communion with Turner Ravis.
For a long time he evaded the thought because he knew that if he allowed
it to come into his mind it would worry and harass him. But by and by
the effort of dodging the enemy became itself too disagreeable, so he
gave it up and allowed himself to look the matter squarely in the face.

Ah, yes; it was an ugly thing he had done there, a really awful thing.
He must have been still drunk when he had knelt in the chancel. Vandover
shuddered as he thought of this, and told himself that one could hardly
commit a worse sacrilege, and that some time he would surely be called
to account for it. But here he checked himself suddenly, not daring to
go further. One would have no peace of mind left if one went on brooding
over such things in this fashion. He realized the enormity of what he
had done. He had tried to be sorry for it. It was perhaps the worst
thing he had ever done, but now he had reached the lowest point. He
would take care never to do such a thing again. After this he would be
better.

But this was not so. Unconsciously, Vandover had shut a door behind him;
he would never again be exactly the same, and the keeping of his
appointment with Turner Ravis that Sunday morning was, as it were, a
long step onward in his progress of ruin and pollution.

He shook himself as though relieving his shoulders of a weight. The
model in the life-class had just been posed for the week, and the others
had begun work. The model for that week was a woman, a fact that pleased
Vandover, for he drew these nude women better than any one in the
school, perhaps better than any one in the city. Portrait work and the
power to catch subtle intellectual distinctions in a face were sometimes
beyond him, but his feeling for the flesh, and for the movement and
character of a pose, was admirable.

He set himself to work. Holding his stick of charcoal toward the model
at arm's-length, he measured off the heads, five in all, and laid off an
equal number of spaces upon his paper. After this, by aid of his mirror,
he studied the general character of the pose for nearly half an hour.
Then, with a few strokes of his charcoal he laid off his larger
construction lines with a freedom and a precision that were excellent.
Upon these lines he made a second drawing a little more detailed, though
as yet everything was blocked in, angularly and roughly. Then, putting a
thin flat edge upon his charcoal, he started the careful and finis