though
it has been more than once pointed out to me, and fairly, I dare say,
that the picture does not resemble her so much as I think, that her
type of beauty is larger, less conventional, infinitely richer, and
that, aside from the really unusually suggestive accident of her
likeness, it is only a general effect.

Well, well, it may be. But I dare to believe that I understand,
perhaps better than anybody, why it hung facing that bare cot-bed, and
what it meant to the man who slept so many years of his life there,
dreaming of the woman for whose sake he hung it. He knew what it
recalled to him even as I know what it means to me, and to both of us
it was more than any portrait. For we are fearfully and wonderfully
made so that no reality shall ever content us, and those sudden
sunsets and bars of music and the meaning glance of pictured eyes are
to teach us this....

The picture (etched by Waltner) was framed in a broad band of dull
gold, and under it, on a very slender, delicately carved teak-wood
stand whose inlaid top just held it, was a silver bowl full of orange
and yellow and flaming nasturtiums. They were quite fresh and must
have been put there that morning, for the dew was still on the pale
leaves.

It was inexpressibly touching, this altar-like, vivid touch in the
austere room, and I stood, drowned in a wave of pity and passionate
regret--for what I could not quite tell--before it, overwhelmed by the
close, compelling pressure of these mysterious dead loves: all over
now and gone? Ah, who knows? Who can know? Not Darwin nor Huxley, be
sure!

I went down the stairs, crossed the study and living-room, and after a
comprehensive glance over the little kitchen ell with its simple
_batterie de cuisine_ went up the main staircase, and entered the room
over the study. Here again was a surprise, for this room was
completely furnished in delicate, light bird's-eye maple, fit for a
marquise, all dainty lemon-tinted curves. The exquisite bed was framed
for a canopy, but lacked it; the coral satin recesses of the
dressing-table had faded almost colourless; the chintz of the slender
chairs had lost its pattern. An oval cheval glass reflected the floor
on whose long unpolished surface sprawled two magnificent white bear
skins. But with these furnishings the elegance ended, for nowhere in
the cottage were to be found such curious, mocking contrasts. The
walls, which should have displayed wanton Watteau cherubs, were ba