sed her
shoulder just a little as if to ward off an expected blow of
condemnation. No need! It had been a beautiful thing, a quite
surprisingly beautiful study of night. He remembered with what a really
jealous ache he had gazed at it--a better thing than he had ever done
himself. And, frankly, he had said so. Her eyes had shone with pleasure.

"Do you really like it? I tried so hard!"

"The day you show that, my dear," he had said, "your name's made!" She
had clasped her hands and simply sighed: "Oh, Dick!" He had felt quite
happy in her happiness, and presently the three of them had taken their
chairs out, beyond the curtains, on to the dark verandah, had talked a
little, then somehow fallen silent. A wonderful warm, black, grape-bloom
night, exquisitely gracious and inviting; the stars very high and white,
the flowers glimmering in the garden-beds, and against the deep, dark
blue, roses hanging, unearthly, stained with beauty. There was a scent
of honeysuckle, he remembered, and many moths came fluttering by towards
the tall narrow chink of light between the curtains. Alicia had sat
leaning forward, elbows on knees, ears buried in her hands. Probably
they were silent because she sat like that. Once he heard her whisper to
herself: "Lovely, lovely! Oh, God! How lovely!" His wife, feeling the
dew, had gone in, and he had followed; Alicia had not seemed to notice.
But when she too came in, her eyes were glistening with tears. She said
something about bed in a queer voice; they had taken candles and gone
up. Next morning, going to her little studio to give her advice about
that picture, he had been literally horrified to see it streaked with
lines of Chinese white--Alicia, standing before it, was dashing her
brush in broad smears across and across. She heard him and turned round.
There was a hard red spot in either cheek, and she said in a quivering
voice: "It was blasphemy. That's all!" And turning her back on him, she
had gone on smearing it with Chinese white. Without a word, he had
turned tail in simple disgust. Indeed, so deep had been his vexation at
that wanton destruction of the best thing she had ever done, or was ever
likely to do, that he had avoided her for years. He had always had a
horror of eccentricity. To have planted her foot firmly on the ladder of
fame and then deliberately kicked it away; to have wantonly foregone
this chance of making money--for she had but a mere pittance! It had
seemed to him rea