treated his works as if he were the last person concerned with them.
He would pass scathing judgment on those which pleased Audrey best; or
he would stand, like a self-complacent deity, aloof from his own
creations, beholding them to be very good, and not hesitating to say so.

"Well," said Audrey at last, "you've shown me a great many lovely
things, but which is your masterpiece?"

"They were all masterpieces when I first finished them."

"Yes; but seriously, which do you consider your best? I want to know."

Ted hesitated, and then turned to a stack of larger canvases.

"I wonder," she murmured, "if _I_ shall think it your best."

"Probably not."

"Why not?"

Ted did not answer: he hardly liked to say, "Because hitherto you have
persistently admired my worst."

"This," he said, laughing, as he lifted a large canvas on to the easel,
"is the only masterpiece that has withstood the test of time."

"He means," struck in his sister, "that he finished it a week ago, and
that in another week he'll want to stick a knife into it."

With all its faults the picture had a poetic audacity that defied the
criticism it provoked. If you looked long enough, you saw that a youth
and a maiden were lying in a trance that was half sleep, half death;
while their souls, diaphanous forms with indefinite legs, hovered above
them in mid-air, each leaning towards the other's body. The souls
described two curves that crossed like the intersecting of rainbows; and
where they met, their wings mingled in a confused iridescence. Eros, in
a flame-coloured tunic, looked on with an air of studied indifference
that might or might not have been intended by the painter.

Audrey looked helplessly at the picture. She could not understand it,
and with things that she could not understand she always felt a vague
impotent displeasure.

"What--what is the subject?" she gasped at length.

"A metempsychosis."

She knitted her brows and said nothing.

"Transmigration of souls--why didn't I say so at first?" returned Ted,
in cheerful response to the frown.

"So I see; but what's Apollo doing there with his bow and arrows, and
why is he all in red?"

"It's not meant for Apollo--it's an Eros."

"I beg your pardon?"

"An Eros--Love, a very inferior order of deity."

"Why is he in red?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. His taste in dress always was a little loud."

"But why is he there at all?"

"Love! Can't you see? I can't explain if it's not o