assurance. I wished
to convey to him that I was not ignorant, nor curious--in fact, that I
believed in him. My allegiance was unshaken by Lawrence Vane's history.
I gave him the faith of friendship, which is a closer grained quality
than the faith of love.

We stood among his pictures and gossiped of art, praising H's
brush-work, wondering at R's anatomy, arguing L's historical accuracy,
and talking of everything warily--on the brink, as it were, of a plunge,
like timid girls at a river, dipping now a finger, a foot, an arm, in
the chilly depths, and wavering. When at last we were seated he took a
header.

"You've seen my portrait?"

"At the Academy? Just come from it."

"You think I've flattered myself?" he said, with his head on one side,
his eyes asking more than the question.

"It would not have done you justice three years ago," I evaded.

"Good! I wished the husk to be a thing of beauty. You think it a work
that will live?"

"Assuredly, or the Corporation of H----would not have unbuttoned to it.
It keeps its heart well within the limits of its waistcoat."

"And the other--the kernel?"

I looked at him and arched an interrogative eyebrow.

"The other picture? 'The Soul of Me?'"

"Of course I've seen it. It's magnificent work, Woll, but I don't like
it."

"Crude realism, eh?" he said, leaning sideways and bending a palette
knife backwards and forwards on the back of his chair.

"More," I said--"exaggeration."

He paled. I thought it was in offence at my critical presumption.

"There was none," he averred. "You shall see the original sketch," and
he paced to an easel that stood, covered with a cloth, in a distant
corner. He unveiled it.

"Ugh!" My cry was inevitable. I resisted the impulse to shroud my eyes,
but my teeth clenched on words.

It was the same picture with a terrible difference. Vivid, almost
glaring, in the black gloom and silence, the woman's form represented a
combination of all the debasement and degradation of the world. Evil
spirits seemed to mock and writhe and gibber in the sludge of the
foreground; the iridescent atmosphere hung with noisome miasmic dews,
even the face of the bargee glowed like a fiend in the glare of his
lamp, held viciously aloft to reveal in its completeness the whole
squalid history of spiritual failure.

"Who was she?" I whispered at last--it was a sight to shackle the
tongue--and his answer hissed back like the sound of searing iron on
sweating fle