my lady there had refused a King; a nice beginning, indeed, and a
pleasant future for her chaperon.'

The few books the house possessed lay on the drawing-room table, or were
piled, in dusty confusion, in the bookcase in Mr. Barton's studio; and,
thinking of them, Alice determined she would pay her father a visit in
his studio.

At her knock he ceased singing _Il Balen_, and cried, 'Come in!'

'I beg your pardon, papa; I'm afraid I am interrupting you.'

'Not at all--not at all, I assure you; come in. I will have a cigarette;
there is nothing like reconsidering one's work through the smoke of a
cigarette. The most beautiful pictures I have ever seen I have seen in
the smoke of a cigarette; nothing can beat those, particularly if you
are lying back looking up at a dirty ceiling.'

War and women were the two poles of Arthur's mind. _Cain shielding his
Wife from Wild Beasts_ had often been painted, numberless _Bridals of
Triermain_; and as for the _Rape of the Sabines_, it seemed as if it
could never be sufficiently accomplished. Opposite the door was a huge
design representing Samson and Delilah; opposite the fireplace, _Julius
Caesar overturning the Altars of the Druids_ occupied nearly the entire
wall. Nymphs and tigers were scattered in between; canvases were also
propped against almost every piece of furniture.

At last Alice's eyes were suddenly caught by a picture representing
three women bathing. It was a very rough sketch, but, before she had
time to examine it, Arthur turned it against the wall. Why he hid two
pictures from her she could not help wondering. It could not be for
propriety's sake, for there were nudities on every side of her.

Then, lying upon the sofa, he explained how So-and-so had told him, when
he was a boy in London, that no one since Michael Angelo had been able
to design as he could; how he had modelled a colossal statue of Lucifer
before he was sixteen, how he had painted a picture of the Battle of
Arbela, forty feet by twenty, before he was eighteen; but that was of no
use, the world nowadays only cared for execution, and he could not wait
until he had got the bit of ribbon in Delilah's hair to look exactly
like silk.

Alice listened to her father babbling, her heart and her mind at
variance. A want of knowledge of painting might blind her to the effects
of his pictures (there was in them all a certain crude merit of design),
but it was impossible not to see that they were lacking i