done with the sex. He became
if anything more intently, more remorselessly analytical, more
absolutely the student of human nature. He lived now in and for his
work.

He struck out into new paths; he was tired of his neutral washes, and
striking effects in black and white. He had begun to dream of glorious
subtilties of design and colour. Novels were lying in his head ten deep.
He had whole note-books full of germs and embryos, all neatly arranged
in their separate pigeon-holes. In some he had jotted down a name and a
date, or a word which stood for a whole train of ideas. In others he had
recorded some illustration as it occurred to him; or a single sentence
stood flanked by a dozen variants--Wyndham being a careful worker and
sensitive to niceties of language. To-night he was supremely happy. He
saw his way to a lovely little bit of psychological realism. All that
had been hitherto wanting to this particular development of his art had
been the woman. In Audrey Craven he had found the indispensable
thing--intimacy without love, or even, as he understood the word,
friendship. She was the type he had long desired, the feminine creature
artless in perpetual artifice, for ever revealing herself in a
succession of disguises.

He was beginning to adjust his latest impressions to his earlier idea of
her. He recalled the evening when he had first seen her--the hot,
crowded drawing-room, the heavy atmosphere, the dull faces coming and
going, and the figure of Audrey flashing through it all. She had
irritated him then, for he had not yet classified her. He had tried not
to think of her. She dogged his thoughts with most unmaidenly
insistence; her image lay in wait for him at every cross-road of
association; it was something vivid yet elusive, protean yet persistent.
He recalled that other evening of her dinner-party--their first
recognised meeting. Her whole person, which at first sight had impressed
him with its emphatic individuality, now struck him as characterless and
conventional. And yet--what was she like? She was like a chameleon. No,
she wasn't; he recollected that the change of colour was a vital process
in that animal. She was like an opal--all sparkle when you move it, and
at rest dull, most undeniably dull. No, _that_ wasn't it exactly. She
was a looking-glass for other people's personalities (he hated the
horrid word, and apologised to himself for using it), formless and
colourless, reflecting form and colour. Af