ous pleasure in
seeing my aunt's aristocratic proclivities baffled by some vexing
_contretemps_ or by some slight passed upon her by people of superior
rank, especially by those in the Royal circle.

There have been so many descriptions of art schools, from the famous
'Gandish's' down to the very moment at which I write, that I do not
intend to describe mine.

It would be very far from my taste to use a narrative like this, a
narrative made sacred by the spiritual love it records, as a means of
advertising efforts of such modest pretensions as mine when placed in
comparison with the work of the illustrious painters my friendship
with whom has been the great honour of my life. And if I allude here
to the fact of my being a painter, it is in order that I may not be
mistaken for another Aylwin. my cousin Percy, who in some unpublished
poems of his which I have seen has told how a sailor was turned into
a poet by love--love of Rhona Boswell. In the same way, these pages
are written to tell how I was made a painter by love of her whom I
first saw in Raxton churchyard, her who filled my being as Beatrice
filled the being of Dante when 'the spirit of life, which hath its
dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so
violently that the least pulses of his body shook therewith.'

III

Time went by, and I returned to Raxton. Just when I had determined
that, come what would, I would go into Wales, Wynne one day told me
that Winnie was coming to live with him at Raxton, her aunt having
lately died. 'The English lady,' said he, 'who lived with them so
long and eddicated Winifred, has gone to live at Carnarvon to get the
sea air.'

This news was at once a joy and a perplexity.

Wynne, though still the handsomest and finest man in Raxton, had sunk
much lower in intemperance of late. He now generally wound up a
conversation with me by a certain stereotyped allusion to the dryness
of the weather, which I perfectly understood to mean that he felt
thirsty, and that an offer of half-a-crown for beer would not be
unacceptable. He was a proud man in everything except in reference to
beer. But he seemed to think there was no degradation in asking for
money to get drunk with, though to have asked for it to buy bread
would, I suppose, have wounded his pride. I did not then see so
clearly as I now do the wrong of giving him those half-crowns. His
annuity he had long since sold.

Spite of all his delinquencies,