a knowledge of beauty in the
plain labours. Now he wanted again to carve things that were
utterances of himself.

But he could not quite hitch on--always he was too busy,
too uncertain, confused. Wavering, he began to study modelling.
To his surprise he found he could do it. Modelling in clay, in
plaster, he produced beautiful reproductions, really beautiful.
Then he set-to to make a head of Ursula, in high relief, in the
Donatello manner. In his first passion, he got a beautiful
suggestion of his desire. But the pitch of concentration would
not come. With a little ash in his mouth he gave up. He
continued to copy, or to make designs by selecting motives from
classic stuff. He loved the Della Robbia and Donatello as he had
loved Fra Angelico when he was a young man. His work had some of
the freshness, the naive alertness of the early Italians. But it
was only reproduction.

Having reached his limit in modelling, he turned to painting.
But he tried water-colour painting after the manner of any other
amateur. He got his results but was not much interested. After
one or two drawings of his beloved church, which had the same
alertness as his modelling, he seemed to be incongruous with the
modern atmospheric way of painting, so that his church tower
stood up, really stood and asserted its standing, but was
ashamed of its own lack of meaning, he turned away again.

He took up jewellery, read Benvenuto Cellini, pored over
reproductions of ornament, and began to make pendants in silver
and pearl and matrix. The first things he did, in his start of
discovery, were really beautiful. Those later were more
imitative. But, starting with his wife, he made a pendant each
for all his womenfolk. Then he made rings and bracelets.

Then he took up beaten and chiselled metal work. When Ursula
left school, he was making a silver bowl of lovely shape. How he
delighted in it, almost lusted after it.

All this time his only connection with the real outer world
was through his winter evening classes, which brought him into
contact with state education. About all the rest, he was
oblivious, and entirely indifferent--even about the war.
The nation did not exist to him. He was in a private retreat of
his own, that had neither nationality, nor any great
adherent.

Ursula watched the newspapers, vaguely, concerning the war in
South Africa. They made her miserable, and she tried to have as
little to do with them as possible. But Skrebensky