ed up at a normal hour; and
coming into the dining-room, he had found her alone at her easel, near
one of the long glass doors. At the sound of his step she turned her
canvas round swiftly, and came to him with a glad lift of her head. He
took her hands in his big grasp, and kissed her forehead.

"Good morning, lass," he said. "You never told me you had brought that
with you. Couldn't be divorced from it, eh? What's the great work
now? May I see?"

"But yes, naturally. I've been keeping it as a surprise for you. I
don't believe I should ever have got through this last fortnight
without it. _Voila_!"

She set it facing him, and standing so with her eyes on the picture,
waited eagerly for his word of praise. But as the seconds passed, and
it did not come, she turned, to find him looking at her, not at the
picture; his teeth tormenting his lower lip; a suspicious film dimming
the clear blue of his eyes. Emboldened by this last incredible
phenomenon, she came and stood close to him, yet without touching him.

"Darling, you do like it, don't you? I can't complete it till you give
me a few sittings; but then--it will be my masterpiece. I shall never
show it, at home, though. It's too much a part of myself . . . my very
inmost self."

And he could not withhold the demonstration that such a confession
provoked.

"Oh, my dear," he said at last, without releasing her. "You made too
little of me once; and now you're making too much. I'm not worth it
all."

She put a hand on his lips.

"Be quiet! I won't hear you when you talk so. Look properly at my
picture now. You haven't told me it's good."

"Of course it's good. Amazingly good. But . . ." he laughed, a short
contented laugh--"it's beyond me how you could be misguided enough to
waste your remarkable talent in perpetuating anything so ugly!"

Her smile hinted at superior knowledge; yet she paid his obvious
sincerity the compliment of not contradicting his final statement.

"In the first place, because I love it. And in the second place,
because, for all true artists, who see in form and colour just a soul's
attempts at self-expression, there is more essential beauty in certain
kinds . . . of ugliness, than in the most faultless symmetry of lines
and curves. One is almost tempted to say that there is no such thing
as actual ugliness; that it is all a matter of understanding, of seeing
deep enough. For instance, I find that essential beauty I