sh:--

"It was my _wife_."

Heaven forgive me, I shrank from him. The man who could thus portray
accurately, unmercifully, this tale of hideous defilement--the victim
his wife, however sinning--must be himself either morally debased or
partially insane.

He saw the gesture, and moved away to the foot of the model throne and
waited.

I could think of nothing but the ghastly achievement, could stand only
with bulged eyes staring at it, a dry, dusty flavour parching my tongue.
At last I broke from the horrible fascination--a fascination that almost
prompted me to snatch his knife and rip the canvas from end to end.

I flung down the cloth.

"Sit there," he almost commanded, and pointed to an arm-chair at some
distance from him.

"You may shun me. It is what I wanted--deserved. To that end I confessed
it, 'The Soul of Me.'"

Then on a sudden his meaning dawned.

"The body," he went on, "was painted before I learnt what colour the
soul was. I will tell you."

"No, no!" I remonstrated, perceiving the tension of his set jaws. "It
will pain you, and do no good."

"Pain?" he said. "There is no pain that eats into the heart like
silence. The knowledge of guilt hidden corrodes like an acid. It must
have been that which taught the Catholic Church the value of
confession."

"Possibly," I said, moving from my distant chair to his side, and
grasping his hand. "But remember I am not a priest; I am only, and
always, a friend."

"I know, I know," he said, hurriedly, staring out across the room at the
humming, busy road. "My confession is not to you. All that humanity can
do the priests have done. You stare? Yes, I've turned myself inside out
for them; but all their altar flowers cannot scent a foul soul, nor can
their sanctuary lights illumine its crooked corners. I'm no historian,
but I've heard of cases where private penance, remorse, and religious
absolution have totally failed to wipe clean the hearts of intellectual
men--they of the world, sinners, needing absolution of the world. Such
men, who live in the open, and trumpet their triumphs there, need, too,
to howl their confessions from the housetop, carve their contrition,
like the wisdom of Asoka, on the immemorial rocks as an outcry to the
generations."

He started up, and began to stride about the room. His face was full of
passionate grief, and his wandering eyes passed beyond me as though
watching a sunset.

I thought of the loganstone, and of the frail w