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Celibates

by George Moore · English · Gutenberg #6005 · 536,855 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Celibates

Author: George Moore


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6005]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CELIBATES ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




CELIBATES

BY

GEORGE MOORE
Author of
"Spring Days," "A Mummer's Wife" Etc.

With Introduction By
TEMPLE SCOTT

NEW YORK
1915



COPYRIGHT, 1895,
BY MACMILLAN AND CO.

COPYRIGHT, 1915,
BY BRENTANO'S.




INTRODUCTION.



Looking back over the twenty years since "Celibates" was first
published I find that the George Moore of the earlier year is the
George Moore of to-day. The novelist of 1895 and the novelist of 1915
are one and the same person. Each is really interested in himself;
each is more concerned with how the world and its humanity appear to
him than how they appear to the casual observer or how they may be in
themselves. The writer is always expressing himself through the facts
and personalities which have stirred his imagination to creative
effort. George Moore has never been a reporter or a philosopher; he
has always been an artist.

Now to say that the author of "Celibates" is always expressing himself
does not at all mean that he is recording merely his private
sensations, emotions, and moods. Egoist as he is, George Moore could
not write his autobiography. He tried to do this lately in "Ave,"
"Vale," and "Salve," and failed--failed captivatingly. He is always
most himself when he is dealing with what is not himself--with skies
and hills and ocean and gardens and men and women. Moore is a
naturalist in the finest sense of that word. He deals with nature as
the artist must deal with it if nature is to be understood and
enjoyed. For Moore's relationship with nature, and especially with
human nature, is of that rare kind which is the experience of the very
few--of those fine spirits endowed with the highest sympathy--a
sympathy which is not a feeling with or for others but an actual union
with others, a union which brings suffering as well as enjoyment. This
is the artist's burden of sorrow and it is also his privilege. It is
because of it that every true work of art has in it also something of
a religious influence--a binding power which unites the separated
onlookers in an experience of a common emotion. If the artist have not
this peculiar sympathy he can have no vision and will never be a
creator; he will never show us or tell us the new and strange
mysteries of life which nature is continually unfolding. The artist's
mission is to reveal to us the visions he alone has been vouchsafed to
see, and to reveal them so that the revelation is a creation. The men
and women he is introducing to us must be as real and as living to us
as they are to him. That is what George Moore has done in "Celibates"
and that is why I say he is an artist.

"Celibates" consists of three stories--two of women and one of a man.
Mildred Lawson and John Norton are celibates by nature. Agnes Lahens
is a celibate from environment and circumstance. Each of the three is
utterly different from the other, and yet all are alike in that they
are the products of a modern civilization. Mildred and John are
without that compulsive force which is known as the sexual passion. If
they have it at all, it has been diluted by tradition and so-called
culture into a mere sensation. Agnes's passion is an arrested one, so
that what there is of it is easily diverted into an expression of
religious aspiration.

Mildred Lawson would be called a born flirt. She is pretty, charming,
and talented; but she is cold, unresponsive, selfish, and futile. She
is also eminently respectable after the English middle-class manner.
She has ambition, but she lacks the will-power to school herself and
the determination to accomplish. She is rich in goods but very poor in
goodness. She is often moved profoundly by beautiful thoughts and
uplifting emotions of which she herself is the pleasing, pulsating
centre; but her soul is negative, so that her spiritual states
evaporate when the opportunity is given her for transforming them into
acts. She never gets anywhere. She is self-conscious to a degree and
unstable as water. After breaking one man's heart and deadening the
hearts of three other men, she finally accepts an old and rejected
sweetheart, only to be torn by suspicions that he no longer cares for
her and is marrying her only for her money. We leave her a prey to
thoughts of a life which, unconsciously, she has brought on herself.

John Norton might be called the born monk. He is, however, but the
male embodiment of that cultured selfishness of which Mildred Lawson
is the female expression. He is not a flirt. He takes life too
seriously to be that; but he takes it so seriously that there is only
room in the world for himself alone. He comes of a fine old English
stock, is rich, and is his own master. He treats his mother as a cold-
blooded English gentleman, with Norton's peculiar nature, would treat
a mother--with polite but firm disregard of her claims. He has enough
and to spare of will-power, but it is become degenerated into
obstinacy. He fails because he wants too much, because he is unsocial
at heart, and does not understand that life means giving as well as
taking. His sexual passion finds expression in a religious fanaticism
which is but the expression of utter selfishness, as all sexual
passion is. In the company of Kitty he has moments of exaltation, when
his degenerate passion scents the pure air of love; but he can never
let himself go. When, on one occasion, he so far forgets himself as to
allow his heart to be responsive to Kitty's natural purity and he
kisses her, he is so shocked at what he has done that he runs away and
leaves the girl to a terrible fate. We leave him also a prey to
thoughts of what he might have prevented. He, too, like Mildred
Lawson, must henceforth face a life of his own unconscious making.

Agnes Lahens is the victim of a heartless, selfish society in which
the abuse of love has made its world a desert and its products Dead
Sea fruit. Out of a sheer impulse for self-protection she flies to the
nunnery, which is ready to give her life at the price of her womanhood
and her self-sacrifice.

As portraits, these of Mildred Lawson and John Norton are exquisitely
finished. They are half-lengths, with a quality of coloring
fascinating in its repelling truth. Every tint and shade have been
cunningly and caressingly laid in, so that the features, living and
animated, are yet filled with suggestions of the spiritual barrenness
in the originals. Very human they are, and yet they are without those
gracious qualities which link humanity with what we feel to be divine.
There is the touch of nature here, but it is not the touch which makes
the whole world kin. That touch we ourselves supply; and it speaks
eloquently for Moore's art that in picturing these unlovely beings he
throws us back on our better selves. Beyond the vision of these
celibates here revealed we see a passionate humanity, working, hating,
sorrowing, and dying, yet always loving, and in loving finding its
fullest life in an earthly salvation. True love is a mighty democrat.
Knowing these "Celibates," we welcome the more gladly those who, even
if less gifted, are ready to walk with us, hand in hand, along the
common human highway of the "pilgrim's progress."

TEMPLE SCOTT.




CONTENTS.


MILDRED LAWSON

JOHN NORTON

AGNES LAHENS




MILDRED LAWSON.

I.



The tall double stocks were breathing heavily in the dark garden; the
delicate sweetness of the syringa moved as if on tip-toe towards the
windows; but it was the aching smell of lilies that kept Mildred
awake.

As she tossed to and fro the recollections of the day turned and
turned in her brain, ticking loudly, and she could see each event as
distinctly as the figures on the dial of a great clock.

'What a strange woman that Mrs. Fargus--her spectacles, her short
hair, and that dreadful cap which she wore at the tennis party! It was
impossible not to feel sorry for her, she did look so ridiculous. I
wonder her husband allows her to make such a guy of herself. What a
curious little man, his great cough and that foolish shouting manner;
a good-natured, empty-headed little fellow. They are a funny couple!
Harold knew her husband at Oxford; they were at the same college. She
took honours at Oxford; that's why she seemed out of place in a little
town like Sutton. She is quite different from her husband; he couldn't
pass his examinations; he had been obliged to leave. ... What made
them marry?

'I don't know anything about Comte--I wish I did; it is so dreadful to
be ignorant. I never felt my ignorance before, but that little woman
does make me feel it, not that she intrudes her learning on any one; I
wish she did, for I want to learn. I wish I could remember what she
told me: that all knowledge passes through three states: the
theological, the--the--metaphysical, and the scientific. We are
religious when we are children, metaphysical when we are one-and-
twenty, and as we get old we grow scientific. And I must not forget
this, that what is true for the individual is true for the race. In
the earliest ages man was religious (I wonder what our vicar would say
if he heard this). In the Middle Ages man was metaphysical, and in
these latter days he is growing scientific.

'The other day when I came into the drawing-room she didn't say a
word. I waited and waited to see if she would speak--no, not a word.
She sat reading. Occasionally she would look up, stare at the ceiling,
and then take a note. I wonder what she put down on that slip of
paper? But when I spoke she seemed glad to talk, and she told me about
Oxford. It evidently was the pleasantest time of her life. It must
have been very curious. There were a hundred girls, and they used to
run in and out of each other's rooms, and they had dances; they danced
with each other, and never thought about men. She told me she never
enjoyed any dances so much as those; and they had a gymnasium, and
special clothes to wear there--a sort of bloomer costume. It must have
been very jolly. I wish I had gone to Oxford. Girls dancing together,
and never thinking about men. How nice!

'At Oxford they say that marriage is not the only mission for women--
that is to say, for some women. They don't despise marriage, but they
think that for some women there is another mission. When I spoke to
Mrs. Fargus about her marriage, she had to admit that she had written
to her college friends to apologise--no, not to apologise, she said,
but to explain. She was not ashamed, but she thought she owed them an
explanation. Just fancy any of the girls in Sutton being ashamed of
being married!'

The darkness was thick with wandering scents, and Mildred's thoughts
withered in the heat. She closed her eyes; she lay quite still, but
the fever of the night devoured her; the sheet burned like a flame;
she opened her eyes, and was soon thinking as eagerly as before.

She thought of the various possibilities that marriage would shut out
to her for ever. She reproached herself for having engaged herself to
Alfred Stanby, and remembered that Harold had been opposed to the
match, and had refused to give his consent until Alfred was in a
position to settle five hundred a year upon her. ... Alfred would
expect her to keep house for him exactly as she was now keeping house
for her brother. Year after year the same thing, seeing Alfred go away
in the morning, seeing him come home in the evening. That was how her
life would pass. She did not wish to be cruel; she knew that Alfred
would suffer terribly if she broke off her engagement, but it would be
still more cruel to marry him if she did not think she would make him
happy, and the conviction that she would not make him happy pressed
heavily upon her. What was she to do? She could not, she dared not,
face the life he offered her. It would be selfish of her to do so.

The word 'selfish' suggested a new train of thought to Mildred. She
argued that it was not for selfish motives that she desired freedom.
If she thought that, she would marry him to-morrow. It was because she
did not wish to lead a selfish life that she intended to break off her
engagement. She wished to live for something; she wished to accomplish
something; what could she do? There was art. She would like to be an
artist! She paused, astonished at the possibility. But why not she as
well as the other women whom she had met at Mrs. Fargus'? She had met
many artists--ladies who had studios--at Mrs. Fargus'.

She had been to their studios and had admired their independence. They
had spoken of study in Paris, and of a village near Paris where they
went to paint landscape. Each had a room at the inn; they met at meal
times, and spent the day in the woods and fields. Mildred had once
been fond of drawing, and in the heat of the summer night she wondered
if she could do anything worth doing. She knew that she would like to
try. She would do anything sooner than settle down with Alfred.
Marriage and children were not the only possibilities in woman's life.
The girls she knew thought so, but the girls Mrs. Fargus knew didn't
think so.

And rolling over in her hot bed she lamented that there was no escape
for a girl from marriage. If so, why not Alfred Stanby--he as well as
another? But no, she could not settle down to keep house for Alfred
for the rest of her life. She asked herself again why she should marry
at all--what it was that compelled all girls, rich or poor, it was all
the same, to marry and keep house for their husbands. She remembered
that she had five hundred a year, and that she would have four
thousand a year if her brother died--the distillery was worth that.
But money made no difference. There was something in life which forced
all girls into marriage, with their will or against their will.
Marriage, marriage, always marriage--always the eternal question of
sex, as if there was nothing else in the world. But there was much
else in life. There was a nobler purpose in life than keeping house
for a man. Of that she felt quite sure, and she hoped that she would
find a vocation. She must first educate herself, so far she knew, and
that was all that was at present necessary for her to know.

'But how hot it is; I shan't be able to go out in the cart to-morrow.
... I wish everything would change, especially the weather. I want to
go away. I hate living in a house without another woman. I wish Harold
would let me have a companion--a nice elderly lady, but not too
elderly--a woman about forty, who could talk; some one like Mrs.
Fargus. When mother was alive it was different. She has been dead now
three years. How long it seems! ... Poor mother! I wish she were here.
I scarcely knew much of father; he went to the city every morning,
just as Harold does, by that dreadful ten minutes past nine. It seems
to me that I have never heard of anything all my life but that
horrible ten minutes past nine and the half-past six from London
Bridge. I don't hear so much about the half-past six, but the ten
minutes past nine is never out of my head. Father is dead seven years,
mother is dead three, and since her death I have kept house for
Harold.'

Then as sleep pressed upon her eyelids Mildred's thoughts grew
disjointed. ... 'Alfred, I have thought it all over. I cannot marry
you. ... Do not reproach me,' she said between dreaming and waking;
and as the purple space of sky between the trees grew paler, she heard
the first birds. Then dream and reality grew undistinguishable, and
listening to the carolling of a thrush she saw a melancholy face, and
then a dejected figure pass into the twilight.




II.


'What a fright I am looking! I did not get to sleep till after two
o'clock; the heat was something dreadful, and to-day will be hotter
still. One doesn't know what to wear.'

She settled the ribbons in her white dress, and looked once again in
the glass to see if the soft, almost fluffy, hair, which the least
breath disturbed was disarranged. She smoothed it with her short white
hand. There was a wistful expression in her brown eyes, a little
pathetic won't-you-care-for-me expression which she cultivated,
knowing its charm in her somewhat short, rather broad face, which
ended in a pointed chin: the nose was slightly tip-tilted, her teeth
were white, but too large. Her figure was delicate, and with quick
steps she hurried along the passages and down the high staircase.
Harold was standing before the fireplace, reading the _Times,_ when
she entered.

'You are rather late, Mildred. I am afraid I shall lose the ten
minutes past nine.'

'My dear Harold, you have gone up to town for the last ten years by
that train, and every day we go through a little scene of fears and
doubts; you have never yet missed it, I may safely assume you will not
miss it this morning.'

'I'm afraid I shall have to order the cart, and I like to get a walk
if possible in the morning.'

'I can walk it in twelve minutes.'

'I shouldn't like to walk it in this broiling sun in fifteen. ... By
the way, have you looked at the glass this morning?'

'No; I am tired of looking at it. It never moves from "set fair."'

'It is intolerably hot--can you sleep at night?'

'No; I didn't get to sleep till after two. I lay awake thinking of
Mrs. Fargus.'

'I never saw you talk to a woman like that before. I wonder what you
see in her. She's very plain. I daresay she's very clever, but she
never says anything--at least not to me.'

'She talks fast enough on her own subjects. You didn't try to draw her
out. She requires drawing out. ... But it wasn't so much Mrs. Fargus
as having a woman in the house. It makes one's life so different; one
feels more at ease. I think I ought to have a companion.'

'Have a middle-aged lady here, who would bore me with her conversation
all through dinner when I come home from the City tired and worn out!'

'But you don't think that your conversation when you "come home from
the City tired and worn out" has no interest whatever for me; that
this has turned out a good investment; that the shares have gone up,
and will go up again? I should like to know how I am to interest
myself in all that. What has it to do with me?'

'What has it to do with you! How do you think that this house and
grounds, carriages and horses and servants, glasshouses without end,
are paid for? Do I ever grumble about the dressmakers' bills?--and
heaven knows they are high enough. I believe all your hats and hosiery
are put down to house expenses, but I never grumble. I let you have
everything you want--horses, carriages, dresses, servants. You ought
to be the happiest girl in the world in this beautiful place.'

'Beautiful place! I hate the place; I hate it--a nasty, gaudy, vulgar
place, in a vulgar suburb, where nothing but money-grubbing is thought
of from morning, noon, till night; how much percentage can be got out
of everything; cut down the salaries of the employees; work everything
on the most economic basis; it does not matter what the employees
suffer so long as seven per cent. dividend is declared at the end of
the year. I hate the place.'

'My dear, dear Mildred, what are you saying? I never heard you talk
like this before. Mrs. Fargus has been filling your head with
nonsense. I wish I had never asked her to the house; absurd little
creature, with her eternal talk about culture, her cropped hair, and
her spectacles glimmering. What nonsense she has filled your head
with!'

'Mrs. Fargus is a very clever woman. ... I think I should like go to
Girton.'

'Go to Girton!'

'Yes, go to Girton. I've never had any proper education. I should like
to learn Greek. Living here, cooped up with a man all one's life isn't
my idea. I should like to see more of my own sex. Mrs. Fargus told me
about the emulation of the class-rooms, about the gymnasium, about the
dances the girls had in each other's rooms. She never enjoyed any
dances like those. She said that I must feel lonely living in a house
without another woman.'

'I know what it'll be. I shall never hear the end of Mrs. Fargus. I
wish I'd never asked them.'

'Men are so selfish! If by any chance they do anything that pleases
any one but themselves, how they regret it.'

Harold was about the middle height, but he gave the impression of a
small man. He was good-looking; but his features were without charm,
for his mind was uninteresting--a dry, barren mind, a somewhat stubbly
mind--but there was an honest kindliness in his little eyes which was
absent from his sister's. The conversation had paused, and he glanced
quickly every now and then at her pretty, wistful face, expressive at
this moment of much irritated and nervous dissatisfaction; also an
irritated obstinacy lurked in her eyes, and, knowing how obstinate she
was in her ideas, Harold sincerely dreaded that she might go off to
Girton to learn Greek--any slightest word might precipitate the
catastrophe.

'I think at least that I might have a companion,' she said at last.

'Of course you can have a companion if you like, Mildred; but I
thought you were going to marry Alfred Stanby?'

'You objected to him; you said he had nothing--that he couldn't afford
to marry.'

'Yes, until he got his appointment; but I hear now that he's nearly
certain of it.'

'I don't think I could marry Alfred.'

'You threw Lumly over, who was an excellent match, for Alfred. So long
as Alfred wasn't in a position to marry you, you would hear of no one
else, and now--but you don't mean to say you are going to throw him
over.'

'I don't know what I shall do.'

'Well, I have no time to discuss the matter with you now. It is seven
minutes to nine. I shall only have just time to catch the train by
walking very fast. Good-bye.'

'Please, mam, any orders to-day for the butcher?'

'Always the same question--how tired I am of hearing the same words. I
suppose it is very wicked of me to be so discontented,' thought
Mildred, as she sat on the sofa with her key-basket in her hand; 'but
I have got so tired of Sutton. I know I shouldn't bother Harold; he is
very good and he does his best to please me. It is very odd. I was all
right till Mrs. Fargus came, she upset me. It was all in my mind
before, no doubt; but she brought it out. Now I can't interest myself
in anything. I really don't care to go to this tennis party, and the
people who go there are not in the least interesting. I am certain I
should not meet a soul whom I should care to speak to. No, I won't go
there. There's a lot to be done in the greenhouses, and in the
afternoon I will write a long letter to Mrs. Fargus. She promised to
send me a list of books to read.'

There was nothing definite in her mind, but something was germinating
within her, and when the work of the day was done, she wondered at the
great tranquillity of the garden. A servant was there in a print
dress, and the violet of the skies and the green of the trees seemed
to be closing about her like a tomb. 'How beautiful!' Mildred mused
softly; 'I wish I could paint that.'

A little surprised and startled, she went upstairs to look for her box
of water-colours; she had not used it since she left school. She found
also an old block, with a few sheets remaining; and she worked on and
on, conscious only of the green stillness of the trees and the romance
of rose and grey that the sky unfolded. She had begun her second
water-colour, and was so intent upon it as not to be aware that a new
presence had come into the garden. Alfred Stanby was walking towards
her. He was a tall, elegantly dressed, good-looking young man.

'What! painting? I thought you had given it up. Let me see.'

'Oh, Alfred, how you startled me!'

He took the sketch from the girl's lap, and handing it back, he said:

'I suppose you had nothing else to do this afternoon; it was too hot
to go out in the cart. Do you like painting?'

'Yes, I think I do.'

They were looking at each other--and there was a questioning look in
the girl's eyes--for she perceived in that moment more distinctly than
she had before the difference in their natures.

'Have you finished the smoking cap you are making for me?'

'No; I did not feel inclined to go on with it.'

Something in Mildred's tone of voice and manner struck Alfred, and,
dropping his self-consciousness, he said:

'You thought that I'd like a water-colour sketch better.'

Mildred did not answer.

'I should like to have some drawings to hang in the smoking-room when
we're married. But I like figures better than landscapes. You never
tried horses and dogs, did you?'

'No, I never did,' Mildred answered languidly, and she continued to
work on her sky. But her thoughts were far from it, and she noticed
that she was spoiling it. 'No, I never tried horses and dogs.'

'But you could, dearest, if you were to try. You could do anything you
tried. You are so clever.'

'I don't know that I am; I should like to be.'

They looked at each other, and anxiously each strove to read the
other's thoughts.

'Landscapes are more suited to a drawing-room than a smoking-room. It
will look very well in your drawing-room when we're married. We shall
want some pictures to cover the walls.'

At the word marriage, Mildred's lips seemed to grow thinner. The
conversation paused. Alfred noticed that she hesitated, that she was
striving to speak. She had broken off her engagement once before with
him, and he had begun to fear that she was going to do so again. There
was a look of mingled irresolution and determination in her face. She
continued to work on her sky; but at every touch it grew worse, and,
feeling that she had irretrievably spoilt her drawing, she said:

'But do you think that we shall ever be married, Alfred?'

'Of course. Why? Are you going to break it off?'

'We have been engaged nearly two years, and there seems no prospect of
our being married. Harold will never consent. It does not seem fair to
keep you waiting any longer.'

'I'd willingly wait twenty years for you, Mildred.'

She looked at him a little tenderly, and he continued more
confidently. 'But I'm glad to say there is no longer any question of
waiting. My father has consented to settle four hundred a year upon
me, the same sum as your brother proposes to settle on you. We can be
married when you like.'

She only looked at the spoilt water-colour, and it was with difficulty
that Alfred restrained himself from snatching it out of her hands.

'You do not answer. You heard what I said, that my father had agreed
to settle four hundred a year upon me?'

'I'm sure I'm very glad, for your sake.'

'That's a very cold answer, Mildred. I think I can say that I'm sure
of the appointment.'

'I'm glad, indeed I am, Alfred.'

'But only for my sake?'

Mildred sat looking at the water-colour.

'You see our marriage has been delayed so long; many things have come
between us.'

'What things?'

'Much that I'm afraid you'd not understand. You've often reproached
me,' she said, her voice quickening a little, 'with coldness. I'm
cold; it is not my fault. I'm afraid I'm not like other girls. ... I
don't think I want to be married.'

'This is Mrs. Fargus' doing. What do you want?'

'I'm not quite sure. I should like to study.'

'This must be Mrs. Fargus.'

'I should like to do something.'

'But marriage--'

'Marriage is not everything. There are other things. I should like to
study art.'

'But marriage won't prevent your studying art.'

'I want to go away, to leave Sutton. I should like to travel.'

'But we should travel--our honeymoon.'

'I don't think I could give up my freedom, Alfred; I've thought it all
over. I'm afraid I'm not the wife for you.'

'Some one else has come between us? Some one richer. Who's this other
fellow?'

'No; there's no one else. I assure you there's no one else. I don't
think I shall marry at all. There are other things besides
marriage.... I'm not fitted for marriage. I'm not strong. I don't
think I could have children. It would kill me.'

'All this is the result of Mrs. Fargus. I can read her ideas in every
word you say. Women like Mrs. Fargus ought to be ducked in the horse-
pond. They're a curse.'

Mildred smiled.

'You're as strong as other girls. I never heard of anything being the
matter with you. You're rather thin, that's all. You ought to go away
for a change of air. I never heard such things; a young girl who has
been brought up like you. I don't know what Harold would say--not
fitted for marriage; not strong enough to bear children. What
conversations you must have had with Mrs. Fargus; studying art, and
the rest of it. Really, Mildred, I did not think a young girl ever
thought of such things.'

'We cannot discuss the subject. We had better let it drop.'

'Yes,' he said, 'we'd better say no more; the least said the soonest
mended. You're ill, you don't know what you're saying. You're not
looking well; you've been brooding over things. You'd better go away
for a change. When you come back you'll think differently.'

'Go away for a change! Yes,' she said, 'I've been thinking over things
and am not feeling well. But I know my own mind now. I can never love
you as I should like to.'

'Then you'd like to love me. Ah, I will make you love me.. I'll teach
you to love me! Only give me the chance.'

'I don't think I shall ever love--at least, not as other girls do.'

He leaned forward and took her hand; he caught her other hand, and the
movement expressed his belief in his power to make her love him.

'No,' she said, resisting him. 'You cannot. I'm as cold as ice.'

'Think what you're doing, Mildred. You're sacrificing a great love--
(no man will ever love you as I do)--and for a lot of stuff about
education that Mrs. Fargus has filled your head with. You're
sacrificing your life for that,' he said, pointing to the sketch that
had fallen on the grass. 'Is it worth it?'

She picked up the sketch.

'It was better before you came,' she said, examining it absent-
mindedly. 'I went on working at it; I've spoiled it.' Then, noticing
the incongruity, she added, 'But it doesn't matter. Art is not the
only thing in the world. There is good to be done if one only knew how
to do it. I don't mean charity, such goodness is only on the surface,
it is merely a short cut to the real true goodness. Art may be only
selfishness, indeed I'm inclined to think it is, but art is education,
not the best, perhaps, but the best within my reach.'

'Mildred, I really do not understand. You cannot be well, or you
wouldn't talk so.'

'I'm quite well,' she said. 'I hardly expected you would understand.
But I beg you to believe that I cannot act otherwise. My life is not
with you. I feel sure of that.'

The words were spoken so decisively that he knew he would not succeed
in changing her. Then his face grew pale with anger, and he said:
'Then everything you've said--all your promises--everything was a lie,
a wretched lie.'

'No, Alfred, I tried to believe. I did believe, but I had not thought
much then. Remember, I was only eighteen.' She gathered up her
painting materials, and, holding out her hand, said, 'Won't you
forgive me?'

'No, I cannot forgive you.' She saw him walk down the pathway, she saw
him disappear in the shadow. And this rupture was all that seemed real
in their love story. It was in his departure that she felt, for the
first time, the touch of reality.




III.


Mildred did not see Alfred again. In the pauses of her painting she
wondered if he thought of her, if he missed her. Something had gone
out of her life, but a great deal more had come into it.

Mr. Hoskin, a young painter, whose pictures were sometimes rejected in
the Academy, but who was a little lion in the minor exhibitions, came
once a week to give her lessons, and when she went to town she called
at his studio with her sketches. Mr. Hoskin's studio was near the
King's Road, the last of a row of red houses, with gables, cross-
beams, and palings. He was a good-looking, blond man, somewhat
inclined to the poetical and melancholy type; his hair bristled, and
he wore a close-cut red beard; the moustache was long and silky; there
was a gentle, pathetic look in his pale blue eyes; and a slight
hesitation of speech, an inability to express himself in words,
created a passing impression of a rather foolish, tiresome person. But
beneath this exterior there lay a deep, true nature, which found
expression in twilit landscapes, the tenderness of cottage lights in
the gloaming, vague silhouettes, and vague skies and fields. Ralph
Hoskin was very poor: his pathetic pictures did not find many
purchasers, and he lived principally by teaching.

But he had not given Mildred her fourth lesson in landscape painting
when he received an advantageous offer to copy two pictures by Turner
in the National Gallery. Would it be convenient to her to take her
lesson on Friday instead of on Thursday? She listened to him, her eyes
wide open, and then in her little allusive way suggested that she
would like to copy something. She might as well take her lesson in the
National Gallery as in Sutton. Besides, he would be able to take her
round the gallery and explain the merits of the pictures.

She was anxious to get away from Sutton, and the prospect of long days
spent in London pleased her, and on the following Thursday Harold took
her up to London by the ten minutes past nine. For the first time she
found something romantic in that train. They drove from Victoria in a.
hansom. Mr. Hoskin was waiting for her on the steps of the National
Gallery.

'I'm so frightened,' she said; 'I'm afraid I don't paint well enough.'

'You'll get on all right. I'll see you through. This way. I've got
your easel, and your place is taken.'

They went up to the galleries.

'Oh, dear me, this seems rather alarming!' she exclaimed, stopping
before the crowd of easels, the paint-boxes, the palettes on the
thumbs, the sheaves of brushes, the maulsticks in the air. She glanced
at the work, seeking eagerly for copies, worse than any she was likely
to perpetrate. Mr. Hoskin assured her that there were many in the
gallery who could not do as well as she. And she experienced a little
thrill when he led her to the easel. A beautiful white canvas stood on
it ready for her to begin, and on a chair by the side of the easel was
her paint-box and brushes. He told her where she would find him, in
the Turner room, and that she must not hesitate to come and fetch him
whenever she was in difficulties.

'I should like you to see the drawing,' she said, 'before I begin to
paint.'

'I shall look to your drawing many times before I allow you to begin
painting. It will take you at least a couple of days to get it
right.... Don't be afraid,' he said, glancing round; 'lots of them
can't do as well as you. I shall be back about lunch time.'

The picture that Mildred had elected to copy was Reynolds's angel
heads. She looked at the brown gold of their hair, and wondered what
combination of umber and sienna would produce it. She studied the
delicate bloom of their cheeks, and wondered what mysterious
proportions of white, ochre, and carmine she would have to use to
obtain it. The bright blue and grey of the eyes frightened her. She
felt sure that such colour did not exist in the little tin tubes that
lay in rows in the black japanned box by her side. Already she
despaired. But before she began to paint she would have to draw those
heavenly faces in every feature. It was more difficult than sketching
from nature. She could not follow the drawing, it seemed to escape
her. It did not exist in lines which she could measure, which she
could follow. It seemed to have grown out of the canvas rather than to
have been placed there. The faces were leaned over--illusive
foreshortenings which she could not hope to catch. The girl in front
of her was making, it seemed to Mildred, a perfect copy. There seemed
to be no difference, or very little, between her work and Reynolds's.
Mildred felt that she could copy the copy easier than she could the
original.

But on the whole she got on better than she had expected, and it was
not till she came to the fifth head, that she found she had drawn them
all a little too large, and had not sufficient space left on her
canvas. This was a disappointment. There was nothing for it but to
dust out her drawing and begin it all again. She grew absorbed in her
work; she did not see the girl in front of her, nor the young man
copying opposite; she did not notice their visits to each other's
easels; she forgot everything in the passion of drawing. Time went by
without her perceiving it; she was startled by the sound of her
master's voice and looked in glad surprise.

'How are you getting on?' he said.

'Very badly. Can't you see?'

'No, not so badly. Will you let me sit down? Will you give me your
charcoal?'

'The first thing is to get the heads into their places on the canvas;
don't think of detail; but of two or three points, the crown of the
head, the point of the chin, the placing of the ear. If you get them
exactly right the rest will come easily. You see there was not much to
correct.' He worked on the drawing for some few minutes, and then
getting up he said, 'But you'll want some lunch; it is one o'clock.
There's a refreshment room downstairs. Let me introduce you to Miss
Laurence,' he said. The women bowed. 'You're doing an excellent copy,
Miss Laurence.'

'Praise from you is praise indeed.'

'I would give anything to paint like that,' said Mildred.

'You've only just begun painting,' said Miss Laurence.

'Only a few months,' said Mildred.

'Miss Lawson does some very pretty sketches from nature,' said Mr.
Hoskin; 'this is her first attempt at copying.'

'I shall never get those colours,' said Mildred. 'You must tell me
which you use.'

'Mr. Hoskin can tell you better than I. You can't have a better
master.'

'Do you copy much here?' asked Mildred.

'I paint portraits when I can get them to do; when I can't, I come
here and copy.... We're in the same boat,' she said, turning to Mr.
Hoskin. 'Mr. Hoskin paints beautiful landscapes as long as he can find
customers; when he can't, he undertakes to copy a Turner.'

Mildred noticed the expression that passed over her master's face. It
quickly disappeared, and he said, 'Will you take Miss Lawson to the
refreshment room, Miss Laurence? You're going there I suppose.'

'Yes, I'm going to the lunch-room, and shall be very glad to show Miss
Lawson the way.'

And, in company with quite a number of students, they walked through
the galleries. Mildred noticed that Miss Laurence's nose was hooked,
that her feet were small, and that she wore brown-leather shoes.
Suddenly Miss Laurence said 'This way,' and she went through a door
marked 'Students only.' Mr. Hoskin held the door open for her, they
went down some stone steps looking on a courtyard. Mr. Hoskin said, 'I
always think of Peter De Hooch when I go down these stairs. The
contrast between its twilight and the brightness of the courtyard is
quite in his manner.'

'And I always think how much I can afford to spend on my lunch,' said
Elsie laughing.

The men turned to the left top to go to their room, the women turned
to the right to go to theirs.

'This way,' said Miss Laurence, and she opened a glass door, and
Mildred found herself in what looked like an eating-house of the
poorer sort. There was a counter where tea and coffee and rolls and
butter were sold. Plates of beef and ham could be had there, too. The
students paid for their food at the counter, and carried it to the
tables.

'I can still afford a plate of beef,' said Miss Laurence, 'but I don't
know how long I shall be able to if things go on as they've been
going. But you don't know what it is to want money,' and in a rapid
glance Miss Laurence roughly calculated the price of Mildred's
clothes.

A tall, rather handsome girl, with dark coarse hair and a face lit up
by round grey eyes, entered.

'So you are here, Elsie,' and she stared at Mildred.

'Let me introduce you to Miss Lawson. Miss Lawson, Miss Cissy Clive.'

'I'm as hungry as a hawk,' Cissy said, and she selected the plate on
which there was most beef.

'I haven't seen you here before, Miss Lawson. Is this your first day?'

'Yes, this is my first day.'

They took their food to the nearest table and Elsie asked Cissy if she
had finished her copy of Etty's 'Bather.' Cissy told how the old
gentleman in charge of the gallery had read her a lecture on the
subject. He did not like to see such pictures copied, especially by
young women. Copies of such pictures attracted visitors. But Cissy had
insisted, and he had put her and the picture into a little room off
the main gallery, where she could pursue her nefarious work
unperceived.

The girls laughed heartily. Elsie asked for whom Cissy was making the
copy.

'For a friend of Freddy's--a very rich fellow. Herbert is going to get
him to give me a commission for a set of nude figures. Freddy has just
come back from Monte Carlo. He has lost all his money.... He says he's
"stony" and doesn't know how he'll pull through.'

'Was he here this morning?'

'He ran in for a moment to see me.... I'm dining with him to-night.'

 You're not at home, then?'

'No, I forgot to tell you, I'm staying with you, so be careful not to
give me away if you should meet mother. Freddy will be back this
afternoon. I'll get him to ask you if you'll come.'

'I promised to go out with Walter to-night.'

'You can put him off. Say that you've some work to finish--some black
and white.'

'Then he'd want to come round to the studio. I don't like to put him
off.'

'As you like.... It'll be a very jolly dinner. Johnny and Herbert are
coming. But I daresay Freddy'll ask Walter. He'll do anything I ask
him.'

When lunch was over Cissy and Elsie took each other's arms and went
upstairs together. Mildred heard Cissy ask who she was.

Elsie whispered, 'A pupil of Ralph's. You shouldn't have talked so
openly before her.'

'So his name is Ralph,' Mildred said to herself, and thought that she
liked the name.




IV.


Mildred soon began to perceive and to understand the intimate life of
the galleries, a strange life full of its special idiosyncrasies.
There were titled ladies who came with their maids and commanded
respect from the keeper of the gallery, and there was a lady with
bright yellow hair who occasioned him much anxiety. For she allowed
visitors not only to enter into conversation with her, but if they
pleased her fancy she would walk about the galleries with them and
take them out to lunch. There was an old man who copied Hogarth, he
was madly in love with a young woman who copied Rossetti. But she was
in love with an academy student who patronised all the girls and spent
his time in correcting their drawings. A little further away was
another old man who copied Turner. By a special permission he came at
eight o'clock, two hours before the galleries were open. It was said
that with a tree from one picture, a foreground from another, a piece
of distance from a third, a sky from a fourth, he had made a picture
which had taken in the Academicians, and had been hung in Burlington
House as an original work by Crome. Most of his work was done before
the students entered the galleries; he did very little after ten
o'clock; he pottered round from easel to easel chattering; but he
never imparted the least of his secrets. He knew how to evade
questions, and after ten minutes' cross-examination he would say 'Good
morning,' and leave the student no wiser than he was before. A legend
was in circulation that to imitate Turner's rough surfaces he covered
his canvas with plaster of Paris and glazed upon it.

The little life of the galleries was alive with story. Walter was a
fair young man with abundant hair and conversation. Elsie hung about
his easel. He covered a canvas with erratic blots of colour and quaint
signs, but his plausive eloquence carried him through, and Elsie
thought more highly of his talents than he did of hers. They were
garrulous one as the other, and it was pleasant to see them strolling
about the galleries criticising and admiring, until Elsie said:

'Now, Walter, I must get back to my work, and don't you think it would
be better if you went on with yours?'

So far as Mildred could see, Elsie's life seemed from the beginning to
have been made up of painting and young men. She was fond of Walter,
but she wasn't sure that she did not like Henry best, and later,
others--a Jim, a Hubert, and a Charles--knocked at her studio door,
and they were all admitted, and they wasted Elsie's time and drank her
tea. Very often they addressed their attentions to Mildred, but she
said she could not encourage them, they were all fast, and she said
she did not like fast men.

'I never knew a girl like you; you're not like other girls. Did you
never like a man? I never really. I once thought you liked Ralph.'

'Yes, I do like him. But he's different from these men; he doesn't
make love to me. I like him to like me, but I don't think I should
like him if he made love to me.'

'You're an odd girl; I don't believe there's another like you.'

'I can't think how you can like all these men to make love to you.'

'They don't all make love to me,' Elsie answered quickly. 'I hope you
don't think there's anything wrong. It is merely Platonic.'

'I should hope so. But they waste a great deal of your time.'

'Yes, that's the worst of it. I like men, men are my life, I don't
mind admitting it. But I know they've interfered with my painting.
That's the worst of it.'

Then the conversation turned on Cissy Clive. 'Cissy is a funny girl,'
Elsie said. 'For nine months out of every twelve she leads a highly-
respectable life in West Kensington. But every now and then the fit
takes her, and she tells her mother, who believes every word she says,
that she's staying with me. In reality, she takes rooms in Clarges
Street, and has a high old time.'

'I once heard her whispering to you something about not giving her
away if you should happen to meet her mother.'

'I remember, about Hopwood Blunt. He had just returned from Monte
Carlo.'

'But I suppose it is all right. She likes talking to him.'

'I don't think she can find much to talk about to Hopwood Blunt,' said
Elsie, laughing. 'Haven't you seen him? He is often in the galleries.'

'What does she say?'

'She says he's a great baby--that he amuses her.'

Next day, Mildred went to visit Cissy in the unfrequented gallery
where her 'Bather' would not give scandal to the visitors. She had
nearly completed her copy; it was excellent, and Mildred could not
praise it sufficiently. Then the girls spoke of Elsie and Walter.
Mildred said:

'She seems very fond of him.'

'And of how many others? Elsie never could be true to a man. It was
just the same in the Academy schools. And that studio of hers? Have
you been to any of her tea-parties? They turn down the lights, don't
they?'

As Mildred was about to answer, Cissy said, 'Oh, here's Freddy.'

Mr. Hopwood Blunt was tall and fair, a brawny young Englishman still,
though the champagne of fashionable restaurants and racecourses was
beginning to show itself in a slight puffiness in his handsome florid
cheeks. He shook hands carelessly with Miss Clive, whom he called Cis,
and declared himself dead beat. She hastened to hand him her chair.

'I know what's the matter with you,' she said, 'too much champagne
last night at the Cafe Royal.'

'Wrong again. We weren't at the Cafe Royal, we dined at the Bristol.
Don't like the place; give me the good old Cafe Savoy.'

'How many bottles?'

'Don't know; know that I didn't drink my share. It was something I had
after.'

Then followed an account of the company and the dinner. The
conversation was carried on in allusions, and Mildred heard something
about Tommy's girl and a horse that was worth backing at Kempton. At
last it occurred to Cissy to introduce Mildred. Mr. Hopwood Blunt made
a faint pretence of rising from his chair, and the conversation turned
on the 'Bather.'

'I think you ought to make her a little better looking. What do you
say, Miss Lawson? Cis is painting that picture for a smoking-room, and
in the smoking-room we like pretty girls.'

He thought that they ought to see a little more of the lady's face;
and he did not approve of the drapery. Cissy argued that she could not
alter Etty's composition; she reproved him for his facetiousness, and
was visibly annoyed at the glances he bestowed on Mildred. A moment
after Ralph appeared.

'Don't let me disturb you,' he said, 'I did not know where you were,
Miss Lawson, that was all. I thought you might like me to see how
you're getting on.'

Ralph and Mildred walked through two galleries in silence. Elsie had
gone out to lunch with Walter; the old lady with the grey ringlets,
who copied Gainsborough's 'Watering Place,' was downstairs having a
cup of coffee and a roll; the cripple leaned on his crutch, and
compared his drawing of Mrs. Siddons's nose with Gainsborough's. Ralph
waited till he hopped away, and Mildred was grateful to him for the
delay; she did not care for her neighbours to see what work her master
did on her picture.

'You've got the background wrong,' he said, taking off a yellowish
grey with the knife. 'The cloud in the left-hand corner is the deepest
dark you have in the picture,' and he prepared a tone. 'What a lovely
quality Reynolds has got into the sky! ... This face is not
sufficiently foreshortened. Too long from the nose to the chin,' he
said, taking off an eighth of an inch. Then the mouth had to be
raised. Mildred watched, nervous with apprehension lest Elsie or the
old lady or the cripple should return and interrupt him.

'There, it is better now,' he said, surveying the picture, his head on
one side.

'I should think it was,' she answered enthusiastically. 'I shall be
able to get on now. I could not get the drawing of that face right.
And the sky--what a difference! I like it as well as the original.
It's quite as good.'

Ralph laughed, and they walked through the galleries. The question, of
course, arose, which was the greater, the Turner or the Claude?

Mildred thought that she liked the Claude.

'One is romance, the other is common sense.'

'If the Turner is romance, I wonder I don't prefer it to the Claude. I
love romance.'

'School-girl romance, very likely.' Mildred didn't answer and, without
noticing her, Ralph continued, 'I like Turner best in the grey and
English manner: that picture, for instance, on the other side of the
doorway. How much simpler, how much more original, how much more
beautiful. That grey and yellow sky, the delicacy of the purple in the
clouds. But even in classical landscape Turner did better than Claude
--Turner created--all that architecture is dreamed; Claude copied
his.'

At the end of each little sentence he stared at Mildred, half ashamed
at having expressed himself so badly, half surprised at having
expressed himself so well. Anxious to draw him out, she said:

'But the picture you admire is merely a strip of sea with some
fishing-boats. I've seen it a hundred times before--at Brighton, at
Westgate, at whatever seaside place we go to, just like that, only not
quite so dark.'

'Yes, just like that, only not quite so dark. That "not quite so dark"
makes the difference. Turner didn't copy, he transposed what he saw.
Transposed what he saw,' he repeated. 'I don't explain myself very
well, I don't know if you understand. But what I mean is that the more
realistic you are the better; so long as you transpose, there must
always be a transposition of tones.'

Mildred admitted that she did not quite understand. Ralph stammered,
and relinquished the attempt to explain. They walked in silence until
they came to the Rembrandts--the portrait of the painter as a young
man and the portrait of the 'Jew Merchant.' Mildred preferred the
portrait of the young man. 'But not because it's a young man,' she
pleaded, 'but because it is, it is---'

'Compared with the "Jew Merchant" it is like a coloured photograph...
Look at him, he rises up grand and mysterious as a pyramid, the other
is as insignificant as life. Look at the Jew's face, it is done with
one tint; a synthesis, a dark red, and the face is as it were made out
of nothing--hardly anything, and yet everything is said... You can't
say where the picture begins or ends, the Jew surges out of the
darkness like a vision. Look at his robe, a few folds, that is all,
and yet he's completely dressed, and his hand, how large, how great...
Don't you see, don't you understand?'

'I think I do,' Mildred replied a little wistfully, and she cast a
last look on the young man whom she must admire no more. Ralph opened
the door marked _students only_, and they went down the stone steps.
When they came to where the men and women separated for their
different rooms, Mildred asked Ralph if he were going out to lunch? He
hesitated, and then answered that it took too long to go to a
restaurant. Mildred guessed by his manner that he had no money.

'There's no place in the gallery where we can get lunch--you women are
luckier than us men. What do they give you in your room?'

'You mean in the way of meat? Cold meat, beef and ham, pork pies. But
I don't care for meat, I never touch it.'

'What do you eat?'

'There are some nice cakes. I'll go and get some; we'll share them.'

'No, no, I really am not hungry, much obliged.'

'Oh, do let me go and get some cakes, it'll be such fun, and so much
nicer than sitting with a lot of women in that little room.'

They shared their cakes, walking up and down the great stone passages,
and this was the beginning of their intimacy. On the following week
she wrote to say what train she was coming up by; he met her at the
station, and they went together to the National Gallery. But their way
led through St. James' Park; they lingered there, and, as the season
advanced, their lingerings in the park grew longer and longer.

'What a pretty park this is. It always seems to me like a lady's
boudoir, or what I imagine a lady's boudoir must be like.'

'Have you never seen a lady's boudoir?'

'No; I don't think I have. I've never been in what you call society. I
had to make my living ever since I was sixteen. My father was a small
tradesman in Brixton. When I was sixteen I had to make my own living.
I used to draw in the illustrated papers. I began by making two pounds
a week. Then, as I got on, I used to live as much as possible in the
country. You can't paint landscapes in London.'

'You must have had a hard time.'

'I suppose I had. It was all right as long as I kept to my newspaper
work. But I was ambitious, and wanted to paint in oils; but I never
had a hundred pounds in front of me. I could only get away for a
fortnight or a month at a time. Then, as things got better, I had to
help my family. My father died, and I had to look after my mother.'

Mildred raised her eyes and looked at him affectionately.

'I think I could have done something if I had had a fair chance.'

'Done something? But you have done something. Have you forgotten what
the _Spectator_ said of your farmyard?'

'That's nothing. If I hadn't to think of getting my living I could do
better than that. Oil painting is the easiest material of all until
you come to a certain point; after that point, when you begin to think
of quality and transparency, it is most difficult.'

They were standing on the bridge. The water below them was full of
ducks. The birds balanced themselves like little boats on the waves,
and Mildred thought of her five hundred a year and the pleasure it
would be to help Ralph to paint the pictures he wanted to paint. She
imagined him a great artist; his success would be her doing. At that
same moment he was thinking that there never had been any pleasure in
his life; and Mildred--her hat, her expensive dress, her sunshade--
seemed in such bitter contrast to himself, to his own life, that he
could not hide a natural irritation.

'Your life has been all pleasure,' he said, glancing at her
disdainfully.

'No, indeed, it has not. My life has been miserable enough. We are
rich, it is true, but our riches have never brought me happiness. The
best time I've had has been since I met you.'

'Is that true? I wonder if that's true.'

Their eyes met and she said hastily, with seeming desire to change the
subject:

'So you're a Londoner born and bred, and yet you'd like to live in the
country.'

'Only for my painting. I love London, but you can't paint landscapes
in London.'

'I wonder why not. You said you loved this park. There's nothing more
beautiful in the country--those trees, this quiet, misty lake; it is
exquisite, and yet I suppose it wouldn't make a picture.'

'I don't know. I've often thought of trying to do something with it.
But what's beautiful to look at doesn't do well in a picture. The
hills and dales in the Green Park are perfect--their artificiality is
their beauty. There's one bit that I like especially.'

'Which is that?'

'The bit by Buckingham Palace where the sheep feed; the trees there
are beautiful, large spreading trees, and they give the place a false
air of Arcady. But in a picture it wouldn't do.'

'Why?'

'I can't say. I don't think it would mean much if it were painted.'

'You couldn't have a shepherd, or if you had he'd have to be cross-
gartered, and his lady-love in flowery silk would have to be sitting
on a bank, and there is not a bank there, you'd have to invent one.'

'That's it; the park is eighteenth century, a comedy of the
restoration.'

'But why couldn't you paint that?' said Mildred, pointing to where a
beautiful building passed across the vista.

'I suppose one ought to be able to. The turrets in the distance are
fine. But no, it wouldn't make a picture. The landscape painter never
will be able to do much with London. He'll have to live in the
country, and if he can't afford to do that he'd better turn it up.'

'Elsie Laurence and Cissy Clive are going to France soon. They say
that's the only place to study. In the summer they're going to a place
called Barbizon, near Fontainebleau. I was thinking of going with
them.'

'Were you? I wish I were going. Especially to Barbizon. The country
would suit me.'

Mildred longed to say, 'I shall be glad if you'll let me lend you the
money,' but she didn't dare. At the end of a long silence, Ralph said:

'I think we'd better be going on. It must be nearly ten.'




V.


As the spring advanced they spent more and more time in the park. They
learnt to know it in its slightest aspects; they anticipated each bend
of the lake's bank; they looked out for the tall trees at the end of
the island, and often thought of the tree that leaned until its lower
leaves swept the water's edge. Close to this tree was their favourite
seat. And, as they sat by the water's edge in the vaporous afternoons,
the park seemed part and parcel of their love of each other; it was
their refuge; it was only there that they were alone; the park was a
relief from the promiscuity of the galleries. In the park they could
talk without fear of being overheard, and they took interest in the
changes that spring was effecting in this beautiful friendly nature--
their friend and their accomplice.

'The park is greener than it was yesterday,' he said. 'Look at that
tree! How bright the green, and how strange it seems amid all the
blackness.'

'And that rose cloud and the reflection of the evening in the lake,
how tranquil.'

'And that great block of buildings, Queen Anne's Mansions, is it not
beautiful in the blue atmosphere? In London the ugliest things are
beautiful in the evening. No city has so pictorial an atmosphere.'

'Not Paris?'

'I've not seen Paris; I've never been out of England.'

'Then you're speaking of things you haven't seen.'

'Of things that I've only imagined.'

The conversation paused a moment, and then Ralph said:

'Are you still thinking of going to Paris with Elsie Laurence and
Cissy Clive?'

'I think so. Paris is the only place one can study art, so they say.'

'You'll be away a long while--several months?'

'It wouldn't be much good going if I didn't stop some time, six or
seven months, would it?'

'I suppose not.'

Mildred raised her eyes cautiously and looked at him. His eyes were
averted. He was looking where some ducks were swimming. They came
towards the bank slowly--a drake and two ducks. A third duck paddled
aimlessly about at some little distance. There was a slight mist on
the water.

'If you go to Paris I hope I may write to you. Send me your drawings
to correct. Any advice I can give you is at your service; I shall only
be too pleased.'

'Oh, yes, I hope you will write to me. I shall be so glad to hear from
you. I shall be lonely all that time away from home.'

'And you'll write to me?'

'Of course. And if I write to you, you won't misunderstand?'

Ralph looked up surprised.

'I mean, if I write affectionately you won't misunderstand. It will be
because---'

'Because you feel lonely?'

'Partly. But you don't misunderstand, do you?'

They watched the ducks in silence. At last Mildred said, 'That duck
wanders about by herself; why doesn't she join the others?'

'Perhaps she can't find a drake.'

'Perhaps she prefers to be alone.'

'We shall see--the drake is going to her.'

'She is going away from him. She doesn't want him.'

'She's jealous of the others. If there were no other she would.'

'There are always others.'

'Do you think so?'

Mildred did not answer. Ralph waited a few moments, then he said:

'So you're going away for six or seven months; the time will seem very
long while you're away.'

Again Mildred was tempted to ask him if she might lend him the money
to go to Paris. She raised her eyes to his (he wondered what was
passing in her mind), but he did not find courage to speak until some
days later. He had asked her to come to his studio to see a picture he
had begun. It was nearly six o'clock; Mildred had been there nearly an
hour; the composition had been exhaustively admired; but something
still unsaid seemed to float in the air, and every moment that
something seemed to grow more imminent.

'You are decided to go to France. When do you leave?'

'Some time next week. The day is not yet fixed.'

'Elsie Laurence and Cissy Clive are going?'

'Yes.... Why don't you come too?'

'I wish I could. I can't. I have no money.'

'But I can lend you what you want. I have more than I require. Let me
lend you a hundred pounds. Do.'

Ralph smiled through his red moustache, and his grey gentle eyes
smiled too, a melancholy little smile that passed quickly.

'It is very kind of you. But it would be impossible for me to borrow
money from you. Even if I had the money, I could hardly go with you.'

'Why not, there's a party. Walter is going, and Hopwood Blunt is
going. I'm the fifth wheel.'

Ralph was about to say something, but he checked himself; he never
spoke ill of any one. So, putting his criticism of her companions
aside, he said:

'Only under one condition could I go abroad with you. You know,
Mildred, I love you.'

An expression of pleasure came upon her face, and, seeing it, he threw
his arms out to draw her closer. She drew away.

'You shrink from me.... I suppose I'm too rough. You could never care
for me.'

'Yes, indeed, Ralph, I do care for you. I like you very much indeed,
but not like that.'

'You could not like me enough to marry me.'

'I don't think I could marry any one.'

'Why not?'

'I don't know.'

'Do you care for any one else?'

'No, indeed I don't. I like you very much. I want you to be my
friend.... But you don't understand. Men never do. I suppose affection
would not satisfy you.'

'But you could not marry me?'

'I'd sooner marry you than any one. But---'

'But what?'

Mildred told the story of her engagement, and how in the end she had
been forced to break it off.

'And you think if you engaged yourself to me it might end in the same
way?'

'Yes. And I would not cause you pain. Forgive me.'

'But if you never intend to marry, what do you intend to do?'

'There are other things to do surely.'

'What?'

'There's art.'

'Art!'

'You think I shall not succeed with my painting?'

'No. I did not mean that. I hope you will. But painting is very
difficult. I've found it so. It seems hopeless.'

'You think I shall be a failure? You think that I'd better remain at
home and marry than go to France and study?'

'It's impossible to say who will succeed. I only know it is very
difficult--too difficult for me.... Women never have succeeded in
painting.'

'Some have, to a certain extent.'

'But you're not angry, offended at my having spoken?'

'No; I hope we shall always be friends. You know that I like you very
much.'

'Then why not, why not be engaged? It will give you time to consider,
to find out if you could.'

'But, you see, I've broken off one engagement, so that I might be free
to devote myself to painting.'

'But that man was not congenial to you. He was not an artist, he would
have opposed your painting; you'd have had to give up painting if you
had married him. But I'm quite different. I should help and encourage
you in your art. All you know I have taught you. I could teach you a
great deal more. Mildred---'

'Do you think that you could?'

'Yes; will you let me try?'

'But, you see, I'm going away. Shall I see you again before I go?'

'When you like. When? To-morrow?'

'To-morrow would be nice.'

'Where--in the National?'

'No, in the park. It will be nicer in the park. Then about eleven.'

At five minutes past eleven he saw her coming through the trees, and
she signed to him with a little movement of her parasol, which was
particularly charming, and which seemed to him to express her. They
walked from the bridge along the western bank; the trees were prettier
there, and from their favourite seat they saw the morning light silver
the water, the light mist evaporate, and the trees on the other bank
emerge from vague masses into individualities of trunk and bough. The
day was warm, though there was little sun, and the park swung a great
mass of greenery under a soft, grey sky.

The drake and the two ducks came swimming towards them--the drake, of
course, in the middle, looking very handsome and pleased, and at a
little distance the third duck pursued her rejected and disconsolate
courtship. Whenever she approached too near, the drake rushed at her
with open beak, and drove her back. Then she affected not to know
where she was going, wandering in an aimless, absent-minded fashion,
getting near and nearer her recalcitrant drake. But these ruses were
wasted upon him; he saw through them all, and at last he attacked the
poor broken-hearted duck so determinedly that she was obliged to seek
safety in flight. And the entire while of the little aquatic comedy
the wisdom of an engagement had been discussed between Ralph and
Mildred. She had consented. But her promise had not convinced Ralph,
and he said, referring to the duck which they had both been watching:

'I shall dangle round you for a time, and when I come too near you'll
chase me away until at last you'll make up your mind that you can
stand it no longer, and will refuse ever to see me again.'




VI.


She had had a rough passage: sea sickness still haunted in her, she
was pale with fatigue, and her eyes longed for sleep. But Elsie and
Cissy were coming to take her to the studio at ten o'clock. So she
asked to be called at nine, and she got up when she was called.

The gilt clock was striking ten in the empty drawing-room when she
entered. 'I didn't expect her to get up at six to receive me, but she
might be up at ten, I think. However, it doesn't much matter. I
suppose she's looking after her sick husband. ... Well, I don't think
much of her drawing-room. Red plush sofas and chairs. It is just like
an hotel, and the street is dingy enough,' thought Mildred, as she
pulled one of the narrow lace curtains aside: I don't think much of
Paris. But it doesn't matter, I shall be at the studio nearly all
day.'

A moment after Mrs. Fargus entered. 'I'm so sorry,' she said, 'I
wasn't up to receive you, but---'

'I didn't expect you to get up at five, which you would have had to
do. I was here soon after six.'

Mrs. Fargus asked her if she had had a good passage, if she felt
fatigued, and what she thought of Paris. And then the conversation
dropped.

'She's a good little soul,' thought Mildred, 'even though she does
dress shabbily. It is pure kindness of her to have me here; she
doesn't want the three pounds a week I pay her. But I had to pay
something. I couldn't sponge on her hospitality for six months... I
wonder she doesn't say something. I suppose I must.'

'You know it is very kind of you to have me here. I don't know how to
thank you.'

Mrs. Fargus' thoughts seemed on their way back from a thousand miles.
'From the depths of Comte,' thought Mildred.

'My dear, you wanted to study.'

'Yes, but if it hadn't been for you I should never have got the
chance. As it was Harold did his best to keep me. He said he'd have to
get a housekeeper, and it would put him to a great deal of
inconvenience: men are so selfish. He'd like me to keep house for him
always.'

'We're all selfish, Mildred. Men aren't worse than women, only it
takes another form. We only recognise selfishness when it takes a form
different from our practice.'

Mildred listened intently, but Mrs. Fargus said no more, and the
conversation seemed as if it were going to drop. Suddenly, to
Mildred's surprise, Mrs. Fargus said:

'When do you propose to begin work?'

'This morning. Elsie Laurence and Cissy Clive are coming to take me to
the studio. I'm expecting them every moment. They're late.'

'They know the studio they're taking you to, I suppose?'

'Oh yes, they've worked there before... The question is whether I
ought to work in the men's studio, or if it would be better, safer, to
join the ladies' class.'

'What does Miss Laurence say?'

'Oh, Elsie and Cissy are going to work with the men. They wouldn't
work with a lot of women.'

'Why?'

'Because they like being with men in the first place.'

'Oh! But you?'

'No, I don't mind, and yet I don't think I should care to be cooped up
all day with a lot of women.'

'You mean that there would be more emulation in a mixed class?'

'Yes; and Elsie says it is better to work in the men's studio. There
are cleverer pupils there than in the ladies' studio, and one learns
as much from one's neighbours as from the professor; more.'

'Are you sure of that? Do you not think that we are all far too ready
to assume that whatever men do is the best?'

'I suppose we are.'

'Men kept us uneducated till a hundred years ago; we are only gaining
our rights inch by inch, prejudice is only being overcome very slowly,
and whenever women have had equal, or nearly equal, advantages they
have proved themselves equal or superior to men. Women's inferiority
in physical strength is immaterial, for, as mankind grows more
civilised, force will be found in the brain and not in the muscles.'

Mrs. Fargus was now fairly afloat on her favourite theme, viz., if men
were kind to women, their kindness was worse than their cruelty--it
was demoralising.

Eventually the conversation returned whence it had started, and Mrs.
Fargus said:

'Then why do you hesitate? What is the objection to the men's studio?'

'I do not know that there is any particular objection, nothing that I
ought to let stand in the way of my studies. It was only something
that Elsie and Cissy said. They said the men's conversation wasn't
always very nice. But they weren't sure, for they understand French
hardly at all--they may have been mistaken. But if the conversation
were coarse it would be very unpleasant for me; the students would
know that I understood... Then there's the model, there's that to be
got over. But Elsie and Cissy say that the model's nothing; no more
than a statue.'

'The model is undraped?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Really Mildred---'

'That's the disadvantage of being a girl. Prejudice closes the
opportunity of study to one.'

Mrs. Fargus did not speak for a long time. At last she said:

'Of course, Mildred, you must consult your own feeling; if it's the
custom, if it's necessary--Your vocation is of course everything.'

Then it was Mildred's turn to pause before answering. At last she
said:

'It does seem rather--well, disgusting, but if it is necessary for
one's art. In a way I'd as soon work in the ladies' studio.'

'I daresay you derive just as much advantage.'

'Do you think so? It's from the students round one that one learns,
and there's no use coming to Paris if one doesn't make the most of
one's opportunities.'

'You might give the ladies' studio a trial, and if you didn't find you
were getting on you could join the men's.'

'After having wasted three months! As you say my vocation is
everything. It would be useless for me to think of taking up painting
as a profession, if I did not work in the men's studio.'

'But are you going there?'

'I can't make up my mind. You have frightened me, you've put me off
it.'

'I think I hardly offered an opinion.'

'Perhaps Harold would not like me to go there.'

'You might write to him. Yes, write to him.'

'Write to Harold about such a thing--the most conventional man in the
world!'

At that moment the servant announced Elsie and Cissy. They wore their
best dresses and were clearly atingle with desire of conversation and
Paris.

'We're a little late, aren't we, dear. We're so sorry,' said Elsie.

'How do you do, dear,' said Cissy.

Mildred introduced her friends. They bowed, and shook hands with Mrs.
Fargus, but were at no pains to conceal their indifference to the drab
and dowdy little woman in the soiled sage green, and the glimmering
spectacles. 'What a complexion,' whispered Elsie the moment they were
outside the door. 'What's her husband like?' asked Cissy as they
descended the first flight. Mildred answered that Mr. Fargus suffered
from asthma, and hoped no further questions would be asked, so happy
was she in the sense of real emancipation from the bondage of home--so
delighted was she in the spectacle of the great boulevard, now radiant
with spring sunlight.

She wondered at the large blue cravats of idlers, sitting in cafes
freshly strewn with bright clean sand, at the aprons of the waiters,--
the waiters were now pouring out green absinthe,--at the little shop
girls in tight black dresses and frizzled hair, passing three together
arm in arm; all the boulevard amused and interested Mildred. It looked
so different, she said, from what it had done four hours before. 'But
none of us look our best at six in the morning,' she added laughing,
and her friends laughed too. Elsie and Cissy chattered of some project
to dine with Walter, and go to the theatre afterwards, and
incidentally Mildred learnt that Hopwood Blunt would not be in Paris
before the end of the week. But where was the studio? The _kiosques_
were now open, the morning papers were selling briskly, the roadway
was full of _fiacres_ plying for hire, or were drawn up in lines three
deep, the red waistcoated coachmen slept on their box-seats. But where
was the studio?

Suddenly they turned into an Arcade. The shops on either side were
filled with jet ornaments, fancy glass, bon-bons, boxes, and fans.
Cissy thought of a present for Hopwood--that case of liqueur glasses.
Mildred examined a jet brooch which she thought would suit Mrs.
Fargus. Elsie wished that Walter would present her with a fan; and
then they went up a flight of wooden stairs and pushed open a swing
door. In a small room furnished with a divan, a desk, and a couple of
cane chairs, they met M. Daveau. He wore a short jacket and a brown-
black beard. He shook hands with Elsie and Cissy, and was introduced
to Mildred. Elsie said:

'You speak better than we do. Tell him you've come here to study.'

'I've come to Paris to study painting,' said Mildred. 'But I don't
know which I shall join, the ladies' studio or the men's studio. Miss
Laurence and Miss Clive advised me to work here, in the men's studio.'

'I know Miss Laurence and Miss Clive very well.' There was charm in
his voice, and Mildred was already interested in him. Cissy and Elsie
had drawn a curtain at the end of the room and were peeping into the
studio. 'Miss Laurence and Miss Clive,' he said, 'worked here for more
than a year. They made a great deal of progress--a great deal. They
worked also in the ladies' studio, opposite.'

'Ah, that is what I wanted to speak to you about. Would you advise me
to work in the men's studio? Do you think it would be advisable? Do
you think there would be any advantages?'

'We have some very clever pupils here--very clever; of course it is of
great advantage to work with clever pupils.'

'That is what I think, but I am not certain.'

'If Mademoiselle intends to study painting seriously.'

'Oh, but I do; I am very serious.'

'Then I do not think there can be any doubt which studio she should
choose.'

'Very well.'

'This studio is a hundred francs a month--for a lady; the ladies'
studio is sixty francs a month.'

'Why is that?'

'Because, if it were not so, we should be overcrowded. Ladies prefer
to work in this studio, it is much more advantageous. If you would
like to see the studio first?'

There were more than thirty in the studio; about twenty men and
fifteen women. Some sat on low stools close under the platform whereon
the model stood, some worked at easels drawn close together in a
semicircle round the room. The model was less shocking than Mildred
had imagined; he stood with his hands on his hip, a staff in his hand;
and, had it not been for a slight swaying motion, she would hardly
have known he was alive. She had never drawn before from the living
model, and was puzzled to know how to begin. She was going to ask
Elsie to tell her, when M. Daveau drew the curtain aside, and picking
his way through the pupils, came straight to her. He took the stool
next her, and with a pleasant smile asked if she had ever drawn from
the life.

'No,' she said, 'I have only copied a few pictures, you learn nothing
from copying.'

He told her how she must count the number of heads, and explained to
her the advantage of the plumb-line in determining the action of the
figure. Mildred was much interested; she wondered if she would be able
to put the instruction she was receiving into practice, and was
disappointed when the model got down from the table and put on his
trousers.

'The model rests for ten minutes every three quarters of an hour.
He'll take the pose again presently. It is now eleven o'clock.'

M. Daveau laid the charcoal upon her easel, and promised to come and
see how she was getting on later in the afternoon. But, just as the
model was about to take the pose again, a young girl entered the
studio.

'Do you want a model?'

'Yes, if she has a good figure,' said a student. 'Have you a good
figure?' he added with a smile.

'Some people think so. You must judge for yourselves,' she answered,
taking off her hat.

'Surely she is not going to undress in public!' said Mildred to Elsie,
who had come to her easel.




VII.


Mildred worked hard in the studio. She was always one of the first to
arrive, and she did not leave till the model had finished sitting, and
during the eight hours, interrupted only by an hour in the middle of
the day for lunch, she applied herself to her drawing, eschewing
conversation with the students, whether French or English. She did not
leave her easel when the model rested; she waited patiently sharpening
her pencils or reading--she never came to the studio unprovided with a
book. And she made a pretty picture sitting on her high stool, and the
students often sketched her during the rests. Although quietly, she
was always beautifully dressed. Simple though they appeared to be, her
black _crepe de chine_ skirts told of large sums of money spent in
fashionable millinery establishments, and her large hats profusely
trimmed with ostrich feathers, which suited her so well, contrasted
strangely with the poor head-gear of the other girls; and when the
weather grew warmer she appeared in a charming shot silk grey and
pink, and a black straw hat lightly trimmed with red flowers. In
answer to Elsie, who had said that she looked as if she were going to
a garden-party, Mildred said:

'I don't see why, because you're an artist, you should be a slattern.
I don't feel comfortable in a dirty dress. It makes me feel quite
ill.'

Although Mildred was constantly with Elsie and Cissy she never seemed
to be of their company; and seeing them sitting together in the
_Bouillon Duval_, at their table next the window, an observer would be
sure to wonder what accident had sent out that rare and subtle girl
with such cheerful commonness as Elsie and Cissy. The contrast was
even more striking when they entered the eating-house, Mildred looking
a little annoyed, and always forgetful of the tariff card which she
should take from the door-keeper. Elsie and Cissy triumphant, making
for the staircase, as Mildred said to herself, 'with a flourish of
cards.' Mildred instinctively hated the _Bouillon Duval_, and only
went there because her friends could not afford a restaurant. The
traffic of the _Bouillon_ disgusted her; the food, she admitted, was
well enough, but, as she said, it was mealing--feeding like an animal
in a cage,--not dining or breakfasting. Very often she protested.

'Oh, nonsense,' said Cissy, 'we shall get one of Catherine's tables if
we make haste.'

Catherine was their favourite waitress. Like a hen she seemed to have
taken them under her protection. And she told them what were the best
dishes, and devoted a large part of her time to attending on them. She
liked Mildred especially; she paid her compliments and so became a
contrary influence in Mildred's dislike of the _Bouillon_. She seemed
to understand them thoroughly from the first. Elsie and Cissy she knew
would eat everything, they were never without their appetites, but
Mildred very often said she could eat nothing. Then Catherine would
come to the rescue with a tempting suggestion, _Une belle aile de
poulet avec sauce remoulade_. 'Well, perhaps I could pick a bone,'
Mildred would answer, and these wings of chicken seemed to her the
best she had ever eaten. She liked the tiny strawberries which were
beginning to come into season; she liked _les petites suisses_; and
she liked the chatter of her friends, and her own chatter across the
little marble table. She thought that she had never enjoyed talking so
much before.

One evening, as they stirred their coffee, Elsie said, looking down
the street, 'What a pretty effect.'

Mildred leaned over her friend's shoulder and saw the jagged outline
of the street and a spire beautiful in the sunset. She was annoyed
that she had not first discovered the picturesqueness of the
perspective, and, when Elsie sketched the street on the marble table,
she felt that she would never be able to draw like that.

The weather grew warmer, and, in June, M. Daveau and three or four of
the leading students proposed that they should make up a party to
spend Sunday at Bas Mendon. To arrive at Bas Mendon in time for
breakfast they would have to catch the ten o'clock boat from the Pont
Neuf. Cissy, Elsie, and Mildred were asked: there were no French girls
to ask, so, as Elsie said, 'they'd have the men to themselves.'

The day impressed itself singularly on Mildred's mind. She never
forgot the drive to the Pont Neuf in the early morning, the sunshine
had seemed especially lovely; she did not forget her fear lest she
should be late--she was only just in time; they were waiting for her,
their paint-boxes slung over their shoulders, and the boat was moving
alongside as she ran down the steps. She did not forget M. Daveau's
black beard; she saw it and remembered it long afterwards. But she
never could recall her impressions of the journey--she only remembered
that it had seemed a long while, and that she was very hungry when
they arrived. She remembered the trellis and the boiled eggs and the
cutlets, and that after breakfast M. Daveau had painted a high
stairway that led to the top of the hill and she remembered how she
had stood behind him wondering at the ease with which he drew in the
steps. In the evening there had been a little exhibition of sketches,
and in the boat going home he had talked to her; and she had enjoyed
talking to him. Of his conversation she only recalled one sentence.
She had asked him if he liked classical music, and he had answered,
'There is no music except classical music.' And it was this chance
phrase that made the day memorable; its very sententiousness had
pleased her; in that calm bright evening she had realised and it had
helped her to realise that there existed a higher plane of
appreciation and feeling than that on which her mind moved.

At the end of July, Elsie and Cissy spoke of going into the country,
and they asked Mildred to come with them. Barbizon was a village close
to the Forest of Fontainebleau. There was an inn where they would be
comfortable: all the clever young fellows went to Barbizon for the
summer. But Mildred thought that on the whole it would be better for
her to continue working in the studio without interruption. Elsie and
Cissy did not agree with her. They told her that she would find the
studio almost deserted and quite intolerable in August. Bad tobacco,
drains, and Italian models--Faugh! But their description of what the
studio would become in the hot weather did not stir Mildred's
resolution. M. Daveau had told her that landscape painting would come
to her very easily when she had learnt to draw, and that the way to
learn to draw was to draw from the nude. So she bore with the heat and
the smells for eight hours a day. There were but four or five other
pupils beside herself; this was an advantage in a way, but these few
were not inclined for work; idleness is contagious, and Mildred
experienced much difficulty in remaining at her easel.

In the evenings her only distraction was to go for a drive with Mrs.
Fargus. But too often Mrs. Fargus could not leave her husband, and
these evenings Mildred spent in reading or in writing letters. The
dullness of her life and the narrowness and aridity of her
acquaintance induced her to write very often to Ralph, and depression
of spirits often tempted her to express herself more affectionately
than she would have done in wider and pleasanter circumstances. She
once spoke of the pleasure it would give her to see him, she said that
she would like to see him walk into the studio. But when he took her
at her word and she saw him draw aside the curtain and look in, a
cloud of annoyance gathered on her face. But she easily assumed her
pretty mysterious smile and said:

'When did you arrive?'

'Only this morning. You said you'd like to see me. I had to come.... I
hope you are not angry.'

Then noticing that the girl next them was an English girl, Ralph spoke
about Mildred's drawing. She did not like him to see it, but he asked
her for the charcoal and said if she would give him her place he would
see if he could find out what was wrong; he did not think she had got
enough movement into the figure.

'Ah, that's what the professor says when he comes round _toujours un
peu froid comme mouvement._ I can get the proportions; it is the
movement that bothers me.'

'Movement is drawing in the real sense of the word. If they would only
teach you to draw by the movement.'

He continued to correct Mildred's drawing for some time. When he laid
down the charcoal, he said:

'How hot it is here! I wonder how you can bear it.'

'Yes, the heat is dreadful. I'm too exhausted to do much work.
Supposing we go out.'

They went downstairs and some way along the Passage des Panoramas
without speaking. At last Mildred said:

'Are you going to be in Paris for long?'

'No, I'm going back at once, perhaps to-morrow. You know I've a lot of
work on hand. I'm getting on, luck has turned. I've sold several
pictures. I must get back.'

'Why, to-morrow?--it was hardly worth while coming for so short a
time.'

'I only came to see you. You know I couldn't--you know--I mean that I
felt that I must see you.'

Mildred looked up, it was an affectionate glance; and she swung her
parasol in a way that recalled their walks in the Green Park. They
passed out of the _passage_ into the boulevard. As they crossed the
Rue Vivienne, Ralph said in his abrupt fragmentary way:

'You said you'd like to see me, I could see from your letters that you
were unhappy.'

'No, I'm not unhappy--a little dull at times, that is all.'

'You wrote me some charming letters. I hope you meant all you said.'

'Did I say so much, then? I daresay I said more than I intended.'

'No, don't say that, don't say that.'

The absinthe drinkers, the green trees, the blue roofs of the great
houses, all these signs of the boulevard, intruded upon and
interrupted their thoughts; then the boulevard passed out of their
sight and they were again conscious of nothing but each other.

'I met your brother. He was anxious about you. He wondered if you were
getting on and I said that I'd go and see.'

'And do you think I'm getting on?'

 Yes, I think you've made progress. You couldn't have done that
drawing before you went to Paris.'

'You really think so.... I was right to go to Paris.... I must show
you my other drawings. I've some better than that.'

The artistic question was discussed till they reached the Place de
l'Opera.

'That is the opera-house,' Mildred said, 'and that is the Cafe de la
Paix.... You haven't been to Paris before?'

'No; this is my first visit. But I didn't come to Paris to see Paris.
I came to see you. I could not help myself. Your letters were so
charming. I have read them over a thousand times. I couldn't go on
reading them without seeing you.... I got afraid that you'd find some
one here you'd fall in love with. Some one whom you'd prefer to me.
Have you?'

'No; I don't know that I have.'

'Then why shouldn't we be married? That's what I've come to ask you.'

'You mean now, in Paris?'

'Why not? If you haven't met any one you like better, you know.'

'And give up my painting, and just at the time I'm beginning to get
on! You said I had improved in my drawing.'

'Ah, your drawing interests you more than I.'

'I'd give anything to draw like Misal. You don't know him--a student
of the _Beaux Arts._'

'When you'd learnt all he knows, you wouldn't be any nearer to
painting a picture.'

'That isn't very polite. You don't think much of my chances of
success.... But we shall see.'

'Mildred, you don't understand me. This is not fair to me. Only say
when you'll marry me, and I'll wait, I'll wait, yes, as long as you
like--only fix a time.'

'When I've learnt to draw.'

'You're laughing at me.'

Her face darkened, and they did not speak again till the green roof of
the Madeleine appeared, striking sharp against a piece of blue sky.
Mildred said:

'This is my way,' and she turned to the right.

'You take offence without cause. When you have learnt to draw! We're
always learning to draw. No one has ever learnt to draw perfectly.'

'I have no other answer.'

'Mildred, this isn't fair.'

'If you're not satisfied I release you from your engagement. Yes, I
release you from your engagement.'

'Mildred, you're cruel. You seem to take pleasure in torturing me. But
this cannot be. I cannot live without you. What am I to do?'

'You must try.'

'No, I shall not try,' he answered sullenly.

'What will you do?'

'My plans are made. I shall not live.'

'Oh, Ralph, you will not kill yourself. It would not be worth while.
You've your art to live for. You are--how old are you--thirty? You're
no longer a sentimental boy. You've got your man's life to lead. You
must think of it.'

'I don't feel as if I could. Life seems impossible.'

She looked into his pale gentle eyes and the thought crossed her mind
that his was perhaps one of those narrow, gentle natures that cannot
outlive such a disappointment as she intended to inflict. It would be
very terrible if he did commit suicide, the object of his visit to
Paris would transpire. But no, he would not commit suicide, she was
quite safe, and on that thought she said:

'I cannot remain out any longer.'




VIII.


She stopped in the middle of the room, and, holding in her hand her
large hat decorated with ostrich feathers, she assured herself that it
was not at all likely that he would commit suicide. Yet men did commit
suicide.... She did not want him to kill himself, that anything so
terrible should happen would grieve her very much. She was quite
sincere, yet the thought persisted that it would be very wonderful if
he did do so. It would make a great scandal. That a man should kill
himself for her! No woman had ever obtained more than that. Standing
in the middle of the room, twirling her hat, she asked herself if she
really wished him to kill himself. Of course not. Then she thought of
herself, of how strange she was. She was very strange, she had never
quite understood herself.

Mechanically, as if in a dream, she opened a bandbox and put her hat
away. She smoothed her soft hair before the glass. Her appearance
pleased her, and she wondered if she were worth a man's life. She was
a dainty morsel, no doubt, so dainty that life was unendurable without
her. But she was wronging herself, she did not wish him to kill
himself.... Men had done so before for women.... If it came to the
point, she would do everything in her power to prevent such a thing.
She would do everything, yes, everything except marry him. She
couldn't settle down to watch him painting pictures. She wanted to
paint pictures herself. Would she succeed? He didn't think so, but
that was because he wanted her to marry him. And, if she didn't
succeed, she would have to marry him or some one else. She would have
to live with a man, give up her whole life to him, submit herself to
him. She must succeed. Success meant so much. If she succeeded, she
would be spoken of in the newspapers, and, best of all, she would hear
people say when she came into a room, 'That is Mildred Lawson....'

She didn't want to marry, but she would like to have all the nicest
men in love with her.... Meanwhile she was doing the right thing. She
must learn to draw, and the studio was the only place she could learn.
But she did not want to paint large portraits with dark backgrounds.
She could not see herself doing things like that. Chaplin was her
idea. She had always admired him. His women were so dainty, so
elegant, so eighteenth century--wicked little women in swings, as
wicked as their ankles, as their lovers' guitars.

But she would have to work two or three years before any one could
tell her whether she would succeed. Two or three years! It was a long
time, but a woman must do something if she wishes to attract
attention, to be a success. A little success in art went a long way in
society. But Paris was so dull, Elsie and Cissy were still away. There
was no one in the studio who interested her; moreover, Elsie had told
her that any flirtation there might easily bring banishment to the
ladies' studio across the way. So it was provoking that Ralph had
forced her to throw him over at that particular moment. She would have
liked to have kept him on, at least till the end of the month, when
Elsie and Cissy would return. The break with Ralph was certainly not
convenient. She still felt some interest in him. She would write to
him.




IX.


'We've come back,' said Elsie. 'We heard at the studio that you had
gone away feeling ill, so we came on here to find out how you were.'

'Oh, it is nothing,' said Mildred. 'I've been working rather hard
lately, that's all.'

'You should have come with us,' said Cissy. 'We've had an awfully
jolly time.'

'We'll go into the drawing-room. Wait a minute till I find my
slippers.'

'Oh, don't trouble to get up; we only came to see how you were,' said
Elsie.

'But I'm quite well, there's really nothing the matter. It was only
that I felt I couldn't go on working this afternoon. The model bored
me, and it was so hot. It was very good of you to come and see me like
this.'

'We've had a jolly time and have done a lot of work.'

'Elsie has done a girl weaving a daisy-chain in a meadow. It is
wonderful how she has got the sunlight on the grass. All our things
are in the studio, you will see them to-morrow.'

'I don't see why I shouldn't see them to-day. I'll dress myself.'

The account they gave of their summer outing was tantalising to the
tired and jaded girl. She imagined the hushed and shady places, the
murmuring mystery of bird and insect life. She could see them going
forth in the mornings with their painting materials, sitting at their
easels under the tall trees, intent on their work or lying on rugs
spread in the shade, the blue smoke of cigarettes curling and going
out, or later in the evening packing up easels and paint-boxes, and
finding their way out of the forest.

It was Elsie who did most of the talking. Cissy reminded her now and
then of something she had forgotten, and, when they turned into the
Passage des Panoramas, Elsie was deep in an explanation of the folly
of square brush work. Both were converts to open brush work. They had
learnt it from a very clever fellow, an impressionist. All his shadows
were violet. She did not hold with his theory regarding the division
of the tones: at least not yet. Perhaps she would come to it in time.

Mildred liked Elsie's lady in a white dress reading under a
rhododendron tree in full blossom. Cissy had painted a naked woman in
the garden sunshine. Mildred did not think that flesh could be so
violet as that, but there was a dash and go about it that she felt she
would never attain. It seemed to her a miracle, and, in her admiration
for her friend's work, she forgot her own failure. The girls dined at
a Bouillon Duval and afterwards they went to the theatre together.
Next morning they met, all three, in the studio; the model was
interesting, Mildred caught the movement more happily than usual; her
friends' advice had helped her.

But at least two years would have to pass before she would know if she
had the necessary talent to succeed as an artist. For that while she
must endure the drudgery of the studio and the boredom of evenings
alone with Mrs. Fargus. She went out with Elsie and Cissy sometimes,
but the men they introduced her to were not to her taste. She had seen
no one who interested her in Paris, except perhaps M. Daveau. That
thick-set, black-bearded southern, with his subtle southern manner,
had appealed to her, in a way. But M. Daveau had been ordered suddenly
to Royon for gout and rheumatism, and Mildred was left without any one
to exercise her attractions upon. She spent evening after evening with
Mrs. Fargus, until the cropped hair, the spectacles, above all, the
black satin dress with the crimson scarf, getting more and more
twisted, became intolerable. And Mr. Fargus' cough and his vacuous
conversation, in which no shadow of an idea ever appeared, tried her
temper. But she forebore, seeing how anxious they were to please her.
That was the worst. These simple kind-hearted people saw that their
sitting-room bored Mildred, and they often took her for drives in the
Bois after dinner. Crazed with boredom Mildred cast side-long glances
of hatred at Mrs. Fargus, who sat by her side a mute little figure
lost in Comte. Mr. Fargus' sallow-complexioned face was always
opposite her; he uttered commonplaces in a loud voice, and Mildred
longed to fling herself from the carriage. At last, unable to bear
with reality, she chattered, laughed, and told stories and joked until
her morose friends wondered at her happiness. Her friends were her
audience; they sufficed to stimulate the histrionic spirit in her, and
she felt pleased like an actor who has amused an audience which he
despises.

She had now been in Paris seven months, but she had seen little of
Paris except the studio and the Bouillon Duval where she went to
breakfast with Elsie and Cissy. The spectacle of the Boulevards, the
trees and the cafes always the same, had begun to weary her. Her
health, too, troubled her a little, she was not very strong, and she
had begun to think that a change would do her good. She would return
to Paris in the spring; she would spend next summer in Barbizon; she
was determined to allow nothing to interfere with her education; but,
for the moment, she felt that she must go back to Sutton. Every day
her craving for England grew more intolerable. She craved for England,
for her home, for its food, for its associations. She longed for her
own room, for her garden, for the trap. She wanted to see all the
girls, to hear what they thought of her absence. She wanted to see
Harold.

At first his letters had irritated her, she had said that he wanted
her to look after his house; she had argued that a man never hesitates
to put aside a woman's education, if it suits his convenience. But now
it seemed to her that it would be unkind to leave Harold alone any
longer. It was manifestly her duty to go home, to spend Christmas with
him. She was only going to Sutton for a while. She loved France, and
would certainly return. She knew now what Paris was like, and when she
returned it would be alone, or in different company. Mrs. Fargus was
very well, but she could not go on living with her for ever. She would
come in useful another time. But, for the moment, she could not go on
living with her, she had become a sort of Old Man of the Sea, and the
only way to rid herself of her was by returning to England.

An imperative instinct was drawing her back to England, but another
instinct equally strong said: 'As soon as I am rested, nothing shall
prevent me from returning to Paris.'




X.


The sea was calm and full of old-fashioned brigs and barques. She
watched them growing small like pictures floating between a green sea
and a mauve sky; and then was surprised to see the white cliffs so
near; and the blowing woodland was welcome after the treeless French
plain.

Harold was to meet her at Victoria, and when she had answered his
questions regarding the crossing, and they had taken their seats in
the suburban train, he said:

'You're looking a little tired, you've been over-doing it.'

'Yes, I've been working pretty hard,' she said, and the conversation
paused.

The trap was waiting for them at the station and, when they got in,
Mildred said: 'I wonder what there will be for dinner.'

'I think there is boiled salmon and a roast leg of mutton. Will that
suit you?'

'Well,' said Mildred, 'isn't that taking a somewhat sudden leap?'

'Leap where?'

'Why, into England. I should have thought that some sort of dish--a
roast chicken or a boiled chicken would have been a _pas de Calais_
kind of dish.'

'You shall have roast chicken to-morrow, or would you like them
boiled?'

'I don't mind,' said Mildred, more disappointed at the failure of her
joke than at the too substantial fare that awaited her. 'Poor Harold,'
she thought, 'is the best of fellows, but, like all of them, he can't
see a joke. The cooking I can alter, but he'll always remain boiled
and roast leg of mutton.'

But, though with little sense of humour, Harold was not as dense as
Mildred thought. He saw that her spirits were forced, that she was in
ill-health, and required a long rest. So he was not surprised to hear
in the morning that she was too tired to come down to breakfast; she
had a cup of tea in her room, and when she came down to the dining-
room she turned from the breakfast table. She could touch nothing, and
went out of doors to see what kind of day it was.

The skies were grey and lowering, the little avenue that led to the
gate was full of dead leaves; they fluttered down from the branches;
the lawn was soaked, and the few flowers that remained were pale and
worn. A sense of death and desolation pervaded the damp, moist air;
Mildred felt sorrow mounting in her throat, and a sense of dread,
occasioned by the sudden showering of a bough, caused her to burst
into tears. She had no strength left, she felt that she was going to
be ill, and trembled lest she should die.

To die, and she so young! No, she would live, she would succeed. But
to do that she must take more care of her health. She would eat no
more bon-bons; she threw the box away. And, conquering her repugnance
to butchers' meat, she finished a chop and drank a couple of glasses
of wine for lunch. The food did her good, and she determined to take a
long rest. For a month she would do nothing but rest, she would not
think of painting, she would not even draw on the blotting-pad. Rest
was what she wanted, and there was no better place to rest than
Sutton.

'If it weren't so dull.' She sighed and looked out on the wet lawn. No
one would call, no one knew she had come home. Was it wise for her to
venture out, and on such a day? She felt that it was not, and
immediately after ordered the trap.

She went to call on some friends.... If they would allow her to bring
Mabel back to dinner it would be nice, she could show Mabel her
dresses and tell her about Paris. But Mabel was staying with friends
in London. This was very disappointing, but determined to see some one
Mildred went a long way in search of a girl who used to bore her
dreadfully. But she too was out. Coming home Mildred was caught in the
rain; the exertion of changing her clothes had exhausted her, and
sitting in the warmth of the drawing-room fire she grew fainter and
fainter. The footman brought in the lamp. She got up in some vague
intention of fetching a book, but, as she crossed the room, she fell
full length along the floor.




XI.


When she was able to leave her room she was ordered to the sea-side.
After a fortnight in Brighton she went to stay with some friends in
town. Christmas she spent in Sutton. There was a large party of
Harold's friends, business folk, whom Mildred hated. She was glad when
they left, and she was free to choose the room that suited her purpose
best. She purchased draperies, and hired models, and commenced a
picture. She commenced a second picture, but that too went wrong; she
then tried a few studies. She got on better with these, but it soon
became clear to her that she could not carry out her ideas until she
had learned to draw.

Another two years of hard work in the studio were necessary. But as
she was not going to Paris till the spring her thoughts turned to the
National Gallery, and on the following week she commenced copying a
head by Greuse. She had barely finished sketching in the head when
Miss Brand told her that Ralph was very ill and was not expected to
live. She laid her charcoal on the easel, the movement was very slow,
and she lifted a frightened face.

'What is the matter with him? Do you know?'

'He caught a bad cold about a month ago, he doesn't seem ever to have
got over it. But for a long time he has been looking worried, you know
the look of a man who has something on his mind.'

A close observer might have noticed that the expression on Mildred's
face changed a little. 'He is dying for me,' she thought. 'He is dying
for love of me.' And as in a ray of sunlight she basked for a moment
in a little glow of self-satisfaction. Then, almost angrily, she
defended herself against herself. She was not responsible for so
casual a thought, the greatest saint might be the victim of a
wandering thought. She was, of course, glad that he liked her, but she
was sorry that she had caused him suffering. He must have suffered.
Men will sacrifice anything for their passions. But no, Ralph had
always been nice with her, she owed him a great deal; they had had
pleasant times together--in this very gallery. She could remember
almost every word he said. She had liked him to lean over her
shoulder, and correct her drawing. He would never do so again.

Good heavens! ... Just before Miss Brand came up to speak to her she
was wondering if she should meet him in the gallery, and what he would
think of the Greuse. He wouldn't care much about it. He didn't care
much about the French eighteenth century, of course he admired
Watteau, but it was an impersonal admiration, there was nothing of the
Watteau, Greuse, Pater, or Lancret in him. He was purely English. He
took no interest in the unreal charm that that head expressed. Of
course, no such girl had ever existed or could exist, those melting
eyes and the impossible innocence of that mouth! It was the soul of a
courtesan in the body of a virgin. She was like that, somewhat like
that; and, inspired by the likeness between herself and the picture,
Mildred took up her charcoal and continued her drawing.

But she must have been thinking vaguely all the while of Ralph, for
suddenly her thoughts became clear and she heard the words as if they
had been read to her: 'Lots of men have killed themselves for women,
but to die of a broken heart proves a great deal more. Few women have
inspired such a love as that.... If it were known--if--she pushed the
thought angrily aside as one might a piece of furniture over which one
has stumbled in the dark. It was shocking that thoughts should come
uncalled for, and such thoughts! the very opposite of what she really
felt. That man had been very good to her; she had liked him very much.
It was shocking that she had been the cause of his death. It was too
terrible. But it was most improbable, it was much more likely that his
illness was the effect of the cold he had caught last month. Men did
not die of broken hearts. She had nothing whatever to do with it....
And yet she didn't know. When men like him set their hearts on a
woman--she was very sorry, she was sorry. But there was no use
thinking any more about it...

So she locked up her paint-box and left the gallery. She was nervous;
her egotism had frightened her a little. He was dying, and for her,
yet she felt nothing. Not only were her eyes dry, but her heart was
too. A pebble with her own name written on it, that was her heart. She
wished to feel, she longed for the long ache of regret which she read
of in books, she yearned for tears. Tears were a divine solace, grief
was beautiful. And all along the streets she continued to woo sorrow--
she thought of his tenderness, the real goodness of his nature, his
solicitude for her, and she allowed her thoughts to dwell on the
pleasant hours they had passed together.

Her heart remained unmoved, but her feet led her towards St. James'
Park. She thought she would like to see it again, and when she stood
on the bridge where they had so often stood, when she visited the seat
where they had often sat chatting under the budding trees her eyes
would surely fill with tears, and she would grieve for her dying lover
as appropriately as any other woman.

But that day the park was submerged in blue mist. The shadows of the
island fell into the lake, still as death; and the birds, moving
through the little light that lingered on the water, seemed like
shadows, strange and woe-begone. To Mildred it seemed all like death.
She would never again walk with him in the pretty spring mornings when
light mist and faint sunlight play together, and the trees shake out
their foliage in the warm air. How sad it all was. But she did feel
sorry for him, she really was sorry, though she wasn't overcome with
grief. But she had done nothing wrong. In justice to herself she could
not admit that she had. She always knew just where to draw the line,
and if other girls did not, so much the worse for them. He had wanted
to marry her, but that was no reason why she should marry him. She may
have led him to expect that she would sooner or later, but in breaking
with him she had done the wisest thing. She would not have made him
happy; she was not sure that she could make any man happy...

Awaking from her thoughts she reproached herself for her selfishness,
she was always thinking of herself... and that poor fellow was dying
for love of her! She knew what death was; she too had been ill. She
was quite well now, but she had been ill enough to see to the edge of
that narrow little slit in the ground, that terrible black little slit
whence Ralph was going, going out of her sight for ever, out of sight
of the park, this park which would be as beautiful as ever in another
couple of months, and where he had walked with her. How terrible it
was, how awful--and how cold, she could not stand on the bridge any
longer. She shivered and said, 'I'm catching a cold.'

For the sake of her figure she never wore quite enough clothes, and
she regretted her imprudence in standing so long on the misty bridge.
She must take care of herself, for her to feel ill would serve no
purpose--she would not be able to see Ralph, and she wanted to see him
above all things. As she crossed the open space in front of Buckingham
Palace the desire to see him laid hold of her. She must know if he
were really dying. She would, drive straight to his studio. She had
been there before, but then she knew no one would be there. She would
have to risk the chance of some one seeing her going in and coming
out. But no matter who saw her, she must go. She hailed a hansom, and
the discovery that she was capable of so much adventure, pleased her.
She thought of his poor sick-bed in the dark room behind the studio.
She had caught sight of his bedroom as she had passed through the
passage. She believed herself capable and willing to sit by his sick-
bed and nurse him. She did not as a rule care for sick people, but she
thought she would like to nurse him.

The hansom turned through the Chelsea streets getting nearer and
nearer to the studio. She wondered who was nursing him--there must be
some one there.... The hansom stopped. She got out and knocked. The
door was opened by a young woman who looked like a servant, but
Mildred was not deceived by her appearance. 'One of his models come to
nurse him,' she thought.

'I have heard,' she said, 'that Mr. Hoskin is ill.'

'Yes, he is very ill, I'm sorry to say.'

'I should like to see him. Will you inquire?'

'He's not well enough to see any one to-day. He has just dozed off. I
couldn't awake him. But I'll give him any message.'

'Give him my card and say I would like to see him. Stay, I'll write a
word upon it.'

While Mildred wrote on the card the girl watched her--her face was
full of suspicion; and when she read the name, an involuntary 'Oh'
escaped from her, and Mildred knew that Ralph had spoken of her.
'Probably,' she thought, 'she has been his mistress. She wouldn't be
here nursing, if she hadn't been.'

'I'll give him your card.'

There was nothing for it but to lower her eyes and murmur 'thank you,'
and before she reached the end of the street her discomfort had
materially increased. She was humiliated and angry, humiliated that
that girl should have seen through her so easily, angry that Ralph
should have spoken about her to his mistress; for she was sure that
the woman was, or had been, his mistress. She regretted having asked
to see Ralph, but she had asked for an appointment, she could hardly
get out of it now.... She would have to meet that woman again, but she
wanted to see Ralph.

'Ralph, I suppose, told her the truth.'

A moment's reflection convinced Mildred that that was probably the
case, and reassured, she went to bed wondering when she would get a
letter. She might get one in the morning. She was. not disappointed;
the first letter she opened read as follows:--

MADAM,--Mr. Hoskin begs me to thank you for your kind inquiry. He is
feeling a little stronger and will be glad to see you. His best time
is in the afternoon about three o'clock. Could you make it convenient
to call about that time?

'I think it right to warn you that it would be well not to speak of
anything that would be likely to excite him, for the doctor says that
all hope of his recovery depends on his being kept quiet.--I am,
Madam, yours truly,

'ELLEN GIBBS.'

'Ellen Gibbs, so that is her name,' thought Mildred. There was a note
of authority in the letter which did not escape Mildred's notice and
which she easily translated into a note of animosity, if not of
hatred. Mildred did not like meeting this woman, something told her
that it would be wiser not, but she wanted to see Ralph, and an
expression of vindictiveness came into her cunning eyes. 'If she dares
to try to oppose me, she'll soon find out her mistake. I'll very soon
settle her, a common woman like that. Moreover she has been his
mistress, I have not, she will quail before me, I shall have no
difficulty in getting the best of her.'

'To-morrow. This letter was written last night, so I have to go to see
him to-day, this afternoon, three o'clock, I shall have to go up after
lunch by the two o'clock train. That will get me there by three.... I
wonder if he is really dying? If I were to go and see him and he were
to recover it would be like beginning it over again.... But I don't
know why every base thought and calculation enter my head. I don't
know why such thoughts should come into my head, I don't know why they
do come, I don't call them nor do their promptings affect me. I am
going to see him because I was once very fond of him, because I caused
him, through no fault of mine, a great deal of suffering--because it
appears that he's dying for love of me. I know he'd like to see me
before he dies, that's why I am going, and yet horrid thoughts will
come into my head; to hear me thinking, any one would imagine it was
only on account of my own vanity that I wanted to see him, whereas it
is quite the contrary. As a rule I hate sick people, and I'm sure it
is most disagreeable to me to meet that woman.'

The two o'clock train took her to town, a hansom from Victoria to the
studio; she dismissed the hansom at the corner and walked up the
street thinking of the woman who would open the door to her. There was
something about the woman she didn't like. But it didn't matter; she
would be shown in at once, and of course left alone with Ralph...
Supposing the woman were to sit there all the while. But it was too
late now, she had knocked.

'I've come to see Mr. Hoskin.' Feeling that her speech was too abrupt
she added, 'I hope he is better to-day.'

'Yes, I'm thankful to say he's a little better.'

Mildred stopped in the passage, and Ellen said:

'Mr. Hoskin isn't in his bedroom. We've put him into the studio.'

'I hope she doesn't think that I've been in his bedroom,' thought
Mildred. Ralph lay in a small iron bed, hardly more than a foot from
the floor, and his large features, wasted by illness, seemed larger
than ever. But a glow appeared in his dying eyes at the sight of
Mildred. Ellen placed a chair by his bedside and said:

'I will go out for a short walk. I shan't be away more than half an
hour.'

Their eyes said, 'We shall be alone for half an hour,' and she took
the thin hand he extended to her.

'Oh, Ralph, I'm sorry to find you ill.... But you're better to-day,
aren't you?'

'Yes, I feel a little better to-day. It was good of you to come.'

'I came at once.'

'How did you hear I was ill? We've not written to each other for a
long while.'

'I heard it in the National. Miss Brand told me.'

'You know her?'

'I remember, she wrote about the new pictures for an American paper.'

'Yes. How familiar it sounds, those dear days in the National.'

Ralph's eyes were fixed upon her. She could not bear their
wistfulness, and she lowered hers.

'She told me you were ill.'

'But when did you return from France? Tell me.'

'About six weeks ago. I fell ill the moment I got back.'

'What was the matter?'

'I had overdone it. I had overworked myself. I had let myself run
down. The doctor said that I didn't eat enough meat. You know I never
did care for meat.'

'I remember.'

'When I got better I was ordered to the seaside, then I went on a
visit to some friends and didn't get back to Sutton till Christmas. We
had a lot of stupid people staying with us. I couldn't do any work
while they were in the house. When they left I began a picture, but I
tried too difficult subjects and got into trouble with my drawing. You
said I'd never succeed. I often thought of what you said. Well, then,
I went to the National. Nellie Brand told me you were ill, that you
had been ill for some time, at least a month.'

A thin smile curled Ralph's red lips and his eyes seemed to grow more
wistful. 'I've been ill more than a month,' he said. 'But no matter,
Nellie Brand told you and---'

'Of course I could not stay at the National. I felt I must see you. I
didn't know how. ... My feet turned towards St. James' Park. I stood
on the little bridge thinking. You know I was very fond of you, Ralph,
only it was in my way and you weren't satisfied.' She looked at him
sideways, so that her bright brown eyes might have all their charm;
his pale eyes, wistful and dying, were fixed on her, not intently as a
few moments before, but vaguely, and the thought stirred in her that
he might die before her eyes. In that case what was she to do? 'Are
you listening?' she said.

'Oh yes, I'm listening,' he answered, his smile was reassuring, and
she said:

'Suddenly I felt that--that I must see you. I felt I must know what
was the matter, so I took a cab and came straight here. Your
servant---'

'You mean Ellen.'

'I thought she was your servant, she said that you were lying down and
could not be disturbed. She did not seem to wish me to see you or to
know what was the matter.'

'I was asleep when you called yesterday, but when I heard of your
visit I told her to write the letter which you received this morning.
It was kind of you to come.'

'Kind of me to come! You must think badly of me if you think I could
have stayed away. ... But now tell me, Ralph, what is the matter, what
does the doctor say? Have you had the best medical advice, are you in
want of anything? Can I do anything? Pray, don't hesitate. You know
that I was, that I am, very fond of you, that I would do anything. You
have been ill a long while now--what is the matter?'

'Thank you, dear. Things must take their course. What that course is
it is impossible to say. I've had excellent medical advice and Ellen
takes care of me.'

'But what is your illness? Nellie Brand told me that you caught a bad
cold about a month ago. Perhaps a specialist---'

'Yes, I had a bad attack of influenza about a month or six weeks ago
and I hadn't strength, the doctor said, to recover from it. I have
been in bad health for some time. I've been disappointed. My painting
hasn't gone very well lately. That was a disappointment.
Disappointment, I think, is as often the cause of a man's death as
anything else. The doctors give it a name: influenza, or paralysis of
the brain, failure of the heart's action, but these are the
superficial causes of death. There is often a deeper reason: one which
medical science is unable to take into account.'

'Oh, Ralph, you mean me. Don't say that I am the cause. It was not my
fault. If I broke my engagement it was because I knew I could not have
made you happy. There's no reason to be jealous, it wasn't for any
other man. There never will be another man. I was really very fond of
you. ... It wasn't my fault.'

'No, dear, it wasn't your fault. It wasn't any one's fault, it was the
fault of luck.'

Mildred longed for tears, but her eyes remained dry, and they wandered
round the studio examining and wondering at the various canvases. A
woman who had just left her bath passed her arms into the sleeves of a
long white wrapper. There was something peculiarly attractive in the
picture. The picture said something that had not been said before, and
Mildred admired its naturalness. But she was still more interested in
the fact that the picture had been painted from the woman who had
opened the door to her.

'She sits for the figure and attends on him when he is ill, she must
be his mistress. Since when I wonder?'

'How do you like it?' he asked.

'Very much. It is beautifully drawn, so natural and so original. How
did you think of that movement? That is just how a woman passes her
arms into her wrapper when she get out of her bath. How did you think
of it?'

'I don't know. She took the pose. I think the movement is all right.'

'Yes; it is a movement that happens every morning, yet no one thought
of it before. How did you think of it?'

'I don't know, I asked her to take some poses and it came like that. I
think it is good. I'm glad you like it.'

'It is very different from the stupid things we draw in the studio.'

'I told you that you'd do no good by going to France.' 'I learnt a
good deal there. Every one cannot learn by themselves as you did. Only
genius can do that.'

'Genius! A few little pictures ... I think I might have done something
if I had got the chance. I should have liked to have finished that
picture. It is a good beginning. I never did better.'

'Dearest, you will live to paint your picture. I want you to finish
it. I want you to: live for my sake. ... I will buy that picture.'

'There's only one thing I should care to live for.'

'And that you shall have.' 'Then I'll try to live.' He raised himself
a little in bed. His eyes were fixed on her and he tried hard to
believe. 'I'm afraid,' he said, 'it's too late now.' She watched him
with the eyes she knew he loved, and though ashamed of the question,
she could not put it back, and it slipped through her lips.

'Would you sooner live for me than for that picture?'

'One never knows what one would choose,' he said. 'Such speculations
are always vain, and never were they vainer than now. ... But I'm glad
you like that movement. It doesn't matter even if I never finish it, I
don't think it looks bad in its present state, does it?'

'It is a sketch, one of those things that could not be finished. ... I
recognise the model. _She_ sat for it, didn't she?'

'Yes.'

'You seem very intimate. ... She seems very devoted.'

'She has been very good to me. ... Don't say anything against her.
I've nothing to conceal, Mildred. It is an old story. It began long
before I knew you.'

'And continued while you knew me?'

'Yes.'

'And you never told me. Oh, Ralph, while you were telling me you loved
me you were living with this woman.'

'It happened so. Things don't come out as straight or as nice as we'd
like them to--that's the way things come out in life--a bit crooked,
tangled, cracked. I only know that I loved you, I couldn't have done
otherwise. That's the way things happened to come out. There's no
other explanation.'

'And if I had consented to marry you, you'd have put her away.'

'Mildred, don't scold me. Things happened that way.'

Mildred did not answer and Ralph said:

'What are you thinking of?'

'Of the cruelty, of the wretchedness of it all.'

'Why look at that side of it? If I did wrong, I've been punished. She
knows all. She has forgiven me. You can do as much? Forgive me, kiss
me. I've never kissed you.'

'I cannot kiss you now. I hear her coming. Wipe those tears away. The
doctor said that you were to be kept quiet.'

'Shall I see you again?'

'I don't think I can come again. She'll be here.'

'Mildred! What difference can it make?'

'We shall see. ...'

The door opened. Ellen came in, and Mildred got up to go.

'I hope you've enjoyed your walk, Miss Gibbs.'

'Yes, thank you. I haven't been out for some days.'

'Nursing is very fatiguing. ... Good-bye, Mr. Hoskin. I hope I shall
soon hear that you're better. Perhaps Miss Gibbs will write.'

'Yes, I'll write, but I'm afraid Mr. Hoskin has been talking too much.
... Let me open the door for you.'




XII.


When she got home she went to her room. She took off her dress and put
on an old wrapper, and then lay on the floor and cried. She could not
cry in a pair of stays. To abandon herself wholly to grief she must
have her figure free.

And all that evening she hardly spoke; she lay back in her chair, her
soul lost in one of her most miserable of moods. Harold spoke a few
words from time to time so that she should not perceive that he was
aware of her depression.

Her novel lay on her knees unread, and she sat, her eyes fixed,
staring into the heart of life. She had never seen so far into life
before; she was looking into the heart of life, which is death. He was
about to die--he had loved her even unto death; he had loved her even
while he was living with another woman. As she sat thinking, her novel
on her knees, she could see that other woman sitting by his death-bed.
Two candles were burning in the vast studio, and by their dim light
she saw the shadow of the profile on the pillow. She thought of him as
a man yearning for an ideal which he could never attain, and dying of
his yearning in the end! And that so beautiful and so holy an
aspiration should proceed from the common concubinage of a studio!
Suddenly she decided that Ralph was not worthy of her. Her instinct
had told her from the first that something was wrong. She had never
known why she had refused him. Now she knew.

But in the morning she was, as she put it herself, better able to see
things from a man's point of view, and she found some excuses for
Ralph's life. This connection had been contracted long ago. ... Ralph
had had to earn his living since he was sixteen--he had never been in
society; he had never known nice women: the only women he had known
were his models; what was he to do? A lonely life in a studio, his
meals brought in from the public-house, no society but those women.
... She could understand. ... Nevertheless, it was a miserable thing
to think that all the time he had been making love to her he had been
living with that woman. 'He used to leave her to come to meet me in
the park.'

This was a great bitterness. She thought that she hated him. But
hatred was inconsistent with her present mood, and she reflected that,
after all, Ralph was dying for love of her, that was a fact, and
behind that fact it were not wise to look. No man could do more than
die for the woman he loved, no man could prove his love more
completely. ... But it was so sad to think he was dying. Could nothing
be done to save him? Would he recover if she were to promise to be his
wife? She need not carry out her promise; she didn't know if she
could. But if a promise would cure him, she would promise. She would
go as far as that. ... But for what good? To get him well so that he
might continue living with that woman. ...

If he hadn't confessed, if she hadn't known of this shameful
connection, if it hadn't been dragged under her eyes! Ralph might have
spared her that. If he had spared her that she felt that she could
promise to be his wife, and perhaps to keep her promise, for in the
end she supposed she would have to marry some one. She didn't see how
she was going to escape. ... Yes, if he had not told her, or better
still, if he had not proved himself unworthy of her, she felt she
would have been capable of the sacrifice.

She had been to see him! She knew that she ought not to have gone. Her
instinct had told her not to go. But she had conquered her feeling. If
she had known that she was going to meet that woman she would not have
gone. Whenever we allow ourselves to be led by our better feelings we
come to grief. That woman hated her; she knew she did. She could see
it in her look. She wouldn't put herself in such a false position
again. ... A moment after she was considering if she should go to
Ellen and propose that she, Mildred, should offer to marry Ralph, but
not seriously, only just to help him to get well. If the plan
succeeded she would persuade Ralph that his duty was to marry Ellen.
And intoxicated with her own altruism, Mildred's thoughts passed on
and she imagined a dozen different dramas, in every one of which she
appeared in the character of a heroine.

'Mildred, what is the matter?'

'Nothing, dear, I've only forgotten my pocket-handkerchief.'

How irritating were Harold's stupid interruptions. She had to ask him
if he would take another cup of tea. He said that he thought he would
just have time. He had still five minutes. She poured out the tea,
thinking all the while of the sick man lying on his poor narrow bed in
the corner of the great studio. It was shameful that he should die;
tears rose to her eyes, and she had to walk across the room to hide
them. It was a pitiful story. He was dying for her, and she wasn't
worth it. She hadn't much heart; she knew it, perhaps one of these
days she would meet some one who would make her feel. She hoped so,
she wanted to feel. She wanted to love; if her brother were to die to-
morrow, she didn't believe she would really care. It was terrible; if
people only knew what she was like they would look the other way when
she passed down the street.... But, no, all this was morbid nonsense;
she was overwrought, and nervous, and that proved that she had a
heart. Perhaps too much heart.

In the next few days Ralph died a hundred times, and had been rescued
from death at least a dozen times by Mildred; she had watched by his
bedside, she had even visited his grave. And at the end of each dream
came the question: 'Would he live, would he die?' At last, unable to
bear the suspense any longer, she went to the National Gallery to
obtain news of him. But Miss Brand had little news of him. She was
leaving the gallery, and the two girls went for a little walk. Mildred
was glad of company, anything to save her from thinking of Ralph, and
she laughed and talked with Nellie on the bridge in St. James' Park,
until she began to feel that the girl must think her very heartless.

'How pale and ill you're looking, Mildred.'

'Am I? I feel all right.'

Nellie's remark delighted Mildred, 'Then I have a heart,' she thought,
'I'm not so unfeeling as I thought.'

The girls separated at Buckingham Palace. Mildred walked a little way,
and then suddenly called a hansom and told the man to drive to
Chelsea. But he had not driven far before thoughts of the woman he was
living with obtruded upon her pity, and she decided that it would be
unwise for her to venture on a second visit. The emotion of seeing her
again might make him worse, might kill him. So she poked her parasol
through the trap, and told the cabby to drive to Victoria Station.
There she bought some violets, she kept a little bunch for herself,
and sent him a large bouquet. 'They'll look nice in the studio,' she
said, 'I think that will be best.'

Two days after she received a letter from Ellen Gibbs.

'MADAM,--It is my sad duty to inform you that Mr. Ralph Hoskin died
this afternoon at two o'clock. He begged me to write and thank you for
the violets you sent him, and he expressed a hope that you would come
and see him when he was dead.

'The funeral will take place on Monday. If you come here to-morrow,
you will see him before he is put into his coffin.--I am, yours truly,

'ELLEN GIBBS.'

The desire to see her dead lover was an instinct, and the journey from
Sutton to Chelsea was unperceived by her, and she did not recover from
the febrile obedience her desire imposed until Ellen opened the studio
door.

'I received a letter from you....'

'Yes, I know, come in.'

Mildred hated the plain middle-class appearance and dress of this
girl. She hated the tone of her voice. She walked straight into the
studio. There was a sensation of judgment in the white profile, cold,
calm, severe, and Mildred drew back affrighted. But she recovered a
little when she saw that her violets lay under the dead hand. 'He
thought of me to the end. I forgive him everything.'

As she stood watching the dead man, she could hear Ellen moving in the
passage. She did not know what Ellen knew of her relations with Ralph.
But there could be no doubt that Ellen was aware that they were of an
intimate nature. She hoped, hurriedly, that Ellen did not suspect her
of being Ralph's mistress, and listened again, wondering if Ellen
would come into the studio. Or would she have the tact to leave her
alone with the dead? If she did come in it would be rather awkward.
She did not wish to appear heartless before Ellen, but tears might
lead Ellen to suspect. As Mildred knelt down, Ellen entered. Mildred
turned round.

'Don't let me disturb you,' said Ellen, 'when you have finished.'

'Will you not say a prayer with me?'

'I have said my prayers. Our prayers would not mingle.'

'What does she mean?' thought Mildred. She buried her face in her
hands and asked herself what Ellen meant. 'Our prayers would not
mingle. Why? Because I'm a pure woman, and she isn't. I wonder if she
meant that. I hope she does not intend any violence. I must say
nothing to annoy, her.' Her heart throbbed with fear, her knees
trembled, she thought she would faint. Then it occurred to her that it
would be a good idea to faint. Ellen would have to carry her into the
street, and in the street she would be safe.

And resolved to faint on the slightest provocation she rose from her
knees, and stood facing the other woman, whom she noticed, with some
farther alarm, stood between her and the door. If she could get out of
this difficulty she never would place herself in such a position
again.... Mildred tried to speak, but words stuck fast in her throat,
and it was some time before her terror allowed her to notice that the
expression on Ellen's face was not one of anger, but of resignation.

She was safe.

'She has pretty eyes,' thought Mildred, 'a weak, nervous creature; I
can do with her what I like. ... If she thinks that she can get the
better of me, I'll very soon show her that she is mistaken. Of course,
if it came to violence, I could do nothing but scream. I'm not
strong.'

Then Mildred said in a firm voice:

'I'm much obliged to you for your letter. This is very sad, I'll send
some more flowers for the coffin. Good morning.'

But a light came into Ellen's eyes, which Mildred did not like.

'Well,' she said, 'I hope you're satisfied. He died thinking of you. I
hope you're satisfied.'

'Mr. Hoskin and I were intimate friends. It is only natural that he
should think of me.'

'We were happy until you came... you've made dust and ashes of my
life. Why did you take the trouble to do this? You were not in love
with him, and I did you no injury.'

'I didn't know of your existence till the other day. I heard that---'

'That I was his mistress. Well, so I was. It appears that you were
not. But, I should like to know which of us two is the most virtuous,
which has done the least harm. I made him happy, you killed him.'

'This is madness.'

'No, it is not madness. I know all about you, Ralph told me
everything.'

'It surprises me very much that he should have spoken about me. It was
not like him. I hope that he didn't tell you, that he didn't suggest
that there were any improper relations between me and him.'

'I daresay that you were virtuous, more or less, as far as your own
body is concerned. Faugh! Women like you make virtue seem odious.'

'I cannot discuss such questions with you,' Mildred said timidly, and,
swinging her parasol vaguely, she tried to pass Ellen by. But it was
difficult to get by. The picture she had admired the other day blocked
the way. Mildred's eyes glanced at it vindictively.

'Yes,' said Ellen in her sad doleful voice, 'You can look at it. I sat
for it. I'm not ashamed, and perhaps I did more good by sitting for it
than you'll do with your painting.... But look at him--there he lies.
He might have been a great artist if he had not met you and I should
have been a happy woman. Now I've nothing to live for.... You said
that you didn't know of my existence till the other day. But you knew
that, in making that man love you, you were robbing another woman.'

'That is very subtle.'

'You knew that you did not love him, and that it could end only in
unhappiness. It has ended in death.'

Mildred looked at the cold face, so claylike, and trembled. The horror
of the situation crept over her; she had no strength to go, and
listened meekly to Ellen.

'He smiled a little, it was a little sad smile, when he told me that I
was to write, saying that he would be glad if you would come to see
him when he was dead. I think I know what was passing in his mind--he
hoped that his death might be a warning to you. Not many men die of
broken hearts, but one never knows. One did. Look at him, take your
lesson.'

'I assure you that we were merely friends. He liked me, I know--he
loved me, if you will; I could not help that,' Mildred drew on the
floor of the studio with her parasol. 'I am very sorry, it is most
unfortunate. I did nothing wrong. I'm sure he never suggested---'

'How that one idea does run in your head. I wonder if your thoughts
are equally chaste.'

Mildred did not answer.

'I read you in the first glance, one glance was enough, your eyes tell
the tale of your cunning, mean little soul. Perhaps you sometimes try
to resist, maybe your nature turns naturally to evil. There are people
like that.'

'If I had done what you seem to think I ought to have done, he would
have abandoned you.' And Mildred looked at her rival triumphantly.

'That would have been better than what has happened. Then there would
have been only one heart broken, now there are two.'

Mildred hated the woman for the humiliation she was imposing upon her,
but in her heart she could not but feel admiration for such single
heartedness. Noticing on Mildred's face the change of expression, but
misinterpreting it, Ellen said:

'I can read you through and through. You have wrecked two lives. Oh,
that any one should be so wicked, that any one should delight in
wickedness. I cannot understand.'

'You are accusing me wrongly.... But let me go. It is not likely that
we shall arrive at any understanding.'

'Go then, you came to gloat; you have gloated, go.

Ellen threw herself on a chair by the bedside. Her head fell on her
hands. Mildred whisked her black crape dress out of the studio.




XIII.


It was not until the spring was far advanced that the nostalgia of the
boulevards began to creep into her life. Then, without intermission,
the desire to get away grew more persistent, at last she could think
of nothing else. Harold oppressed her. But Mrs. Fargus was not in
France, she could not live alone. But why could she not live alone?

Although she asked herself this question, Mildred felt that she could
not live alone in Paris. But she must go to Paris! but with whom? Not
with Elsie or Cissy--they both had studios in London. Moreover, they
were not quite the girls she would like to live with; they were very
well as studio friends. Mildred thought she might hire a chaperon;
that would be very expensive! And for the solution of her difficulty
Mildred sought in vain until one day, in the National Gallery, Miss
Brand suggested that they should go to Paris together.

Miss Brand had told Mildred how she had begun life as a musician. When
she was thirteen she had followed Rubenstein from London to
Birmingham, from Birmingham to Manchester, and then to Liverpool. Her
parents did not know what had become of her. Afterwards she studied
counterpoint and harmony with Rubenstein in St. Petersburg, and also
with Von Bulow in Leipsic. But she had given up music for journalism.
Her specialty was musical criticism, to which, having been thrown a
good deal with artists, she had added art criticism. Mildred could
help her with her art criticism.... She thought they'd get on very
well together.... She would willingly share the expenses, of a little
flat.

Mildred was fascinated by the project; if she could possibly get
Harold to agree.... He must agree. He would raise many objections. But
that did not matter; she was determined. And at the end of the month
Mildred and Miss Brand left for Paris.

They had decided that for fifteen hundred or two thousand francs a
year they could find an apartment that would suit them, five or six
rooms within easy reach of the studio, and, leaning back in their cab
discussing the advantages or the disadvantages of the apartment they
had seen, they grew conscious of their intimacy and Mildred rejoiced
in the freedom of her life. Their only trouble was the furnishing.
Mildred did not like to ask Harold for any more money, and credit was
difficult to obtain. But even this difficulty was surmounted: and they
found an upholsterer who agreed to furnish the apartment they had
taken in the Rue Hauteville for five thousand francs, payable in
monthly instalments. To have to pay five hundred francs every month
would keep them very short of money for the first year, but that could
not be helped. They would get on somehow; and the first dinner in the
half-furnished dining-room, with the white porcelain stove in the
corner, seemed to them the most delicious they had ever tasted.
Josephine, their servant, was certainly an excellent cook; and so
obliging; they could find no fault with her. But the upholsterer was
dilatory, and days elapsed before he brought the chairs that were to
match the sofa; nearly every piece of drapery was hung separately, and
they had given up hope of the _etageres_ and girondoles. For a long
while a grand piano was their principal piece of furniture. Though she
never touched it, Miss Brand could not live without, a grand piano.
'What's the use?' she'd say. 'I've only to open the score to remember
--to hear Rubenstein play the passage.'

When they were _tout a fait bien installees,_ they had friends to
dinner, and they were especially proud of M. Daveau's company. Mildred
liked this large, stout man. There was something strangely winning in
his manner; a mystery seemed to surround him, and it was impossible
not to wish to penetrate this mystery. Besides, was he not their
master, the lord of the studio? Though a large, fat man, none was more
illusive, more difficult to realise, harder to get on terms of
intimacy with. These were temptations which appealed to Mildred and
she had determined on his subduction. But the wily Southerner had read
her through. Those little brown eyes of his had searched the bottom of
her soul, and, with pleasant smiles and engaging courtesies, he had
answered all her coquetries. But the difficulty of conquest only
whetted her appetite for victory, and she might even have pursued her
quest with ridiculous attentions if accident had not made known to her
the fact that M. Daveau was not only the lover of another lady in the
studio, but that he loved her to the perfect exclusion of every other
woman. Mildred's face darkened between the eyes, a black little cloud
of hatred appeared and settled there. She invented strange stories
about M. Daveau; and it surprised her that M. Daveau took no notice of
her calumnies. She desired above all things to annoy the large
mysterious Southerner who had resisted her attractions, who had
preferred another, and who now seemed indifferent to anything she
might say about him. But M. Daveau was only biding his time; and when
Mildred came to renew her subscription to the studio, he told her that
he was very sorry, but that he could not accept her any longer as a
pupil. Mildred asked for a reason. M. Daveau smiled sweetly,
enigmatically, and answered, that he wished to reduce the number of
ladies in his studio. There were too many.

Expulsion from the studio made shipwreck of her life in Paris. There
was no room in the flat in which she could paint. She had spent all
her money, and could not afford to hire a studio. She took lessons in
French and music, and began a novel, and when she wearied of her novel
she joined another studio, a ladies' class. But Mildred did not like
women; the admiration of men was the breath of her nostrils. With a
difference, men were her life as much as they were Elsie's. She pined
in this new studio; it grew hateful to her, and she spoke of returning
to England.

But Miss Brand said that one of these days she would meet M. Daveau;
that he would apologise if he had offended her, and that all would be
made right. For Mildred had given Miss Brand to understand that M.
Daveau had made love to her; then she said that he had tried to kiss
her, and that it would be unpleasant for her to meet him again. And
her story had been accepted as the true one by the American and
English girls; the other students had assumed that Miss Lawson had
given up painting or had taken a holiday. So she had got herself out
of her difficulty very cleverly. And she listened complacently to Miss
Brand's advice. There was something in what Nellie said. If she were
to meet M. Daveau she felt that she could talk him over. But she did
not know if she could bring herself to try after what had happened....
She hated him, and the desire, as she put it, to get even with him
often rose up in her heart. At last she caught sight of him in the
Louvre. He was looking at a picture on the other side of the gallery,
and she crossed over so that he should see her. He bowed, and was
about to pass on; but Mildred insisted, and, responding to the
question why he had refused her subscription, he said:

'I think I told you at the time that I found myself obliged to reduce
the number of pupils. But, tell me, are you copying here?'

'One doesn't learn anything from copying. Won't you allow me to come
back?'

'I don't see how I can. There are so many ladies at present in the
studio.'

'I hear that some have left? ... Madlle. Berge has left, hasn't she?'

'Yes, she has left.'

'If Madlle. Berge has left, there is no reason why I should not
return.'

M. Daveau did not answer; he smiled satirically and bade her good-bye.
Mildred hated him more than ever, but when a subscription was started
by the pupils to present him with a testimonial she did not neglect to
subscribe. The presentation took place in the studio. 'I think this is
an occasion to forget our differences,' he said, when he had finished
his speech. 'If you wish to return you'll find my studio open to you.'
And to show that he wished to let bygones be bygones, he often came
and helped her with her drawing; he seemed to take an interest in her;
and she tried to lead him on. But one day she discovered that she
could not deceive him, and again she began to hate him; but
remembering the price of her past indiscretions she refrained, and the
matter was forgotten in another of more importance. Miss Brand
suddenly fell out of health and was obliged to return to England.

Then the little flat became too expensive for Mildred; she let it, and
went to live in a boarding-house on the other side of the water, where
Cissy was staying. But, at the end of the first quarter, Mildred
thought the neighbourhood did not suit her, and she went to live near
St. Augustine. She remained there till the autumn, till Elsie came
over, and then she went to Elsie's boarding-house. Elsie returned to
England in the spring, and Mildred wandered from boarding-house to
boarding-house. She took a studio and spent a good deal of money on
models, frames, and costumes. But nothing she did satisfied her, and,
after various failures, she returned to Daveau's, convinced that she
must improve her drawing. She was, moreover, determined to put her
talent to the test of severe study. She got to the studio every
morning at eight, she worked there till five. As she did not know how
to employ her evenings, she took M. Daveau's advice and joined his
night-class.

For three months she bore the strain of these long days easily; but
the fourth month pressed heavily upon her, and in the fifth month she
was a mere mechanism. She counted the number of heads more correctly
than she used to, she was more familiar with the proportions of the
human figure. Alas! her drawing was no better. It was blacker, harder,
less alive. And to drag her weariness all the way along the boulevards
seemed impossible. That foul smelling studio repelled her from afar,
the prospect of the eternal model--a man with his hand on his hip--a
woman leaning one hand on a stool, frightened her; and her blackened
drawing, that would not move out of its insipid ugliness, tempted her
no more with false hopes.

Mildred paused in her dressing; it seemed that she could not get her
clothes on. She had to sit down to rest. Tears welled up into her
eyes; and, in the midst of much mental and physical weakness, the maid
knocked at her door and handed her a letter. It was from Elsie.

'DEAREST MILDRED,--Here we are again in Barbizon, painting in the day
and dancing in the evening. There are a nice lot of fellows here, one
or two very clever ones. I have already picked up a lot of hints. How
we did waste our time in that studio. Square brush work, drawing by
the masses, what rot! I suppose you have abandoned it all long ago....
Cissy is here, she has thrown over Hopwood Blunt for good and all. She
is at present much interested in a division of the tones man. A clever
fellow, but not nearly so good-looking as mine. The inn stands in a
large garden, and we dine and walk after dinner under the trees, and
watch the stars come out. There's a fellow here who might interest
you--his painting would, even if he failed to respond to the gentle
Platonism of your flirtations. The forest, too, would interest you. It
is an immense joy. I'm sure you want change of air. Life here is very
cheap, only five francs, room and meals--breakfast and dinner,
everything included except coffee.'

Mildred rejoiced in the prospect of escape from the studio; and her
life quickened at the thought of the inn with its young men, its new
ideas, the friends, the open air, and the great forest that Elsie
described as an immense joy. There was no reason why she should not go
at once, that very day. And the knowledge that she could thus
peremptorily decide her life was in itself a pleasure which she would
not have dispensed with. There were difficulties in the way of
clothes, she wanted some summer dresses. It would be difficult to get
all she wanted before four o'clock. She would have to get the things
ready made, others she could have sent after her. Muslins, trimmings,
hats, stockings, shoes, and sunshades occupied Mildred all the
morning, and she only just got to the Gare de Lyons in time to catch
the four o'clock train. Elsie's letter gave explicit directions, she
was not to go to Fontainebleau, she was to book to Melun, that was the
nearest station, there she would find an omnibus waiting, which would
take her to Barbizon, or, if she did not mind the expense, she could
take a fly which would be pleasanter and quicker.




XIV.


A formal avenue of trim trees led out of the town of Melun. But these
were soon exchanged for rough forest growths; and out of cabbage and
corn lands the irruptive forest broke into islands; and the plain was
girdled with a dark green belt of distant forest.

She lay back in the fly tasting in the pure air, the keen joy of
returning health, and she thrilled a little at the delight of an
expensive white muslin and a black sash which accentuated the
smallness of her waist. She liked her little brown shoes and brown
stockings and the white sunshade through whose strained silk the red
sun showed.

At the cross roads she noticed a still more formal avenue, trees
planted in single line and curving like a regiment of soldiers
marching across country. The whitewashed stead and the lonely peasant
scratching like an insect in the long tilth were painful impressions.
She missed the familiar hedgerows which make England like a garden;
and she noticed that there were trees everywhere except about the
dwellings; and that there were neither hollybush or sunflowers in the
white village they rolled through--a gaunt white village which was not
Barbizon. The driver mentioned the name, but Mildred did not heed him.
She looked from the blank white walls to her prettily posed feet and
heard him say that Barbizon was still a mile away.

It lay at the end of the plain, and when the carriage entered the long
street, it rocked over huge stones so that Mildred was nearly thrown
out. She called to the driver to go slower; he smiled, and pointing
with his whip said that the hotel that Mademoiselle wanted was at the
end of the village, on the verge of the forest.

A few moments after the carriage drew up before an iron gateway, and
Mildred saw a small house at the bottom of a small garden. There was a
pavilion on the left and a numerous company were dining beneath the
branches of a cedar. Elsie and Cissy got up, and dropping their
napkins ran to meet their friend. She was led in triumph to the table,
and all through dinner she had a rough impression of English girls in
cheap linen dresses and of men in rough suits and flowing neck-ties.

She was given some soup, and when the plate of veal had been handed
round, and Elsie and Cissy had exhausted their first store of
questions, she was introduced to Morton Mitchell. His singularly small
head was higher by some inches than any other, bright eyes, and white
teeth showing through a red moustache, and a note of defiance in his
open-hearted voice made him attractive. Mildred was also introduced to
Rose Turner, the girl who sat next him, a weak girl with pretty eyes.
Rose already looked at Mildred as if she anticipated rivalry, and was
clearly jealous of every word that Morton did not address to her.
Mildred looked at him again. He was better dressed than the others,
and an air of success in his face made him seem younger than he was.
He leaned across the table, and Mildred liked his brusque, but withal
well-bred manner. She wondered what his pictures were like. At
Daveau's only the names of the principal exhibitors at the Salon were
known, and he had told her that he had not sent there for the last
three years. He didn't care to send to the vulgar place more than he
could help.

Mildred noticed that all listened to Morton; and she was sorry to
leave the table, so interesting was his conversation. But Elsie and
Cissy wanted to talk to her, and they marched about the grass plot,
their arms about each other's waists; and, while questioning Mildred
about herself and telling her about themselves, they frequently looked
whither their lovers sat smoking. Sometimes Mildred felt them press
her along the walk which passed by the dining table. But for half an
hour their attractions were arrayed vainly against those of cigarettes
and _petits verres_. Rose was the only woman who remained at table.
She hung over her lover, desirous that he should listen to her.
Mildred thought, 'What a fool.... We shall see presently.'

The moment the young men got up Cissy and Elsie forgot Mildred. An
angry expression came upon her face and she went into the house. The
walls had been painted all over--landscapes, still life, nude figures,
rustic, and elegiac subjects. Every artist had painted something in
memory of his visit, and Mildred sought vaguely for what Mr. Mitchell
had painted. Then, remembering that he had chosen to walk about with
the Turner girl, she abandoned her search and, leaning on the window-
sill, watched the light fading in the garden. She could hear the frogs
in a distant pond, and thought of the night in the forest amid
millions of trees and stars.

Suddenly she heard some one behind her say:

'Do you like being alone?'

It was Morton.

'I'm so used to being alone.'

'Use is a second nature, I will not interrupt your solitude.'

'But sometimes one gets tired of solitude.'

'Would you like to share your solitude? You can have half of mine.'

'I'm sure it is very kind of you, but---' It was on Mildred's tongue
to ask him what he had done with Rose Turner. She said instead, 'and
where does your solitude hang out?'

'Chiefly in the forest. Shall we go there?'

'Is it far? I don't know where the others have gone.'

'They're in the forest, we walk there every evening; we shall meet
them.'

'How far is the forest?'

'At our door. We're in the forest. Come and see. There is the forest,'
he said, pointing to a long avenue. 'How bright the moonlight is, one
can read by this light.'

'And how wonderfully the shadows of the tall trunks fall across the
white road. How unreal, how phantasmal, is that grey avenue shimmering
in the moonlight.'

'Yes, isn't the forest ghostlike. And isn't that picturesque,' he
said, pointing to a booth that had been set up by the wayside. On a
tiny stage a foot or so from the ground, by the light of a lantern and
a few candle ends, a man and a woman were acting some rude
improvisation.

Morton and Mildred stayed; but neither was in the mood to listen. They
contributed a trifle each to these poor mummers of the lane's end, and
it seemed that their charity had advanced them in their intimacy.
Without hesitation they left the road, taking a sandy path which led
through some rocks. Mildred's feet sank in the loose sand, and very
soon it seemed to her that they had left Barbizon far behind. For the
great grey rocks and the dismantled tree trunk which they had suddenly
come upon frightened her; and she could hardly bear with the ghostly
appearance the forest took in the stream of glittering light which
flowed down from the moon.

She wished to turn back. But Morton said that they would meet the
others beyond the hill, and she followed him through great rocks,
filled with strange shadows. The pines stood round the hill-top making
it seem like a shrine; a round yellow moon looked through; there was
the awe of death in the lurid silence, and so clear was the sky that
the points of the needles could be seen upon it.

'We must go back,' she said.

'If you like.'

But, at that moment, voices were heard coming over the brow of the
hill.

'You see I did not deceive you. There are your friends, I knew we
should meet them. That is Miss Laurence's voice, one can always
recognise it.'

'Then let us go to them.'

'If you like. But we can talk better here. Let me find you a place to
sit down.' Before Mildred could answer, Elsie cried across the glade:

'So there you are.'

'What do you think of the forest?' shouted Cissy.

'Wonderful,' replied Mildred.

'Well, we won't disturb you... we shall be back presently.'

And, like ghosts, they passed into the shadow and mystery of the
trees.

'So you work in the men's studio?'

'Does that shock you?'

'No, nothing shocks me.'

'In the studio a woman puts off her sex. There's no sex in art.'

'I quite agree with you. There's no sex in art, and a woman would be
very foolish to let anything stand between her and her art.'

'I'm glad you think that. I've made great sacrifices for painting.'

'What sacrifices?'

'I'll tell you one of these days when I know you better.'

'Will you?'

The conversation paused a moment, and Mildred said:

'How wonderful it is here. Those pines, that sky, one hears the
silence; it enters into one's very bones. It is a pity one cannot
paint silence.'

'Millet painted silence. "The Angelus" is full of silence, the air
trembles with silence and sunset.'

'But the silence of the moonlight is more awful, it really is very
awful, I'm afraid.'

'Afraid of what? there's nothing to be afraid of. You asked me just
now if I believed in Daveau's, I didn't like to say; I had only just
been introduced to you; but it seems to me that I know you better
now... Daveau's is a curse. It is the sterilisation of art. You must
give up Daveau's, and come and work here.'

'I'm afraid it would make no difference. Elsie and Cissy have spent
years here, and what they do does not amount to much. They wander from
method to method, abandoning each in turn. I am utterly discouraged,
and made up my mind to give up painting.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I don't know. One of these days I shall find out my true vocation.'

'You're young, you are beautiful---'

'No, I'm not beautiful, but there are times when I look nice.'

'Yes, indeed there are. Those hands, how white they are in the
moonlight.' He took her hands. 'Why do you trouble and rack your soul
about painting? A woman's hands are too beautiful for a palette and
brushes.'

The words were on her tongue to ask him if he did not admire Rose's
hands equally, but remembering the place, the hour, and the fact of
her having made his acquaintance only a few hours before, she thought
it more becoming to withdraw her hands, and to say:

'The others do not seem to be coming back. We had better return.'

They moved out of the shadows of the pines, and stood looking down the
sandy pathway.

'How filmy and grey those top branches, did you ever see anything so
delicate?'

'I never saw anything like this before. This is primeval.... I used to
walk a good deal with a friend of mine in St. James' Park.'

'The park where the ducks are, and a little bridge. Your friend was
not an artist.'

'Yes, he was, and a very clever artist too.'

'Then he admired the park because you were with him.'

'Perhaps that had something to do with it. But the park is very
beautiful.'

'I don't think I care much about cultivated nature.'

'Don't you like a garden?'

'Yes; a disordered garden, a garden that has been let run wild.'

They walked down the sandy pathway, and came unexpectedly upon Elsie
and her lover sitting behind a rock. They asked where the others were.
Elsie did not know. But at that moment voices were heard, and Cissy
cried from the bottom of the glade:

'So there you are; we've been looking for you.'

'Looking for us indeed,' said Mildred.

 Now, Mildred, don't be prudish, this is Liberty Hall. You must lend
us Mr. Mitchell, we want to dance.'

'What, here in the sand!'

'No, in the Salon.... Come along, Rose will play for us.'




XV.


Mildred was the first down. She wore a pretty _robe a fleurs,_ and her
straw hat was trimmed with tremulous grasses and cornflowers. A faint
sunshine floated in the wet garden.

A moment after Elsie cried from the door-step:

'Well, you have got yourself up. We don't run to anything like that
here. You're going out flirting. It's easy to see that.'

'My flirtations don't amount to much. Kisses don't thrill me as they
do you. I'm afraid I've never been what you call "in love."'

'You seem on the way there, if I'm to judge by last night,' Elsie
answered rather tartly. 'You know, Mildred, I don't believe all you
say, not quite all.'

A pained and perplexed expression came upon Mildred's face and she
said:

'Perhaps I shall meet a man one of these days who will inspire passion
in me.'

'I hope so. It would be a relief to all of us. I wouldn't mind
subscribing to present that man with a testimonial.'

Mildred laughed.

'I often wonder what will become of me. I've changed a good deal in
the last two years. I've had a great deal of trouble.'

'I'm sorry you're so depressed. I know what it is. That wretched
painting, we give ourselves to it heart and soul, and it deceives us
as you deceive your lovers.'

'So it does. I had not thought of it like that. Yes, I've been
deceived just as I have deceived others. But you, Elsie, you've not
been deceived, you can do something. If I could do what you do. You
had a picture in the Salon. Cissy had a picture in the Salon.'

'That doesn't mean much. What we do doesn't amount to much.'

'But do you think that I shall ever do as much?'

Elsie did not think so, and the doubt caused her to hesitate. Mildred
perceived the hesitation and said:

'Oh, there's no necessity for you to lie. I know the truth well
enough. I have resolved to give up painting. I have given it up.'

 You've given up painting! Do you really mean it?'

'Yes, I feel that I must. When I got your letter I was nearly dead
with weariness and disappointment--what a relief your letter was--what
a relief to be here!'

'Well, you see something has happened. Barbizon has happened, Morton
has happened.'

'I wonder if anything will come of it. He's a nice fellow. I like
him.'

'You're not the first. All the women are crazy about him. He was the
lover of Merac, the actress of the _Francais_. They say she could only
play Phedre when he was in the stage-box. He always produced that
effect upon her. Then he was the lover of the Marquise de la--de la
Per----I can't remember the name.'

'Is he in love with any one now?'

'No; we thought he was going to marry Rose.'

'That little thing!'

'Well, he seemed devoted to her. He seemed inclined to settle down.'

'Did he ever flirt with you?'

'No; he's not my style.'

'I know what that means,' thought Mildred.

The conversation paused, and then Elsie said:

'It really is a shame to upset him with Rose, unless you mean to marry
him. Even the impressionists admit that he has talent. He belongs to
the old school, it is true, but his work is interesting all the same.'

The English and American girls were dressed like Elsie and Cissy in
cheap linen dresses; one of the French artists was living with a
cocotte. She was dressed more elaborately; somewhat like Mildred,
Elsie remarked, and the girls laughed, and sat down to their bowls of
coffee.

Morton and Elsie's young man were almost the last to arrive. Swinging
their paint-boxes they came forward talking gaily.

'Yours is the best looking,' said Elsie.

'Perhaps you'd like to get him from me.'

'No, I never do that.'

'What about Rose?'

Mildred bit her lips, and Elsie couldn't help thinking, 'How cruel she
is, she likes to make that poor little thing miserable. It's only
vanity, for I don't suppose she cares for Morton.'

Those who were painting in the adjoining fields and forest said they
would be back to the second breakfast at noon, those who were going
further, and whose convenience it did not suit to return, took
sandwiches with them. Morton was talking to Rose, but Mildred soon got
his attention.

'You're going to paint in the forest,' she said, 'I wonder what your
picture is like: you haven't shown it to me.'

'It's all packed up. But aren't you going into the forest? If you're
going with Miss Laurence and Miss Clive you might come with me. You'd
better take your painting materials; you'll find the time hang
heavily, if you don't.'

'Oh no, the very thought of painting bores me.'

'Very well then. If you are ready we might make a start, mine is a
mid-day effect. I hope you're a good walker. But you'll never be able
to get along in those shoes and that dress--that's no dress for the
forest. You've dressed as if for a garden-party.'

'It is only a little _robe a fleurs,_ there's nothing to spoil, and as
for my shoes, you'll see I shall get along all right, unless it is
very far.'

'It is more than a mile. I shall have to take you down to the local
cobbler and get you measured. I never saw such feet.'

He was oddly matter of fact. There was something naive and childish
about him, and he amused and interested Mildred.

'With whom,' she said, 'do you go out painting when I'm not here?
Every Jack seems to have his own Jill in Barbizon.'

'And don't they everywhere else? It would be damned dull without.'

'Do you think it would? Have you always got a Jill?'

'I've been down in my luck lately.'

Mildred laughed.

'Which of the women here has the most talent?'

'Perhaps Miss Laurence. But Miss Clive does a nice thing
occasionally.'

'What do you think of Miss Turner's work?'

'It's pretty good. She has talent. She had two pictures in the Salon
last year.'

Mildred bit her lips. 'Have you ever been out with her?'

'Yes, but why do you ask?'

'Because I think she likes you. She looked very miserable when she
heard that we were going out together. Just as if she were going to
cry. If I thought I was making another person unhappy I would sooner
give you--give up the pleasure of going out with you.'

'And what about me? Don't I count for anything?'

'I must not do a direct wrong to another. Each of us has a path to
walk in, and if we deviate from our path we bring unhappiness upon
ourselves and upon others.'

Morton stopped and looked at her, his stolid childish stare made her
laugh, and it made her like him.

'I wonder if I am selfish?' said Mildred reflectively. 'Sometimes I
think I am, sometimes I think I am not. I've suffered so much, my life
has been all suffering. There's no heart left in me for anything. I
wonder what will become of me. I often think I shall commit suicide.
Or I might go into a convent.'

'You'd much better commit suicide than go into a convent. Those poor
devils of nuns! as if there wasn't enough misery in this world. We are
certain of the misery, and if we give up the pleasures, I should like
to know where we are.'

Each had been so interested in the other that they had seen nothing
else. But now the road led through an open space where every tree was
torn and broken; Mildred stopped to wonder at the splintered trunks;
and out of the charred spectre of a great oak crows flew and settled
among the rocks, in the fissures of a rocky hill.

'But you're not going to ask me to climb those rocks,' said Mildred.
'There are miles and miles of rocks. It is like a landscape by
Salvator Rosa.'

'Climb that hill! you couldn't. I'll wait until our cobbler has made
you a pair of boots. But isn't that desolate region of blasted oaks
and sundered rocks wonderful? You find everything in the forest. In a
few minutes I shall show you some lovely underwood.'

And they had walked a very little way when he stopped and said: 'Don't
you call that beautiful?' and, leaning against the same tree, Morton
and Mildred looked into the dreamy depth of a summer wood. The trunks
of the young elms rose straight, and through the pale leafage the
sunlight quivered, full of the impulse of the morning. The ground was
thick with grass and young shoots.... Something ran through the grass,
paused, and then ran again.

'What is that?' Mildred asked.

'A squirrel, I think... yes, he's going up that tree.'

'How pretty he is, his paws set against the bark.'

'Come this way and we shall see him better.'

But they caught no further sight of the squirrel, and Morton asked
Mildred the time.

'A quarter-past ten,' she said, glancing at the tiny watch which she
wore in a bracelet.

'Then we must be moving on. I ought to be at work at half-past. One
can't work more than a couple of hours in this light.'

They passed out of the wood and crossed an open space where rough
grass grew in patches. Mildred opened her parasol.

'You asked me just now if I ever went to England. Do you intend to go
back, or do you intend to live in France?'

'That's my difficulty. So long as I was painting there was a reason
for my remaining in France, now that I've given it up---'

'But you've not given it up.'

'Yes, I have. If I don't find something else to do I suppose I must go
back. That's what I dread. We live in Sutton. But that conveys no idea
to your mind. Sutton is a little town in Surrey. It was very nice
once, but now it is little better than a London suburb. My brother is
a distiller. He goes to town every day by the ten minutes past nine
and he returns by the six o'clock. I've heard of nothing but those two
trains all my life. We have ten acres of ground--gardens, greenhouses,
and a number of servants. Then there's the cart--I go out for drives
in the cart. We have tennis parties--the neighbours, you know, and I
shall have to choose whether I shall look after my brother's house, or
marry and look after my husband's.'

'It must be very lonely in Sutton.'

'Yes, it is very lonely. There are a number of people about, but I've
no friends that I care about. There's Mrs. Fargus.'

'Who's Mrs. Fargus?'

'Oh, you should see Mrs. Fargus, she reads Comte, and has worn the
same dinner dress ever since I knew her--a black satin with a crimson
scarf. Her husband suffers from asthma, and speaks of his wife as a
very clever woman. He wears an eyeglass and she wears spectacles. Does
that give you an idea of my friends?'

'I should think it did. What damned bores they must be.'

'He bores me, she doesn't. I owe a good deal to Mrs. Fargus. If it
hadn't been for her I shouldn't be here now.'

'What do you mean?'

They again passed out of the sunlight into the green shade of some
beech trees. Mildred closed her parasol, and swaying it to and fro
amid the ferns she continued in a low laughing voice her tale of Mrs.
Fargus and the influence that this lady had exercised upon her. Her
words floated along a current of quiet humour cadenced by the gentle
swaying of her parasol, and brought into relief by a certain
intentness of manner which was peculiar to her. And gradually Morton
became more and more conscious of her, the charm of her voice stole
upon him, and once he lingered, allowing her to get a few yards in
front so that he might notice the quiet figure, a little demure, and
intensely itself, in a yellow gown. When he first saw her she had
seemed to him a little sedate, even a little dowdy, and when she had
spoken of her intention to abandon painting, although her manner was
far from cheerless, he had feared a bore. He now perceived that this
she at least was not--moreover, her determination to paint no more
announced, an excellent sense of the realities of things in which the
other women--the Elsies and the Cissys--seemed to him to be strangely
deficient. And when he set up his easel her appreciation of his work
helped him to further appreciation of her. He had spread the rug for
her in a shady place, but for the present she preferred to stand
behind him, her parasol slanted slightly, talking, he thought very
well, of the art of the great men who had made Barbizon rememberable.
And the light tone of banter in which she now admitted her failure
seemed to Morton to be just the tone which she should adopt, and her
ridicule of the impressionists and, above all, of the dottists amused
him.

'I don't know why they come here at all,' he said, 'unless it be to
prove to themselves that nature falls far short of their pictures. I
wonder why they come here? They could paint their gummy tapestry stuff
anywhere.'

'I can imagine your asking them what they thought of Corot. Their
faces would assume a puzzled expression, I can see them scratching
their heads reflectively; at last one of them would say:

'"Yes, there is _Chose_ who lives behind the Odeon--he admires Corot.
_Pas de blague_, he really does." Then all the others in chorus: "he
really does admire Corot; we'll bring him to see you next Tuesday."'

Morton laughed loudly, Mildred laughed quietly, and there was an
intense intimacy of enjoyment in her laughter.

'I can see them,' she said, 'bringing _Chose, le petit Chose_, who
lives behind the Odeon and admires Corot, to see you, bringing him,
you know, as a sort of strange survival, a curious relic. It really is
very funny.'

He was sorry when she said the sun was getting too hot for her, and
she went and lay on the rug he had spread for her in the shade of the
oak. She had brought a book to read, but she only read a line here and
there. Her thoughts followed the white clouds for a while, and then
she admired the man sitting easily on his camp-stool, his long legs
wide apart. His small head, his big hat, the line of his bent back
amused and interested her; she liked his abrupt speech, and wondered
if she could love him. A couple of peasant women came by, bent under
the weight of the faggots they had picked, and Mildred could see that
Morton was watching the movement of these women, and she thought how
well they would come into the picture he was painting.

Soon after he rose from his easel and walked towards her.

'Have you finished?' she said. 'No, not quite, but the light has
changed. I cannot go on any more to-day. One can't work in the
sunlight above an hour and a half.'

'You've been working longer than that.'

'But haven't touched the effect. I've been painting in some figures--
two peasant women picking sticks, come and look.'




XVI.


Three days after Morton finished his picture. Mildred had been with
him most of the time. And now lunch was over, and they lay on the rug
under the oak tree talking eagerly.

'Corot never married,' Morton remarked, as he shaded his eyes with his
hand, and asked himself if any paint appeared in his sky. There was a
corner on the left that troubled him. 'He doesn't seem to have ever
cared for any woman. They say he never had a mistress.'

'I hear that you have not followed his example.'

'Not more than I could help.'

His childish candour amused her so that she laughed outright, and she
watched the stolid childish stare that she liked, until a longing to
take him in her arms and kiss him came upon her. Her voice softened,
and she asked him if he had ever been in love?

'Yes, I think I was.'

'How long did it last?'

'About five years.'

'And then?'

'A lot of rot about scruples of conscience. I said, I give you a week
to think it over, and if I don't hear from you in that time I'm off to
Italy.'

'Did she write?'

'Not until I had left Paris. Then she spent five-and-twenty pounds in
telegrams trying to get me back.'

'But you wouldn't go back.'

'Not I; with me, when an affair of that sort is over, it is really
over. Don't you think I'm right?'

'Perhaps so.... But I'm afraid we've learnt love in different
schools.'

'Then the sooner you relearn it in my school the better.'

At that moment a light breeze came up the sandy path, carrying some
dust on to the picture. Morton stamped and swore. For three minutes it
was damn, damn, damn.

'Do you always swear like that in the presence of ladies?'

'What's a fellow to do when a blasted wind comes up smothering his
picture in sand?'

Mildred could only laugh at him; and, while he packed up his canvases,
paint-box, and easel, she thought about him. She thought that she
understood him, and fancied that she would be able to manage him. And
convinced of her power she said aloud, as they plunged into the
forest:

'I always think it is a pity that it is considered vulgar to walk arm
in arm. I like to take an arm.... I suppose we can do what we like in
the forest of Fontainebleau. But you're too heavily laden--'

'No, not a bit. I should like it.'

She took his arm and walked by his side with a sweet caressing
movement, and they talked eagerly until they reached the motive of his
second picture.

'What I've got on the canvas isn't very much like the view in front of
you, is it?'

'No, not much, I don't like it as well as the other picture.'

'I began it late one evening. I've never been able to get the same
effect again. Now it looks like a Puvis de Chavannes--not my picture,
but that hillside, that large space of blue sky and the wood-cutters.'

'It does a little. Are you going on with it?'

'Why?'

'Because there is no shade for me to sit in. I shall be roasted if we
remain here.'

'What shall we do? Lie down in some shady place?'

'We might do that.... I know what I should like.'

'What?'

'A long drive in the forest.'

'A capital idea. We can do that. We shall meet some one going to
Barbizon. We'll ask them to send us a fly.'

Their way lay through a pine wood where the heat was stifling; the dry
trees were like firewood scorched and ready to break into flame; and
their steps dragged through the loose sand. And, when they had passed
this wood, they came to a place where the trees had all been felled,
and a green undergrowth of pines, two or three feet high, had sprung
up. It was difficult to force their way through; the prickly branches
were disagreeable to touch, and underneath the ground was spongy, with
layers of fallen needles hardly covered with coarse grass.

Morton missed the way, and his paint-box and canvases had begun to
weigh heavy when they came upon the road they were seeking. But where
they came upon it, there was only a little burnt grass, and Morton
proposed that they should toil on until they came to a pleasanter
place.

The road ascended along the verge of a steep hill, at the top of which
they met a bicyclist who promised to deliver Morton's note. There was
an opening in the trees, and below them the dark green forest waved
for miles. It was pleasant to rest--they were tired. The forest
murmured like a shell. They could distinguish here and there a tree,
and their thoughts went to that tree. But, absorbed though they were
by this vast nature, each was thinking intensely of the other. Mildred
knew she was near the moment when Morton would take her hand and tell
her that he loved her. She wondered what he would say. She did not
think he would say he loved her, he would say: 'You're a damned pretty
woman.' She could see he was thinking of something, and suspected him
of thinking out a phrase or an oath appropriate to the occasion. She
was nearly right. Morton was thinking how he should act. Mildred was
not the common Barbizon art student whose one idea is to become the
mistress of a painter so that she may learn to paint. She had
encouraged him, but she had kept her little dignity. Moreover, he did
not feel sure of her. So the minutes went by in awkward expectancy,
and Morton had not kissed her before the carriage arrived.

She lay back in the fly smiling, Morton thought, superciliously. It
seemed to him stupid to put his arm round her waist and try to kiss
her. But, sooner or later, he would have to do this. Once this Rubicon
was passed he would know where he was.... As he debated, the tall
trunks rose branchless for thirty or forty feet; and Mildred said that
they were like plumed lances.

'So they are,' he said, 'like plumed lances. And how beautifully that
beech bends, what an exquisite curve, like a lance bent in the shock
of the encounter.'

The underwood seemed to promise endless peace, happy life amid leaves
and birds; and Mildred thought of a duel under the tall trees. She saw
two men fighting to the death for her. A romantic story begun in a
ball-room, she was not quite certain how. Morton remembered a drawing
of fauns and nymphs. But there was hardly cover for a nymph to hide
her whiteness. The ground was too open, the faun would soon overtake
her. She could better elude his pursuit in the opposite wood. There
the long branches of the beeches swept the heads of the ferns, and, in
mysterious hollows, ferns made mysterious shade, places where nymphs
and fauns might make noonday festival.

'What are you thinking of?' said Mildred.

'Of fauns and nymphs,' he answered. 'These woods seem to breathe
antiquity.'

'But you never paint antiquity.'

'I try to. Millet got its spirit. Do you know the peasant girl who has
taken off her clothes to bathe in a forest pool, her sheep wandering
through the wood? By God! I should like you to see that picture.'

At the corner of the _carrefour_, the serpent catcher showed them two
vipers in a low flat box. They darted their forked tongues against the
wire netting, and the large green snake, which he took out of a bag,
curled round his arm, seeking to escape. In questioning him they
learnt that the snakes were on their way to the laboratory of a
vivisectionist. This dissipated the mystery which they had suggested,
and the carriage drove in silence down the long forest road.

'We might have bought those snakes from him, and set them at liberty.'

'We might have, but we didn't.'

'Why didn't we?'

'What would be the good? ... If we had, he would have caught others.'

'I suppose so. But I don't like the idea of that beautiful snake,
which you compared to me, being vivisected.'

The forest now extended like a great temple, hushed in the beautiful
ritual of the sunset. The light that suffused the green leaves
overhead glossed the brown leaves underfoot, marking the smooth
grosund as with a pattern. And, like chapels, every dell seemed in the
tranquil light, and leading from them a labyrinthine architecture
without design or end. Mildred's eyes wandered from the colonnades to
the underwoods. She thought of the forest as of a great green prison;
and then her soul fled to the scraps of blue that appeared through the
thick leafage, and she longed for large spaces of sky, for a view of a
plain, for a pine-plumed hill-top. Once more she admired, once more
she wearied of the forest aisles, and was about to suggest returning
to Barbizon when Morton said:

'We are nearly there now; I'm going to show you our lake.'

'A lake! Is there a lake?'

'Yes, there's a lake--not a very large one, it is true, but still a
lake--on the top of a hill where you can see the forest. Under a
sunset sky the view is magnificent.'

The carriage was to wait for them, and, a little excited by the
adventure, Mildred followed Morton through rocks and furze bushes.
When it was possible she took his arm, and once accidentally, or
nearly accidentally, she sprang from a rock into his arms. She was
surprised that he did not take advantage of the occasion to kiss her.

'Standing on this flat rock we're like figures in a landscape, by
Wilson,' Mildred said.

'So we are,' said Morton, who was struck by the truth of the
comparison. 'But there is too much colour in the scene for Wilson--he
would have reduced it all to a beautiful blue, with only a yellow
flush to tell where the sun had gone.'

'It would be very nice if you would make me a sketch of the lake. I'll
lend you a lead pencil, the back of an envelope will do.'

'I've a water-colour box in my pocket and a block. Sit down there and
I'll do you a sketch.'

'And, while you are accomplishing a work of genius, I'll supply the
levity, and don't you think I'm just the person to supply the
necessary leaven of lightness? Look at my frock and my sunshade.'

Morton laughed, the conversation paused, and the water-colour
progressed. Suddenly Mildred said:

'What did you think of me the first time you saw me? What impression
did I produce on you?'

'Do you want me to tell you, to tell you exactly?'

'Yes, indeed I do.'

'I don't think I can.'

'What was it?' Mildred asked in a low affectionate tone, and she
leaned towards him in an intimate affectionate way.

'Well--you struck me as being a little dowdy.'

'Dowdy! I had a nice new frock on. I don't think I could have looked
dowdy, and among the dreadful old rags that the girls wear here.'

'It had nothing to do with the clothes you wore. It was a little
quiet, sedate air.'

'I wasn't in good spirits when I came down here.'

'No, you weren't. I thought you might be a bore.'

'But I haven't been that, have I?'

'No, I'm damned if you're that.'

'But what a charming sketch you're making. You take that ordinary
common grey from the palette, and it becomes beautiful. If I were to
take the very same tint, and put it on the paper, it would be mud.'

Morton placed his sketch against a rock, and surveyed it from a little
distance. 'I don't call it bad, do you? I think I've got the sensation
of the lonely lake. But the effect changes so rapidly. Those clouds
are quite different from what they were just now. I never saw a finer
sky, it is wonderful. It is splendid as a battle'...

'Write underneath it, "That night the sky was like a battle."'

'No, it would do for my sketch.'

'You think the suggestion would overpower the reality.... But it is a
charming sketch. It will remind me of a charming day, of a very happy
day.'

She raised her eyes. The moment had come.

He threw one arm round her, and raised her face with the other hand.
She gave her lips easily, with a naturalness that surprised and
deceived him. He might marry her, or she might be his mistress, he
didn't know which, but he was quite sure that he liked her better than
any woman he had seen for a long time. He had not known her a week,
and she already absorbed his thoughts. And, during the drive home, he
hardly saw the forest. Once a birch, whose faint leaves and branches
dissolved in a glittering light, drew his thoughts away from Mildred.
She lay upon his shoulder, his arm was affectionately around her, and,
looking at him out of eyes whose brown seemed to soften in affection,
she said:

'Elsie said you'd get round me.'

'What did she mean?'

'Well,' said Mildred, nestling a little closer, and laughing low,
'haven't you got round me?'

Her playfulness enchanted her lover, and, when she discreetly sought
his hand, he felt that he understood her account of Alfred's
brutality. But her tenderness, in speaking of Ralph, quickened his
jealousy.

'My violets lay under his hand, he must have died thinking of me.'

'But the woman who wrote to you, his mistress, she must have known all
about his love for you. What did she say?'

'She said very little. She was very nice to me. She could see that I
was a good woman....'

'But that made no difference so far as she was concerned. You took her
lover away from her.'

'She knew that I hadn't done anything wrong, that we were merely
friends.'

The conversation paused a moment, then Morton said: 'It seems to have
been a mysterious kind of death. What did he die of?'

'Ah, no one ever knew. The doctors could make nothing of his case. He
had been complaining a long time. They spoke of overwork, but--'

'But, what?'

'I believe he died of slow poisoning.'

'Slow poisoning! Who could have poisoned him?'

'Ellen Gibbs.'

'What an awful thing to say.... I suppose you have some reason for
suspecting her?'

'His death was very mysterious. The doctors could not account for it.
There ought to have been a _post-mortem_ examination.' Feeling that
this was not sufficient reason, and remembering suddenly that Ralph
held socialistic theories and was a member of a sect of socialists,
she said: 'Ralph was a member of a secret society.... He was an
anarchist--no one suspected it, but he told me everything, and it was
I who persuaded him to leave the Brotherhood.'

'I do not see what that has to do with his death by slow poisoning.'

'Those who retire from these societies usually die.'

'But why Ellen Gibbs?'

'She was a member of the same society, it was she who got him to join.
When he resigned it was her duty to--'

'Kill him! What a terrible story. I wonder if you're right.'

'I know I am right.'

At the end of a long silence, Morton said:

'I wonder if you like me as much as you liked Ralph.'

'It is very different. He was very good to me.'

'And do you think that I shall not be good to you?'

'Yes, I think you will,' she said looking up and taking the hand which
pressed against her waist.

'You say he was a very clever artist. Do you like his work better than
mine?'

'It was as different as you yourselves are.'

'I wonder if I should like it?'

'He would have liked that,' and she pointed with her parasol towards
an oak glade, golden hearted and hushed.

'A sort of Diaz, then?'

'No, not the least like that. No, it wasn't the Rousseau palette.'

'That's a regular Diaz motive. It would be difficult to treat it
differently.'

The carriage rolled through a tender summer twilight, through a
whispering forest.




XVII.


At the end of September the green was duskier, yellow had begun to
appear; and the crisped leaf falling through the still air stirred the
heart like a memory.

The skies which rose above the dying forest had acquired gentler
tints, a wistfulness had come into the blue which was in keeping with
the fall of the leaf.

There was a scent of moisture in the underwoods, rills had begun to
babble; on the hazel rods leaves fluttered pathetically, the branches
of the plane trees hung out like plumes, their drooping leaves making
wonderful patterns.

In the hotel gardens a sunflower watched the yellowing forest, then
bent its head and died.

The great cedar was deserted, and in October Morton was painting
chrysanthemums on the walls of the dining-room. He called them the
flowers of twilight, the flowers of the summer's twilight. Mildred
watched him adding the last sprays to his bouquet of white and purple
bloom.

The inveigling sweetness of these last bright days entered into life,
quickening it with desire to catch and detain some tinge of autumn's
melancholy. All were away in the fields and the forest; and, though
little of their emotion transpired on their canvases, they were moved,
as were Rousseau and Millet, by the grandeur of the blasted oak and
the lonely byre standing against the long forest fringes, dimming in
the violet twilight.

Elsie was delighted with her birch, and Cissy considered her rocks
approvingly.

'You've caught the beauty of that birch,' said Cissy. 'How graceful it
is in the languid air. It seems sad about something.'

'About the pine at the end of the glade,' said Elsie laughing. 'I
brought the pine a little nearer. I think it composes better.'

'Yes, I think it does. You must come and see my rocks and ferns.
There's one corner I don't know what to do with. But I like my oak.'

'I will come presently. I'm working at the effect; the light will have
changed in another half hour.'

'I've done all I can do to mine. It would make a nice background for a
hunting picture. There's a hunt to-day in the forest. Mildred and
Morton are going to see the meet.'

Elsie continued painting, Cissy sat down on a stone and soon lost
herself in meditations. She thought about the man she was in love
with; he had gone back to Paris. She was now sure that she hated his
method of painting, and, finding that his influence had not been a
good one, she strove to look on the landscape with her own eyes. But
she saw only various painters in it. The last was Morton Mitchell, and
she thought if he had been her lover she might have learnt something
from him. But he was entirely taken up with Mildred. She did not like
Mildred any more, she had behaved very badly to that poor little Rose
Turner. 'Poor little thing, she trembles like that birch.'

'What are you saying, Cissy? Who trembles like that birch?'

'I was thinking of Rose, she seems dreadfully upset, Morton never
looks at her now.'

'I think that Morton would have married her if Mildred hadn't appeared
on the scene. I know he was thinking of settling down.'

'Mildred is a mystery. Her pleasure seems to be to upset people's
lives. You remember poor Ralph Hoskin. He died of a broken heart. I
can't make Mildred out, she tells a lot of lies. She's always talking
about her virtue. But I hardly think that Morton would be as devoted
to her as he is if he weren't her lover. Do you think so?'

'I don't know, men are very strange.'

Elsie rose to her feet. She put aside her camp stool, walked back a
few yards, and looked at her picture. The motive of her picture was a
bending birch at the end of the glade. Rough forest growth made clear
its delicate drawing, and in the pale sky, washed by rains to a faded
blue, clouds arose and evaporated. The road passed at the bottom of
the hill and several huntsmen had already ridden by. Now a private
carriage with a pair of horses stood waiting.

'That's Madame Delacour's carriage, she is waiting for Mildred and
Morton.'

'The people at Fontainebleau?'

'Yes, the wife of the great Socialist Deputy. They're at Fontainebleau
for the season. M. Delacour has taken the hunting. They say he has a
fine collection of pictures. He buys Morton's pictures.... It was he
who bought his "Sheepfold."'

Elsie did not admire Morton's masterpiece as much as Cissy. But they
were agreed that Mildred might prove a disintegrating influence in the
development of his talent. He had done no work since he had made her
acquaintance. She was a mere society woman. She had never cared for
painting; she had taken up painting because she thought that it would
help her socially. She had taken up Morton for the same reason. He had
introduced her to the Delacours. She had been a great

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