ns--what are they but spiritual Tubes bored through the
universe! Through these narrow tunnels, where all is recognisably human,
one travels comfortable and secure, contriving to forget that all round
and below and above them stretches the blind mass of earth, endless
and unexplored. Yes, give me the Tube and Cubismus every time; give me
ideas, so snug and neat and simple and well made. And preserve me from
nature, preserve me from all that's inhumanly large and complicated and
obscure. I haven't the courage, and, above all, I haven't the time to
start wandering in that labyrinth."

While Mr. Scogan was discoursing, Denis had crossed over to the farther
side of the little square chamber, where Anne was sitting, still in her
graceful, lazy pose, on the low chair.

"Well?" he demanded, looking at her almost fiercely. What was he asking
of her? He hardly knew himself.

Anne looked up at him, and for answer echoed his "Well?" in another, a
laughing key.

Denis had nothing more, at the moment, to say. Two or three canvases
stood in the corner behind Anne's chair, their faces turned to the wall.
He pulled them out and began to look at the paintings.

"May I see too?" Anne requested.

He stood them in a row against the wall. Anne had to turn round in her
chair to look at them. There was the big canvas of the man fallen from
the horse, there was a painting of flowers, there was a small landscape.
His hands on the back of the chair, Denis leaned over her. From behind
the easel at the other side of the room Mr. Scogan was talking away.
For a long time they looked at the pictures, saying nothing; or, rather,
Anne looked at the pictures, while Denis, for the most part, looked at
Anne.

"I like the man and the horse; don't you?" she said at last, looking up
with an inquiring smile.

Denis nodded, and then in a queer, strangled voice, as though it had
cost him a great effort to utter the words, he said, "I love you."

It was a remark which Anne had heard a good many times before and mostly
heard with equanimity. But on this occasion--perhaps because they had
come so unexpectedly, perhaps for some other reason--the words provoked
in her a certain surprised commotion.

"My poor Denis," she managed to say, with a laugh; but she was blushing
as she spoke.

CHAPTER XXIV.

It was noon. Denis, descending from his chamber, where he had been
making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in
particular, foun