ay I put temptation in his way. Horrid, isn't it, to
think there's something in me that appeals to his diseased
imagination?"

"It's a pity. And I don't know what I can do for you. You see you've
identified yourself with a school I particularly abominate. It isn't a
school. A school implies a master and some attempt at discipline. It
should have a formula. Crawley has none."

"Oh, I don't know about that." He stood beside Jewdwine, who was
gazing at the frontispiece. "Talk about absolute beauty, any fool can
show you the beauty of a beautiful thing, or the ugliness of an ugly
one; but it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in
anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman's face. Look at it!
He's got hold of something. He's caught the lurking fascination,
the--the leer of life."

Jewdwine made a gesture of disgust.

"Of course, it's no good as an illustration. I don't see life with a
leer on its face. But he can draw. Look at the fellow's line. Did you
ever see anything like the purity of it? It's a high and holy
abstraction. By Jove! He's got _his_ formula. Pure line remains pure,
however bestial the object it describes. I wish he'd drawn it at
illustrating _me_. But I suppose if he saw it that way he had to draw
it that way."

Jewdwine turned over the pages gingerly, as if he feared to be
polluted. He was at the moment profoundly sorry for Rickman in this
marriage of his art with Mordaunt Crawley's. Whatever might be said of
Rickman's radiant and impetuous genius it neither lurked nor leered;
it was in no way represented by that strange and shameless figure,
half Maenad, half modern courtesan, the face foreshortened, tilted back
in the act of emptying a wine-cup.

"At any rate," said Rickman, "he hasn't lied. He's had the courage to
be his filthy self."

"Still, the result isn't exactly a flattering portrait of your Muse."

"She _is_ a caution. It's quite enough to make you and Hanson lump me
with Letheby and that lot."

This touched Jewdwine in two sensitive places at once. He objected to
being "lumped" with Hanson. He also felt that his generosity had been
called in question. For a moment the truth that was in him looked out
of his grave and earnest eyes.

"I do _not_ lump you with Letheby or anybody. On the contrary, I think
you stand by yourself. Quite one half of this book is great poetry."

"You really think that?"

"Yes," said Jewdwine solemnly; "I do think it. That's why I depl