,
and her tongue showed between her lips. Presently behind his seat he saw
another idyll. A thin white spaniel had come running up. She lay down in
the grass quite close, and three other dogs who followed, sat and looked
at her. A poor, dirty little thing she was, who seemed as if she had not
seen a home for days. Her tongue lolled out, she panted piteously, and
had no collar. Every now and then she turned her eyes, but though they
were so tired and desperate, there was a gleam in them. 'For all its
thirst and hunger and exhaustion, this is life!' they seemed to say. The
three dogs, panting too, and watching till it should be her pleasure to
begin to run again, seemed with their moist, loving eyes to echo: 'This
is life!'

Because of this idyll, people near were moving on.

And suddenly the thin white spaniel rose, and, like a little harried
ghost, slipped on amongst the trees, and the three dogs followed her.

CHAPTER XIX

BIANCA

In her studio that afternoon Blanca stood before her picture of the
little model--the figure with parted pale-red lips and haunting,
pale-blue eyes, gazing out of shadow into lamplight.

She was frowning, as though resentful of a piece of work which had the
power to kill her other pictures. What force had moved her to paint like
that? What had she felt while the girl was standing before her, still as
some pale flower placed in a cup of water? Not love--there was no love
in the presentment of that twilight figure; not hate--there was no hate
in the painting of her dim appeal. Yet in the picture of this shadow
girl, between the gloom and glimmer, was visible a spirit, driving the
artist on to create that which had the power to haunt the mind.

Blanca turned away and went up to a portrait of her husband, painted
ten years before. She looked from one picture to the other, with eyes as
hard and stabbing as the points of daggers.

In the more poignant relationships of human life there is a point beyond
which men and women do not quite truthfully analyse their feelings--they
feel too much. It was Blanca's fortune, too, to be endowed to excess
with that quality which, of all others, most obscures the real
significance of human issues. Her pride had kept her back from Hilary,
till she had felt herself a failure. Her pride had so revolted at that
failure that she had led the way to utter estrangement. Her pride had
forced her to the attitude of one who says "Live your own life; I should