he threw more frenzy into his work than ever
before. His mind struck deep roots in it, so that the passion of it was
ever in him. Yet a sense of suffering and defeat stirred sometimes in
him, so that he dared not be alone with himself. He spent some of his
evenings in coteries where art and other things were hotly debated, and
this, too, helped him, furnishing food for reflection and sending him to
books as an interested reader in search of enlightenment and suggestion.

Thus the month flew away with almost unprecedented rapidity. Show Sunday
arrived, and the great picture (on which he had worked till the last
moment) was revealed to the world at large. The house was thrown open,
the empty dining-room improvised into a commodious buffet, and the great
studio arranged as a gallery, with the new portraits and the best of the
old work all brilliantly framed and lining the walls. Alice's portrait,
which had been brought across for the occasion, occupied a central place
of honour immediately facing the masterpiece.

The function was eminently successful, and a great many people of the
very pink of fashion came to lend it the light of their countenances.
The Robinsons had worked hard the previous fortnight preparing for it,
and had arranged the house and buffet, and had seen to the framing of
the pictures, and attended to the catering arrangements, without taking
a moment of the precious time away from Wyndham. Everybody said the
house was charming and the pictures works of genius. People could be
overheard asking each other, "Well, what do you think of it all?" and
then eyes would be turned up in ecstasy, and faces would glow with
enthusiasm, and the long-drawn "Beautiful," full of conviction, was the
epithet most largely utilised. There was in the air the dominant note of
triumph, the unmistakable feeling of Success. Alice, who flitted about
quietly, showing herself as much as good taste demanded, yet by no means
in the centre of the world's eye, was keenly sensitive to the prevailing
spirit of the afternoon, feeling closely the pulse of the assembly, and
she knew at last that Wyndham's barque was to sail in full career.

Mary, too, was there, immensely important as the host's sister,
conducting special friends of her own round the walls, and talking
ubiquitously in an unusual glow of zest and animation. If for Alice the
occasion happily revealed the future, for Mary that future had
emphatically arrived already!

And in