ividly with his prodigal brother, would he not eventually take up the
role of dutiful parentage? The extraordinary thing was that the model
father should be also the artist.

I determined to abandon the Carville problem for an hour or two after
breakfast in favour of Maupassant. It is my custom to read once a year
at least, the chief works of that incomparable writer. The forenoon of
our Sunday has this peculiarity: no moral obligation to work is imposed
by our unwritten laws. If, on Sunday morning, I am discovered by Bill
leisurely turning over a pile of old magazines, or reading a story, I am
not greeted with "Do you call that work?" On the contrary, she will
probably sit down beside me and indulge in what may be charitably
described as gossip. Mac, too, will leave his palette and boards in
peace, will lie luxuriantly in the big rocker, or, spade on shoulder,
disappear among the shrubs at the lower end of the estate. We neglect
collars and appear brazenly at breakfast in shirt-sleeves on Sunday
mornings. It is for us a day of rest from the insistent badgering of
ideas. Our minds go into neglige; we forget editors and
advertising-managers for a while. Imagine then our dismay when I
reported my view of Mr. Carville in his brushed blue serge and Derby
hat, his glazed linen collar and dark green tie, passing sedately down
the Avenue, a neat child in each hand. There seemed to be no rift in
this man's armour of respectability. He seemed determined to maintain a
great and terrible contrast between his inner and outer life. O supreme
artist! I stretched myself on my sofa and opened Maupassant:

"_Monsieur_," I read. "_Doctor James Ferdinand does not exist, but the
man whose eyes you saw does, and you will certainly recognize his eyes.
This man has committed two crimes, for which he does not feel any
remorse, but, as a psychologist, he is afraid of some day yielding to
the irresistible temptation of confessing his crimes._"

I laid down the book, drawn by the aptness of the text to my problem.
Had Maupassant given me the key of the whole enigma? Was this
astonishing genius, who had so wrought upon our imaginations, was he a
criminal irresistibly driven to tell us the story of his evil life? Were
the police of Europe and America even now scouring the surface of the
globe for him? That brother, that dare-devil gentleman of the
painter-cousin's letter, was a fitting accomplice for him, the quiet,
unobtrusive, impeccable "seama