nter's colic."

"House painters acquire that," he said, smiling. "I'm not a member of
their union yet."

"Well, you must use as much white lead as they do on those enormous
canvases of yours. Why don't you start on a trip around the world,
Louis?"

He laughed.

Later, after he had taken his leave, the suggestion reoccurred to him.
He took enough trouble to think about it the next morning; sent out his
servant to amass a number of folders advertising world girdling tours of
various attractions, read them while lunching, and sat and pondered. Why
not? It might help. Because he certainly began to need help. He had gone
quite stale. Querida was right; he ought to lie fallow. No ground could
yield eternally without rest. Querida was clever enough to know that;
and he had been stupid enough to ignore it--even disbelieve it,
contemptuous of precept and proverb and wise saw, buoyed above
apprehension by consciousness and faith in his own inexhaustible energy.

And, after all, something really seemed to have happened to him. He
almost admitted it now for the first time--considered the proposition
silently, wearily, without any definite idea of analysing it, without
even the desire to solve it.

Somehow, at some time, he had lost pleasure in his powers, faith in his
capacity, desire for the future. What had satisfied him yesterday,
to-day became contemptible. Farther than ever, farther than the
farthest, stars receded the phantoms of the great Masters. What they
believed and endured and wrought and achieved seemed now not only
hopelessly beyond any comprehension or attainment of his, but even
beyond hope of humble discipleship.

And always, horribly, like an obsession, was creeping over him in these
days the conviction of some similarity between his work and the thin,
clear, clever brush-work of Allaire--with all its mastery of ways and
means, all its triumph over technical difficulties, all its tricks and
subtle appeals, and its falsity, and its glamour.

Reflection, retrospection sickened him. It was snowing and growing late
when he wrote to a steamship agent making inquiries and asking for plans
of staterooms.

Then he had tea, alone there in the early winter dusk, with the
firelight playing over Gladys who sat in the full heat of the blaze,
licking her only kitten, embracing its neck with one maternal paw.

He dressed about six, intending to dine somewhere alone that New Year's
Eve. The somewhere, as usual, ended