to be sunny, and shutting the bedroom door she went round to
the window, where she uncovered immediately, in his full view, and said,
'See if I am satisfactory now--to you who think beauty vain. The rest
of me--and it is a good deal--lies on my dressing-table at home. I shall
never put it on again--never!'

But she was a woman; and her lips quivered, and there was a tear in her
eye, as she exposed the ruthless treatment to which she had subjected
herself. The cruel morning rays--as with Jocelyn under Avice's
scrutiny--showed in their full bareness, unenriched by addition,
undisguised by the arts of colour and shade, the thin remains of
what had once been Marcia's majestic bloom. She stood the image and
superscription of Age--an old woman, pale and shrivelled, her forehead
ploughed, her cheek hollow, her hair white as snow. To this the face he
once kissed had been brought by the raspings, chisellings, scourgings,
bakings, freezings of forty invidious years--by the thinkings of more
than half a lifetime.

'I am sorry if I shock you,' she went on huskily but firmly, as he
did not speak. 'But the moth frets the garment somewhat in such an
interval.'

'Yes--yes!... Marcia, you are a brave woman. You have the courage of the
great women of history. I can no longer love; but I admire you from my
soul!'

'Don't say I am great. Say I have begun to be passably honest. It is
more than enough.'

'Well--I'll say nothing then, more than how wonderful it is that a woman
should have been able to put back the clock of Time thirty years!'

'It shames me now, Jocelyn. I shall never do it any more!'

* * *

As soon as he was strong enough he got her to take him round to his
studio in a carriage. The place had been kept aired, but the shutters
were shut, and they opened them themselves. He looked round upon the
familiar objects--some complete and matured, the main of them seedlings,
grafts, and scions of beauty, waiting for a mind to grow to perfection
in.

'No--I don't like them!' he said, turning away. 'They are as ugliness
to me! I don't feel a single touch of kin with or interest in any one of
them whatever.'

'Jocelyn--this is sad.'

'No--not at all.' He went again towards the door. 'Now let me look
round.' He looked back, Marcia remaining silent. 'The Aphrodites--how I
insulted her fair form by those failures!--the Freyjas, the Nymphs and
Fauns, Eves, Avices, and other innumerabl