, her head and
shoulders turned at an angle from the rest of her body, towards the
front, she had fallen into an attitude of indolent abandonment. He had
emphasised the lazy curves of her body; the lines sagged as they crossed
the canvas, the grace of the painted figure seemed to be melting into
a kind of soft decay. The hand that lay along the knee was as limp as
a glove. He was at work on the face now; it had begun to emerge on the
canvas, doll-like in its regularity and listlessness. It was Anne's
face--but her face as it would be, utterly unillumined by the inward
lights of thought and emotion. It was the lazy, expressionless mask
which was sometimes her face. The portrait was terribly like; and at the
same time it was the most malicious of lies. Yes, it would be diabolic
when it was finished, Gombauld decided; he wondered what she would think
of it.

CHAPTER XXII.

For the sake of peace and quiet Denis had retired earlier on this same
afternoon to his bedroom. He wanted to work, but the hour was a drowsy
one, and lunch, so recently eaten, weighed heavily on body and mind. The
meridian demon was upon him; he was possessed by that bored and hopeless
post-prandial melancholy which the coenobites of old knew and feared
under the name of "accidie." He felt, like Ernest Dowson, "a little
weary." He was in the mood to write something rather exquisite and
gentle and quietist in tone; something a little droopy and at the same
time--how should he put it?--a little infinite. He thought of Anne, of
love hopeless and unattainable. Perhaps that was the ideal kind of love,
the hopeless kind--the quiet, theoretical kind of love. In this sad mood
of repletion he could well believe it. He began to write. One elegant
quatrain had flowed from beneath his pen:

"A brooding love which is at most The stealth of moonbeams when they
slide, Evoking colour's bloodless ghost, O'er some scarce-breathing
breast or side..."

when his attention was attracted by a sound from outside. He looked down
from his window; there they were, Anne and Gombauld, talking, laughing
together. They crossed the courtyard in front, and passed out of sight
through the gate in the right-hand wall. That was the way to the
green close and the granary; she was going to sit for him again. His
pleasantly depressing melancholy was dissipated by a puff of violent
emotion; angrily he threw his quatrain into the waste-paper basket and
ran downstairs. "The stealth of