f the misunderstanding with Tim. I went, of course, to
the studio, not to the hotel. Mrs. Ascher is at her best in the studio.
Besides I was much more likely to find her there than anywhere else.

She was hard at work when I entered on a figure, at least two feet high,
of a man of very fine muscular development. I glanced at it and then
asked where Tim Gorman's head was.

"You know," I said, "that I admired that piece of work greatly."

Mrs. Ascher waved her hand towards a table in the darkest corner of the
room.

"It's not finished," she said, "and never will be. I've lost all
interest in it. If you like it take it away. I'll give it to you with
pleasure."

I found poor Tim, not even swathed in wet bandages, among a litter of
half finished fauns and nymphs and several attempts at a smooth-haired
dog. Mrs. Ascher had done very little work at him since I saw him
before. She had, in pursuance of her own idea, turned half the saucer
on which the head stood into a mat of water-lily leaves. The other
half--and I felt gratified when I saw this--was worked up into an
unmistakable hammer and a number of disproportionately large nails.
Tim's face and head still expressed lofty idealism in the way which had
fascinated me when I first saw the thing. But Mrs. Ascher had evidently
neglected some necessary precaution in dealing with her material. The
neck--and Tim's neck is an unusually long one--had collapsed. A jagged
crack ran half round it close under the right ear. The left side of
the neck was curiously crumpled. The head leaned rakishly towards the
water-lily side of the saucer.

I remember hearing once of an irreverent choir boy. At a Christmas
party, a sort of feast of an Abbot of Unreason held in the less sacred
parts of the cathedral precincts, the brat decorated the statue of an
Archbishop with a pink and blue paper cap taken from a cracker. The
effect must have been much the same as that produced by the subsidence
of Tim Gorman's neck.

"Do you really mean to give it to me?" I said. "I should like to have
it very much. I should set it up on my writing table and call it
'Disillusion.' But do you think it will collapse any more?"

"Has it collapsed? I suppose it did not dry properly."

Mrs. Ascher did not even look at it.

"Oh," I said, "the present effect, the cynical contempt for the
original noble spirituality, is the result of an accident? What tricks
circumstances play on us! A slight irregularity in dryin