isfaction. It was a little
weakness of his to think that he could paint, and one of which he was
somewhat tenacious. Like many another man he could do a number of
things exceedingly well and one thing very badly, and yet had more
faith in that bad thing than in all the good.

But, strange to say, although he affected to believe so firmly in his
own style of art and hold Ida's in such cheap regard, it was a little
painting of the latter's that he valued most, and which was oftenest
put upon his easel for purposes of solitary admiration. It was one of
those very impressionist productions that faded away in the distance,
and full of soft grey tints, such as his soul loathed. There was a
tree with a blot of brown colour on it, and altogether (though as a
matter of fact a clever thing enough) from his point of view of art it
was utterly "anathema." This little picture in oils faintly shadowed
out himself sitting at his easel, working in the soft grey of the
autumn evening, and Ida had painted it and given it to him, and that
was why he admired it so much. For to speak the truth, our friend the
Colonel was going, going fast--sinking out of sight of his former self
into the depths of the love that possessed his soul.

He was a very simple and pure-minded man. Strange as it may appear,
since that first unhappy business of his youth, of which he had never
been heard to speak, no living woman had been anything to him.
Therefore, instead of becoming further vulgarised and hardened by
association with all the odds and ends of womankind that a man
travelling about the globe comes into contact with, generally not
greatly to his improvement, his faith had found time to grow up
stronger even than at first. Once more he looked upon woman as a young
man looks before he has had bitter experience of the world--as a being
to be venerated and almost worshipped, as something better, brighter,
purer than himself, hardly to be won, and when won to be worn like a
jewel prized at once for value and for beauty.

Now this is a dangerous state of mind for a man of three or four and
forty to fall into, because it is a soft state, and this is a world in
which the softest are apt to get the worst of it. At four and forty a
man, of course, should be hard enough to get the better of other
people, as indeed he generally is.

When Harold Quaritch, after that long interval, set his eyes again
upon Ida's face, he felt a curious change come over him. All