ink?"

That same afternoon Piers went in search of Kite's garret. It was a
garret literally, furnished with a table and a bed, and little else,
but a large fire burned cheerfully, and on the table, beside a
drawing-board, stood a bottle of wine. When he had welcomed his
visitor, Kite pointed to the bottle.

"I got used to it in Paris," he said, "and it helps me to work. I
shan't offer you any, or you might be made ill; the cheapest claret on
the market, but it reminds me of--of things."

There rose in Otway's mind a suspicion that, to-day at all events, Kite
had found his cheap claret rather too seductive. His face had an
unwonted warmth of colour, and his speech an unusual fluency. Presently
he opened a portfolio and showed some of the work he had done in Paris:
drawings in pen-and-ink, and the published reproductions of others;
these latter, he declared, were much spoilt in the process work. The
motive was always a nude female figure, of great beauty; the same face,
with much variety of expression; for background all manner of fantastic
scenes, or rather glimpses and suggestions of a poet's dreamland.

"You see what I mean?" said Kite. "It's simply Woman, as a beautiful
thing, as a--a--oh, I can't get it into words. An ideal, you
know--something to live for. Put her in a room--it becomes a different
thing. Do you feel my meaning? English people wouldn't have these, you
know. They don't understand. They call it sensuality."

"Sensuality!" cried Piers, after dreaming for a moment. "Great heavens!
then why are human bodies made beautiful?"

The artist gave a strange laugh of gratification.

"There you hit it! Why--why? The work of the Devil, they say."

"The worst of it is," said Piers, "that they're right as regards most
men. Beauty, as an inspiration, exists only for the few. Beauty of any
and every kind--it's all the same. There's no safety for the world as
we know it, except in utilitarian morals."

Later, when he looked back upon these winter months, Piers could
distinguish nothing clearly. It was a time of confused and obscure
motives, of oscillation, of dreary conflict, of dull suffering. His
correspondence with Olga, his meetings with her, had no issue. He made
a thousand resolves; a thousand times he lost them. But for the day's
work, which kept him in an even tenor for a certain number of hours, he
must have drifted far and perilously.

It was a life of solitude. The people with whom he talked were m