him. Were he still in the old studio, the
+sense of the Robinsons' house within a stone's throw would have been
+intolerable. He would hardly have dared to set foot out of doors for
+fear of the painful accident of stumbling up against one of the family.
+He desired no further explanations and apologies. He shuddered at the
+very idea. Here at least he could take shelter silently within his own
+pride.
+
+And the thought of his pride made him rise up again, and pace to and fro
+vigorously. It was beneath him to admit that that had been wounded. But
+he came to a standstill, and the blood rushed to his temples at the
+abrupt remembrance that all the prosperity and success that must still
+remain his had come to him through the Robinsons. Were not the
+humiliating evidences here before his eyes? This charming house and
+studio, the successful pictures hung in the galleries, the money at his
+bankers, the promise of unlimited treasure yet to flow into his coffers,
+the acclamation of the world and his social lionising--how much of all
+this would have been achieved without the timely co-operation of the
+Robinsons? He staggered in moral agony under the burden of good they had
+heaped on him so lavishly.
+
+Nothing of course could be undone. Wisest to acquiesce silently, and
+start forward afresh from the point at which he stood. But since it was
+now only the end of May, and the best of the season was yet to follow,
+he felt that to stay in London would be intolerable.
+
+The world seemed to swarm with people, all intent on chattering about
+his affairs, on discussing and misunderstanding this sensation in the
+life of the lion of the season. A lovely titbit for the social gossips
+to relish! He could not possibly meet people, shake their hands, answer
+their stupid questions, listen to the hateful sympathy of the more
+intimate. He must shut up the house and fly from London. But where could
+he hide himself for the time?
+
+He resumed his pacing to and fro, sometimes perambulating the studio to
+vary his movement. So far he was under the influence of the first
+excitement attendant on the rupture. Whatever his astonishment at having
+been ousted in the affections of a woman by a man whom he had more or
+less despised, whose rivalry he had brushed aside as easily as a cobweb;
+the bare idea that a broken engagement should figure in his life was so
+distasteful that it made the wound to his mere vanity a secondary
+matter. He could not at once extricate his mind from the contemplation
+of these immediate bearings of the event. His relation to Lady Betty,
+indeed, was present to him, but he had not yet turned the flood of his
+thought in that direction.
+
+In the reaction of feeling, however, when the first sting and shock had
+somewhat lightened, it was natural for his whole soul to turn to Lady
+Betty longingly; not with the joyous impulse of one unexpectedly free to
+claim his true comrade, but like a bruised child to find relief for his
+hurt. But how to reach her again he did not know. So thorough had been
+their sacrifice that he had even promised never to write to her.
+Besides, letters would only follow her if sent through a certain banker,
+whose name she had withheld from him. And though now he felt that
+circumstances absolved him from the promise, he did not care that such a
+letter as he must write, once he put pen to paper, should go to her
+father's deserted house, and thence be tossed about the world in perhaps
+a futile pursuit, with the possible fate of being read in a dead-letter
+office, and finally returned to him. He would wait awhile. Perhaps, if
+the gossip got abroad, it might by some circuitous route arrive even as
+far as Lady Betty's ears, and then no doubt she would announce her
+whereabouts to him. The pressing problem before him was to decide on his
+own plans for the immediate present.
+
+How stale and tired he was! How terribly he had toiled these past
+months, sustained by he knew not what mysterious energy. It seemed
+almost as if he had exerted a supernatural strength, and the work he had
+accomplished might well have claimed double the period. And now,
+something had suddenly gone snap. He was finished; a mere hollow shell
+of a man.
+
+His mind turned again towards other climes and other skies. It seemed so
+long since he had crossed the Channel; so many years indeed that it was
+hateful to count them. It reminded him too much of the big slice of his
+life, the years of his prime, that had been so miserably sterile.
+
+But his face brightened as his thought played again amid the haunts of
+his early manhood. Ah, those were happy times--the work in the schools,
+the discussions in the cafe, the pleasant camaraderie, the freedom to
+laugh, to feel master of one's own soul. The brilliance and green
+avenues of Paris beckoned him; his blood beat pleasurably. And then of
+course there was his portrait of Lady Betty in the Salon. What better
+shrine for a pilgrimage!
+
+He would linger a little in Paris, then proceed further South. He was
+not of the great crowd that refuses to venture in those regions during
+the summer. He knew well how to adapt himself to the conditions, and the
+lands of the South would be soon in their full glory. His imagination
+dwelt on the prospect, and sunshine broke in on his mood. Perhaps, too,
+there was the hope, deep in his heart, that he might encounter Lady
+Betty somewhere--by some charming train of events! Heigho for the
+orange trees, for the old Italian palaces, the Venetian canals, the
+coast-line of Salerno! He would make a leisurely progression, working a
+little as he went--just a few distinguished sketches, odd impressions of
+light and beauty caught on the wing! Late in the year when time had done
+its work, when the wretched affair was forgotten, and himself recovered
+from the sordid experience, he might return to London. But never here to
+this studio again!
+
+The prospect of departure stirred him! "Here I cannot breathe another
+day!" he kept murmuring to himself.
+
+Then why not start this very evening?
+
+He glanced at his watch; it was not yet four. There would be time to
+dash round to a local bank and provide himself with funds for the start.
+But on investigation he found he had enough to take him to Paris, so he
+could devote the whole time to his preparations and necessary
+correspondence.
+
+And no sooner was the decision arrived at than he adjusted his outlook
+to it as an accomplished fact. Without any further delay, he got ready
+his trunk and dressing-case, and started his packing in earnest.
+
+The train left at nine that evening. He had five good hours to catch it.
+So he worked deliberately and carefully, overlooking nothing in the
+haste of departure. Lady Betty's wizard, his most cherished possession,
+went down deep into the trunk, and he did not forget his cheque-book and
+his private papers. Otherwise, everything was in such excellent order
+that his task was comparatively simple. Whatever he lacked for his
+journey he could count on purchasing in Paris, where also he could renew
+his funds for travelling.
+
+At last everything was ready, and he had ample time for his
+correspondence. This was speedily disposed of, since his letters were
+mostly to cry "off" from invitations already accepted. Only one was of a
+more intimate character, and that was to his sister Mary. But even that
+was brief and to the point. "Dearest Mary," he wrote,--"I regret I have
+rather disagreeable news for you, but I trust you will not take too
+serious a view of it. Alice asked me to release her to-day, and of
+course I had no alternative but to accede to her wishes. I cannot bear
+to stay in London just now, so I leave this evening for a long stay
+abroad. Forgive this brief note, forgive me also for not coming to kiss
+you goodbye, but, as you may guess, I am off on impulse, time is short,
+and there were a few matters to arrange. Perhaps you may be able to join
+me later when your vacation comes, and then we shall have a happy time
+together. I am all right, so please don't worry about me. I shall write
+to you soon, and keep you posted as to my adventures."
+
+He took out the batch of letters to the post, picking up a cab on his
+way back. In a few minutes his traps were on the roof, and he was being
+driven to the station.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a serene summer night, and the crossing was ideal. As he
+promenaded the deck, and looked into the spacious darkness, and let the
+breeze play free about his face, the sense of strain and fatigue, all
+the broken feeling that remained from the stress of his tussle with the
+world, seemed to be swept away. His early manhood, when he had gone to
+and fro as he listed, began to stir in him again, and the consciousness
+of mature power and ripe experience which were now added to it awakened
+an almost overweening sense of well-being and confidence.
+
+The episode of his broken engagement already began to look absurd rather
+than tragic in this new spirited mood of his. The whole thing seemed
+beneath his dignity. Of course, in some ways, he would always look back
+upon it as a bitterly unpleasant incident; but, in this life, you were
+necessarily called upon to be a stoic in some degree. The point was to
+choose the degree yourself. In face of unpleasant things stoicism was no
+doubt the wisest; but where good things were concerned it was best to
+preserve all the fresh feelings of the natural human being.
+
+The Robinsons were already receding into the mists of distance. Despite
+the reality and the closeness of his connection with them, they were
+taking their place among the shadows that peopled the past. His own
+vision was turned forward--ever forward!
+
+"Strange," he thought, "how things and people cease to have any
+consequence, once you have turned your back upon them!"
+
+The night passed like a dream. In the train from Calais to Paris he
+dozed lightly, and woke only at dawn. The sky was cloudless and
+wonderfully blue, but the sun shone as yet coldly over the landscape,
+and the fat fields sparkled with dew. Save for the quiet herds of
+cattle, the world was deserted. Immediately all his faculties were
+pleasurably alert again. He noticed with delight the hamlets and
+sleeping villages, the still wayside stations where moustachioed old
+women, who surely dated from the Revolution, stood on guard with flags
+at the cross-ways. At last they were running through the environs of the
+capital, and Wyndham tasted the sensation of entering the great city of
+light and intellect as keenly as in his jubilant boyhood.
+
+The drive through Paris in the early morning was exhilarating and
+enchanting. At that hour the streets at first were surprisingly
+thronged, the roadway sometimes blocked with a heavy traffic of carts
+all converging to the Halles. But soon they were passing through quieter
+neighbourhoods, through stately avenues lined by vast hotels with
+far-stretching lines of shuttered windows. Wyndham surrendered himself
+to the charm of steeping himself again in this atmosphere, drawing freer
+breaths, subtly attuned to it, aided by golden memories.
+
+The brisk buxom matron, who was already at her post in the hotel bureau,
+recognised her old client, and welcomed him with a cry of joy. Her face
+beamed with pleasure as he shook hands with her, and he had a joyous
+sense of home-coming!
+
+"But one has not seen you for eternities," she exclaimed. "We had
+thought that you had quite abandoned us!"
+
+"The loss has been more mine than yours, madame," he returned. "I should
+have announced my arrival beforehand, if I had not left London so
+suddenly."
+
+Presently he took possession of his room, and, as it was not yet seven,
+he sank into an arm-chair and dozed for a time. At nine he awoke,
+washed, changed into more civilised clothes, then strolled out
+cheerfully on to the Boulevards, and had his morning coffee at a little
+table in the open, with a budget of French papers to look through, and
+the spectacle of the passing world in the sunshine for his
+entertainment.
+
+He sat on for a long while in leisurely enjoyment, then proceeded to
+stroll by way of the Place de la Concorde (which looked vaster and
+finer than it had ever appeared to him) round to the great Palace of Art
+off the Champs Elysees. It had sprung up during these years of his
+absence, and he wandered round it delightedly, examining all the
+facades, familiarising himself with all the points of view.
+
+At last he entered through the nearest turnstile and went straight to
+see how Lady Betty's portrait was hung.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Wyndham did not linger in Paris as he had intended. He had found
+Lady Betty beautifully placed on the line, and had returned to her
+daily, not to gaze at the painting, but at the features of the woman he
+loved. And then there surged in him a fever of impatience. He had not
+the least hope of finding her here in Paris--he took it for granted she
+had long since seen the Salon, and he had the strangely settled
+belief--he did not know why--that she was not then in France at all. And
+somehow he was unable to conceive of himself now save as actively in
+search of her. All the first impulsion towards holiday and repose that
+had swept him headlong across the Channel had mysteriously died away, to
+give place to this haunting, this imperious, idea of a mission. He must
+push on with it at once!
+
+He chose his route largely haphazard, yet zigzagging through her
+favourite cities. His heart thrilled with hope as he was borne again
+through the outskirts, and Paris lay behind him. In this dash through
+Europe, the happy chance might perhaps befall him! He knew the quest in
+that way was wholly irrational, but it had its charm. He might pass
+within a stone's throw of her a score of times, and yet remain
+unconscious of the proximity. A billion to one at least against him!
+
+Yet he pursued his journey feverishly; passing through Belgium swiftly,
+thence to Dresden by stages, then hurrying down to Munich, next on to
+Vienna, and passing further southwards; vibrating off the beaten path at
+every turn; staying here a day, there a night, rarely anywhere longer;
+guided by no principle, but darting about at random, often doubling back
+on his track, and yielding to every fantastic impulse that rose in him.
+
+At Belgrade, where he found himself some four weeks after leaving Paris
+(though the days, packed with changing scenes and impressions, had
+seemed to run into months), he had an inspiration, and abruptly took the
+train straight back again. Might not Lady Betty gravitate once more to
+the portrait, before the Salon closed its doors for the season? Even
+though it was to be her own possession in the end, she might well desire
+to pay it that tribute. Had it not given them their brief companionship
+in avowed affection? He would haunt the Salon daily; he would wait and
+watch for her. He journeyed all day, all night, and all the next day,
+impelled by the same fever of impatience, which now oppressed him
+tenfold. He stepped out of the train in the evening amid the bustle and
+lights of the terminus. He was in Paris again! He breathed with relief
+as at a goal accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+One blue summer morning, Wyndham, for the twentieth time at least,
+entered the Salon through his customary turnstile, and stood in the
+great central court, under the crystal roof, amid the gleaming display
+of statuary. There was already a goodly number of people about; not yet
+a crowd, but enough for the costumes and hats of the fair sex to colour
+the whole place like a flower-garden. He moved about among them for
+awhile, his eye keen and ready; then ascended the staircase, and entered
+the nearest doorway. He spent an hour or two in leisurely progression
+through the galleries, long since familiar with all the pictures, and
+staying only before the interesting ones, yet with attention ever on the
+alert.
+
+At last he had set foot in the particular room, which was to him the
+shrine, the inner sanctuary, of this Temple of the Arts. It was already
+crowded here, and his first impression was of a mass of silk hats and
+beflowered millinery rather than of pictures. He hesitated in the
+doorway an instant, then began the slow tour of the room, pausing
+before every picture in turn, so as to indulge in the pleasurable
+make-believe of coming on Lady Betty again suddenly. Gradually he worked
+his way along and it was not till he had come again within reach of his
+starting-point that his own frame gleamed on his vision. He manoeuvred
+through a bevy of ladies, and then found himself side by side with a
+girlish figure in a light flowered muslin costume and a pretty hat
+trimmed with violets. He had stepped quite close to her out of the
+crowd, by which she had been entirely hidden; but, his eyes drawn
+imperiously to the portrait of Lady Betty, he was merely aware of his
+neighbour as one of the crowd, and he did not even look at her
+definitely. He saw just her gloved hand holding her catalogue, and, in a
+vague way, he wondered what she was thinking of the picture. He felt
+rather than saw that his neighbour had stepped back a little, as if
+naturally to make way for him. Then some mysterious impulse made him
+turn, and their eyes met. In all those winter days that were past he had
+never seen her so bright and gracious as she appeared now, clad for the
+summer, and in this sparkling universe. Never before had those violet
+eyes shone with so perfect a light, as of the full freshness of
+childhood. Yet her face was pallid and awestruck as she gazed at him.
+But a wild joy sang at his heart, and he felt his blood pulsing with a
+glad note that seemed to be at one with the note that sang to him from
+horizons of enchantment opening before him; at one, too, with the note
+that sang to him out of all this exquisite Paris!
+
+"I am free," he whispered. "Do you understand? Free!"
+
+"Free?"
+
+He divined rather than heard the breathed exclamation from the movement
+of her lips--read the amazed questioning of her eyes.
+
+"I have not broken my promise to you!" The crowd surged round them,
+struggling to see his picture, ejaculating banal words of admiration.
+"You do not doubt!" he whispered tensely.
+
+The blood came back to her face at last. "No! But the how?--the why?"
+
+"She sought her release!"
+
+"She suspected the truth!" She was pale again.
+
+"We cheated ourselves. She cared for one of her own kind. Our
+renunciation was an irony."
+
+Lady Betty bent her head. Her brow was wrinkled for a moment in thought,
+and her hand trembled visibly.
+
+"An irony--no," she said gently. "We were true to ourselves--the future
+lies the fairer before us."
+
+The press around them grew closer.
+
+"Mais c'est chic ca!"
+
+"Un beau talent!"
+
+"C'est exquis!"
+
+She took his arm, as if seeking freer air, and they moved through the
+throng that continued its compliments, unsuspecting of the proximity of
+either artist or subject. They stood at last on the great balcony, and
+looked down on the splendid court agleam with sculpture and greenery.
+
+"I have searched Europe for you!" he said.
+
+"This great change in our lives--it is too wonderful to grasp all at
+once," she murmured musingly.
+
+"I do not see why we should not stroll round to the Embassy now, and
+inquire," he suggested stoutly.
+
+"Inquire about what?" she asked, her deep absent look changing to
+bewilderment.
+
+"As to when they can marry us, of course!"
+
+"Oh, I see," she said, with a quick smile; but her glance was inward
+again.
+
+"You don't think me precipitate?" he asked uneasily.
+
+"I am thinking of Alice," she returned. "I could have sworn she was the
+soul of constancy."
+
+    THE END.
+
+
+UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRAHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
+  BROWN, LANGHAM & CO.,
+  78 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W.
+
+
+
+
+  Life of the Right Hon Thomas Burt, M.P.
+
+  By AARON WATSON.
+
+  With Portrait and Illustrations. 8vo. 15s. net.
+
+Mr. Burt's life is indissolubly bound up with the rise of the Labour
+Movement in this country.
+
+ "Mr. Aaron Watson places at the beginning of his deeply interesting
+ biography of Mr. Thomas Burt the following tribute, paid to the
+ veteran labour leader by Earl Grey: 'The finest gentleman I ever knew
+ was a working miner in England, whose gentleness, absolute fairness,
+ instinctive horror of anything underhand or mean, or anything that
+ was not the strictest fair-play, gave him a character that enabled
+ him to rise to the position of Privy Councillor.' Never was eulogy
+ better deserved.... Mr. Burt's host of friends will be grateful to
+ Mr. Aaron Watson for his excellent work."--_Daily News._
+
+
+  The Automobilist Abroad.
+
+  By FRANCIS MILTOUN.
+
+  Author of "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," "Cathedrals of
+  Northern France," &c.
+
+  With Illustrations and Decorations by BLANCHE McMANUS, a number being in
+  full colour. 8vo. boxed. 10s. 6d. net.
+
+Mr. Miltoun's new book of travel "_en automobile_" is the record of
+hundreds of miles of motoring through regions rich in beautiful views,
+in strange costumes, and quaint peoples, whose pictured and narrated
+charms form a volume of exceptional attractiveness.
+
+The trip is across seven frontiers, through the British Isles, France,
+Belgium, Holland, and Germany, and contains much of historical sentiment
+and romance that could only have been gleaned by leisurely travellers.
+
+
+  England and America, 1763 to 1783.
+
+  The History of a Reaction.
+
+  By MARY A. M. MARKS.
+
+  2 vols. Demy 8vo, gilt top. L1 10s. net.
+
+An important historical work dealing with the War of Independence.
+
+
+  Letters of Christina Rossetti.
+
+  With Memoir and Introduction.
+
+  By W. M. ROSSETTI.
+
+Many interesting Portraits and Facsimiles. 8vo. 15s. net. _Shortly._
+
+Miss Rossetti had many correspondents among the distinguished artists
+and literary personages of the day.
+
+
+  Diary of Dr. Polidori.
+
+  Edited, with Introduction and Notes by his nephew,
+  W. M. ROSSETTI.
+
+  Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s. net. _Shortly._
+
+Dr. Polidori was travelling physician to Lord Byron during his tour in
+Europe in 1816. His diary gives an account of this tour, in which
+Shelley and many other interesting personages appear.
+
+
+  SECOND EDITION.
+
+  Some Reminiscences.
+
+  By W. M. ROSSETTI.
+
+  2 Vols. 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top. 42s. net.
+
+This important work contains a full account of the early days of the
+Rossetti family, with most interesting side-lights of the Pre-Raphaelite
+movement, and the literary and artistic career of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti. The volumes are illustrated with numerous reproductions, very
+few of which have been published before. Mr. Rossetti's "Reminiscences"
+are very complete, dating from his birth in London, 1829, down to the
+present day. Most of the great names in the art and literature of this
+epoch are to be met with in his pages.
+
+
+  The Western Avernus.
+
+  By MORLEY ROBERTS.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth gilt. Price 3s. 6d.
+
+ "All who think of going to the far West of America or British
+ Columbia, would do well to read this book carefully before booking
+ their passage."--_To-Day._
+
+ "These powerful sketches of life in the Western States of America are
+ written from first-hand knowledge, and are memorable pictures of a
+ period which has largely passed away."--_Echo._
+
+ "This story of his wanderings and hardships in Western America reads
+ like a novel--even like a novel by Mr. Roberts himself. As a picture
+ of earlier days in British Columbia, it should soon be
+ invaluable."--_St. James's Gazette._
+
+
+  Moons and Winds of Araby.
+
+  By ROMA WHITE.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth gilt. 5s.
+
+Amusing sketches of official life in Egypt.
+
+
+  Pranks in Provence.
+
+  By PERCY WADHAM, A.R.E.
+
+  With coloured Cover-design by Cecil Aldin. Profusely Illustrated.
+
+  Square 8vo, gilt top. 5s.
+
+An amusing skit on modern books of travel.
+
+
+  Si Mihi
+
+  By "Egomet."
+
+  Crown 8vo. 3s. net.
+
+A volume of thoughtful, personal essays, by a new writer of very
+considerable promise.
+
+
+  Going Through the Mill.
+
+  By Mrs. GERALD PAGET.
+
+  Crown 8vo, gilt top. 5s. net.
+
+ "It is impossible to deny the force of much which she avers. She
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+ Possibly all will be remedied if women get the vote; certainly the
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+ on old subjects, and certain very awkward subjects are most
+ delicately handled."--_Liverpool Post._
+
+
+  Auction Bridge.
+
+  By VANE PENNELL.
+
+  2s. 6d. net.
+
+A treatise on the new variation of bridge as now generally played.
+
+ "To any lover of bridge the new game will prove most fascinating, and
+ intending players cannot do better than study Mr. Vane Pennell's
+ book."--_Western Mail._
+
+
+  POETRY.
+
+  Nineveh and other Poems.
+
+  By GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 5s. net.
+
+Mr. Viereck is a poet who will have to be reckoned with seriously. The
+son of a German father and an American mother, he has "listened to the
+music of two worlds." This volume is his introduction to English
+readers.
+
+
+  FICTION.
+
+  An Engagement of Convenience.
+
+  By LOUIS ZANGWILL.
+
+  6s.
+
+ "He is one of the forces to be counted with in contemporary
+ literature.... Mr. Louis Zangwill is bound to travel far."--_Weekly
+ Sun._
+
+
+  The Brotherhood of Wisdom.
+
+  By FRANCES J. ARMOUR.
+
+  6s.
+
+  A Story dealing with the occult.
+
+
+  Follow Up!
+
+  By ARCHIBALD D. FOX.
+
+  6s.
+
+  A Story of Harrow School.
+
+
+  Faith Unfaithful.
+
+  By FRED E. WYNNE.
+
+  Author of "Fortune's Fool." 6s.
+
+
+  A Mirror of Folly.
+
+  By HAROLD WINTLE.
+
+  6s.
+
+ "A powerful tale of modern society."--_Spectator._
+
+
+  The Barony of Brendon.
+
+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
+
+  6s.
+
+ "The plot is excellent and it is handled with delicacy."--_Daily
+ News._
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+ "Cannot but add to his already considerable reputation."--_Daily
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+  Fortune's Fool.
+
+  By FRED E. WYNNE.
+
+  6s.
+
+ "A remarkable achievement for a first book."--_Daily Graphic._
+
+
+  The Nancy Manoeuvres.
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+  By CHARLES GLEIG.
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+  6s.
+
+ "A very droll mixture of Fleet Street, Bohemia, and life on board a
+ man-of-war."--_Country Life._
+
+
+  The Feast of Bacchus.
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+
+  6s.
+
+
+  One or Two.
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+  By THEO. DOUGLAS.
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+  6s.
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+  Two stories of the occult world that have met with considerable
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+
+
+  The Builders.
+
+  By W. G. EMERSON.
+
+  6s.
+
+ "There is no story of the West like it. There are no dull patches in
+ it."--_Boston Globe._
+
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+  Eve and the Wood God.
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+  By HELEN MAXWELL.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s.
+
+  A new novel by the author of that very successful book, "A DAUGHTER OF
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+
+
+  NEW EDITION.
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+  The Gaiety of Fatma.
+
+  By KATHLEEN WATSON.
+
+  Author of "Litanies of Life." Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s.
+
+This is a novel in quite an unusual vein. Fatma is a maiden of Arabian
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+English nobleman wintering in Algeria. The bulk of the book is taken up
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+
+
+  NEW EDITION.
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+  It Happened in Japan.
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+  By the BARONESS ALBERT d'ANETHAN.
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+  With coloured Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s.
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+  The Voyage of the Arrow.
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+  By T. JENKINS HAINS.
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+  Author of "The Windjammers," &c. With 6 Illustrations by H. C.
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+
+ "It stirs the pulse like a close ride to hounds or a stiff finish to
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+  The Sunset Trail.
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+  By A. H. LEWIS.
+
+  Author of "The President," and "Wolfville Days." Illustrated. 6s.
+
+ "The smell of the open air haunts every page. One could hardly say
+ more for such a volume than that it is worthy of comparison with Bret
+ Harte at his best, and that can be said without hesitation."--_Daily
+ Express._
+
+
+  The Making of a Man.
+
+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt. 6s.
+
+ "All may read it for the sake of the light and genial touch displayed
+ in the treatment of life. Comedy is here plentifully provided and is
+ of the best."--_Daily Graphic._
+
+
+  Christopher Deane.
+
+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
+
+  A New and Cheaper Edition of this Story of Winchester and Cambridge.
+
+  With Frontispiece. 3s. 6d.
+
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+ of the best public school and University type which does not deserve
+ one or both of these adjectives."--_Week's Survey._
+
+
+  Playmates; or, Studies in Child Life.
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+  By Rev. H. MAYNARD SMITH, M.A.
+
+  Author of "In Playtime" and "Church Teaching at Home."
+
+  Crown 8vo, cloth, extra, 2s. 6d. net.
+
+ "We conclude our too brief notice of the volume by saying that the
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+ from the error of his ways. As we read, we were startled by coming
+ upon a short paper on Charles Lamb, whose mantle, by the way, it
+ seems to us, has fallen, in no slight degree, upon Mr. Maynard Smith;
+ nor can we repress the thought that if the great essayist had had the
+ privilege of reading these pages, he would never have perpetrated the
+ atrocity, with which tradition charges him, of toasting the memory of
+ Herod the Great."--_Church Family Newspaper._
+
+
+  NEW AND CHEAP EDITION.
+
+  Reflections of a Householder.
+
+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
+
+  With Cover Design in Colour. 1s. net.
+
+
+  Benedictine.
+
+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
+
+  With Cover Design in Colour. 1s. net.
+
+  Cheap editions of Mr. Watson's sketches and light essays.
+
+ "It is a compliment to the much-maligned tribe of the general reader
+ that a second edition has been called for of Mr. E. H. Lacon Watson's
+ genial sketches of married life, which he calls 'Benedictine.' In
+ their new and revised edition (Brown, Langham & Co., 1s. net) they
+ make a sober-looking, tasteful volume, which is wonderfully cheap
+ when we consider the humour and literary quality of the
+ writing."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+
+  Hints to Young Authors.
+
+  By E. H. LACON WATSON.
+
+  Crown 8vo. Cloth extra, gilt top. 2s. net.
+
+ "We unhesitatingly recommend young authors to accept the advice
+ tendered as that of one who knows what he is writing about."--_St.
+ James's Gazette._
+
+
+  THIRD EDITION.
+
+  Litanies of Life.
+
+  By KATHLEEN WATSON.
+
+  Cloth extra, gilt top. 2s. 6d. net.
+
+ "A little book containing five short stories, but every one of them
+ is worth reading, and the note of all sounds sweet and free. The
+ reader will lay down the book, as I did, with a feeling of profound
+ sympathy and gratitude to the writer."--Mr. W. T. STEAD.
+
+
+  Three Little Gardeners.
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+  By L. AGNES TALBOT.
+
+  With Illustrations by GERTRUDE BRADLEY. Cover Design in
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+
+A charming book for children who wish to learn how to manage a
+small garden.
+
+ "This book should be given to every little girl or boy who has a
+ garden, and who is anxious to do things properly."--_Examiner._
+
+
+  THE HANDY VOLUME EDITION OF
+
+  Nathaniel Hawthorne's Romances.
+
+  14 vols. 12mo. Cloth, gilt top, 1s. 6d. net.
+
+  Lambskin, 2s. 6d. net, each.
+
+
+  London: BROWN, LANGHAM & Co., Ltd., 78, New Bond Street, W.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+  Punctuation has been normalized.
+
+  Page 106, "unobstrusive" changed to "unobtrusive". (her unobtrusive
+    walking-costume)
+
+  Page 273, "any thing" changed to "anything". (was there anything more
+    ridiculous)
+
+  Page 343, "ne" changed to "net". (2s. 6d. net)
+
+  Chapter numbers at end of the book have been corrected so as to be
+    sequential. (Chapter XXVIII, XXIX, and XXX)
+
+
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