above,--there is no joy like that. I found a
model--a fine and beautiful woman, the same magnificent blonde who
sat for so many of the Master's greatest pictures. For a long time my
work delighted me; but after awhile a suspicion, and then a sickening
dread, came upon me that all was not well with the picture. And then
the withering truth broke in upon me, the scales fell from my
eyes--the model's face was beautiful, but it was not right; the
expression I wanted was as far off as ever; there was but one right
expression in the world, and that I could not find. Ah! is there any
pain like that of discovering that all the toil of years has been in
vain, that the best you can do--the best that the spiritual world
permits you to do--is as far off the goal as when you began?'

'And so you failed after all, Mr. Wilderspin?' I said, anxious to get
him away so that I might talk to Cyril alone upon the one subject at
my heart.

'I told the model I should want her no more,' said Wilderspin, 'and
for two days and nights I sat in the studio in a dream, and could get
nothing to pass my lips but bread and water. Then it was that Mary
Wilderspin, my mother, remembered me, blessed me--sent me a
spiritual body--'

'For God's sake!' I whispered to Cyril, 'take the good madman away;
you don't know how his prattle harrows me just now.'

'Ah! never,' said Wilderspin, 'shall I forget that sunny morning when
was first revealed to me--'

'My dear fellow,' said Cyril, 'to tell the adventures of that sunny
morning would, as I know from experience, keep us here for the next
three hours. So, as I must not miss my train, and as you cannot spare
a second from "Ruth and Boaz," come along.'

While I was accompanying them through the corridors of the hotel,
Cyril said: 'You say he is not in love with his model? Don't you see
the sulky looks he gives me? I was the innocent cause of an unlucky
catastrophe with her. I'll tell you about that, however, another
time. Good-bye; I'm off to Paris.'

'When you return to London,' I said to Cyril, 'I wish to consult you
upon, a matter that concerns me deeply.'

II

On re-entering my room, as I stood and gazed at my father's book _The
Veiled Queen_, I understood something about that fascination which
the bird feels who goes fluttering to the serpent's jaws from sheer
repulsion. 'Am I indeed,' I asked myself, 'that same Darwinian
student who in Switzerland not long since turned over in scorn these
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