pneumonia; it was two months before she was up again--a
very shadow of herself. There had never been much health in her since
then. She floated like a ghost through life, a crazy ghost, who still
would steal away, goodness knew where, and come in with a flush in her
withered cheeks, and her grey hair wild blown, carrying her spoil--some
flower, some leaf, some tiny bird, or little soft rabbit. She never
painted now, never even talked of it. They had made her give up her
cottage and come to live with them, literally afraid that she would
starve herself to death in her forgetfulness of everything. These
spindleberries even! Why, probably she had been right up this morning to
that sunny chalk-pit in the lew of the Downs to get them, seven miles
there and back, when you wouldn't think she could walk seven hundred
yards, and as likely as not had lain there on the dewy grass, looking up
at the sky, as he had come on her sometimes. Poor Alicia! And once he
had been within an ace of marrying her! A life spoiled! By what, if not
by love of beauty! But who would have ever thought that the intangible
could wreck a woman, deprive her of love, marriage, motherhood, of fame,
of wealth, of health! And yet--by George!--it had!

Scudamore flipped the four pink berries off the wall. The radiance and
the meandering milky waters; that swan against the brown tufted rushes;
those far, filmy Downs--there was beauty! _Beauty!_ But, damn it
all--moderation! Moderation! And, turning his back on that prospect,
which he had painted so many times, in his celebrated manner, he went
in, and up the expensively restored staircase to his studio. It had
great windows on three sides, and perfect means for regulating light.
Unfinished studies melted into walls so subdued that they looked like
atmosphere. There were no completed pictures--they sold too fast. As he
walked over to his easel, his eye was caught by a spray of colour--the
branch of spindleberries set in water, ready for him to use, just where
the pale sunlight fell, so that their delicate colour might glow and the
few tiny drops of moisture still clinging to them shine. For a second he
saw Alicia herself as she must have looked, setting them there, her
transparent hands hovering, her eyes shining, that grey hair of hers all
fine and loose. The vision vanished! But what had made her bring them
after that horrified "God!" when he spoke of using them? Was it her way
of saying: "Forgive me for being