e he was master again of his full sanity. He
had been beaten, smashed! But for this timely piece of good fortune all
would have been at an end by now. The Robinson support once withdrawn,
he would not be strong enough to stand. He had gauged his powers in the
great contest, and, in this moment of supreme lucidity, he foresaw he
must be conquered again. One portrait could not suffice for the
rebuilding of his future; even on the money side his fee would be
absorbed immediately. And the finishing of the great picture meant more
outlay. To try to "fake" it without proper models would be a folly of
follies--far better to abandon it altogether. His blind optimism at the
turn of things had certainly been of benefit to him, had stimulated him
to his best; but with this first piece of work practically
accomplished, the moment for estimating and facing the situation with
mathematical exactitude had certainly arrived.

He could not fight the world alone. However he might desire nothing in
life save self-consecration to work, he could not even achieve that much
without reinforcing his own strength by means that were unexceptionable
and honourable.

He came to an abrupt stop as the words swept from his brain. "By Jove,
that hits the nail pretty square!" he murmured, his lips ashen. Naked
and ugly, his primary motive stood before him as in a mirror. For one
clear moment he saw himself brutally, and shuddered. "I am not in love
with her. If she were dowerless, I should never have worked myself up to
this stage of appreciation; I should never have dressed up the Robinson
menage to make it palatable. The portrait would never have come out like
this. I should have dashed in a brutal modern study of a plain woman,
full of bravura passages. If I am going in for a thing of this kind, let
me at least be honest with myself."

And then he laughed with the irony of it all. He, the lover of poesie;
he, the fastidious gourmet in things of the spirit; who had followed the
cult of all that was lyrical and exquisite; he planned to mate beneath
him for the sake of crude money. Faugh! A vulture hovering over a heap
of carrion!

But the violence of the metaphor brought a reaction. "Rubbish!" he
murmured, and paced again. The pacing grew into a striding. Up and down
the length of the studio he stamped, face and eyes working intensely. "I
am exaggerating. I am morbid about it all; I am rushing to the other
extreme. When have I ever hidden from mysel