You are alone in the world. You have a lovely home. You are in a
fair way to be spoiled by all the silly women who run after you. Of
course we are perfectly aware that your wife must have every
incomparable beauty under the sun united in her own exquisite person.
But each new divinity you see and paint apparently fulfils, for the
time being, this wondrous ideal; and, perhaps, if you wedded one,
instead of painting her, she might continue permanently to fulfil it."

Garth considered this in silence, his level brows knitted. At last he
said: "Beauty is so much a thing of the surface. I see it, and admire
it. I desire it, and paint it. When I have painted it, I have made it
my own, and somehow I find I have done with it. All the time I am
painting a woman, I am seeking for her soul. I want to express it on my
canvas; and do you know, Miss Champion, I find that a lovely woman does
not always have a lovely soul."

Jane was silent. The last things she wished to discuss were other
women's souls.

"There is just one who seems to me perfect," continued Garth. "I am to
paint her this autumn. I believe I shall find her soul as exquisite as
her body."

"And she is--?" inquired Jane.

"Lady Brand."

"Flower!" exclaimed Jane. "Are YOU so taken with Flower?"

"Ah, she is lovely," said Garth, with reverent enthusiasm. "It
positively is not right for any one to be so absolutely flawlessly
lovely. It makes me ache. Do you know that feeling, Miss Champion, of
perfect loveliness making you ache?"

"No, I don't," said Jane, shortly. "And I do not think other people's
wives ought to have that effect upon you."

"My dear old chap," exclaimed Garth, astonished; "it has nothing to do
with wives or no wives. A wood of bluebells in morning sunshine would
have precisely the same effect. I ache to paint her. When I have
painted her and really done justice to that matchless loveliness as I
see it, I shall feel all right. At present I have only painted her from
memory; but she is to sit to me in October."

"From memory?" questioned Jane.

"Yes, I paint a great deal from memory. Give me one look of a certain
kind at a face, let me see it at a moment which lets one penetrate
beneath the surface, and I can paint that face from memory weeks after.
Lots of my best studies have been done that way. Ah, the delight of it!
Beauty--the worship of beauty is to me a religion."

"Rather a godless form of religion," suggested Jane.

"Ah no," said