le thought 'the thing'! Their cant about the free
artist spirit experiencing everything, would wither the moment it came
up against a canon of 'good form,' so that in truth it was no freer than
the bourgeois spirit, with its conventions; or the priest spirit, with
its cry of 'Sin!' No, no! To resist--if resistance were possible to this
dragging power--maxims of 'good form,' dogmas of religion and morality,
were no help--nothing was any help, but some feeling stronger than
passion itself. Sylvia's face, forced to smile!--that, indeed was
a reason why they should condemn him! None of their doctrines about
freedom could explain that away--the harm, the death that came to a
man's soul when he made a loving, faithful creature suffer.

But they were gone at last--with their "Thanks so much!" and their
"Delightful evening!"

And those two were face to face for another night.

He knew that it must begin all over again--inevitable, after the stab of
that wretched argument plunged into their hearts and turned and turned
all the evening.

"I won't, I mustn't keep you starved, and spoil your work. Don't think
of me, Mark! I can bear it!"

And then a breakdown worse than the night before. What genius, what
sheer genius Nature had for torturing her creatures! If anyone had
told him, even so little as a week ago, that he could have caused such
suffering to Sylvia--Sylvia, whom as a child with wide blue eyes and
a blue bow on her flaxen head he had guarded across fields full of
imaginary bulls; Sylvia, in whose hair his star had caught; Sylvia, who
day and night for fifteen years had been his devoted wife; whom he loved
and still admired--he would have given him the lie direct. It would have
seemed incredible, monstrous, silly. Had all married men and women such
things to go through--was this but a very usual crossing of the desert?
Or was it, once for all, shipwreck? death--unholy, violent death--in a
storm of sand?

Another night of misery, and no answer to that question yet.

He had told her that he would not see Nell again without first letting
her know. So, when morning came, he simply wrote the words: "Don't come
today!"--showed them to Sylvia, and sent them by a servant to Dromore's.

Hard to describe the bitterness with which he entered his studio that
morning. In all this chaos, what of his work? Could he ever have peace
of mind for it again? Those people last night had talked of 'inspiration
of passion, of experience