the apparition as it were, and
the personal action and desire, took a new form at the approach of death.
He made two or three charming and blasphemous designs; I think especially
of a Madonna and Child, where the Child has a foolish, doll-like face, and
an elaborate modern baby's dress; and of a St. Rose of Lima in an
expensive gown decorated with roses, ascending to Heaven upon the bosom of
the Madonna, her face enraptured with love, but with that form of it
which is least associated with sanctity. I think that his conversion to
Catholicism was sincere, but that so much of impulse as could exhaust
itself in prayer and ceremony, in formal action and desire, found itself
mocked by the antithetical image; and yet I am perhaps mistaken, perhaps
it was merely his recognition that historical Christianity had dwindled to
a box of toys, and that it might be amusing to empty the whole box on to
the counterpane.

XVII

I had been a good deal in Paris, though never very long at any time, my
later visits with a member of the Rhymer's Club whose curiosity or emotion
was roused by every pretty girl. He treated me with a now admiring, now
mocking wonder, because being in love, and in no way lucky in that love, I
had grown exceedingly puritanical so far as my immediate neighbourhood was
concerned. One night, close to the Luxembourg, a strange young woman in
bicycling costume, came out of a side street, threw one arm about his
neck, walked beside us in perfect silence for a hundred yards or so, and
then darted up another side street. He had a red and white complexion and
fair hair, but how she discovered that in the dark I could not understand.
I became angry and reproachful, but he defended himself by saying, "You
never meet a stray cat without caressing it: I have similar instincts."
Presently we found ourselves at some Cafe--the Cafe D'Harcourt, I
think--and when I looked up from my English newspaper, I found myself
surrounded with painted ladies and saw that he was taking vengeance. I
could not have carried on a conversation in French, but I was able to say,
"That gentleman over there has never refused wine or coffee to any lady,"
and in a little they had all settled about him like greedy pigeons.

I had put my ideal of those years, an ideal that passed away with youth,
into my description of _Proud Costello_. "He was of those ascetics of
passion, who keep their hearts pure for love or for hatred, as other men
for God, for Mary