im see things: to begin with, hadn't I first made him see
Flora Saunt? I wanted him to give her up and luminously informed him
why; on which he never protested nor contradicted, never was even
so alembicated as to declare just for the sake of the drama that he
wouldn't. He simply and undramatically didn't, and when at the end of
three months I asked him what was the use of talking with such a fellow
his nearest approach to a justification was to say that what made him
want to help her was just the deficiencies I dwelt on. I could only
reply without pointing the moral: "Oh, if you're as sorry for her as
that!" I too was nearly as sorry for her as that, but it only led me to
be sorrier still for other victims of this compassion. With Dawling as
with me the compassion was at first in excess of any visible motive;
so that when eventually the motive was supplied each could to a certain
extent compliment the other on the fineness of his foresight.

After he had begun to haunt my studio Miss Saunt quite gave it up, and
I finally learned that she accused me of conspiring with him to put
pressure on her to marry him. She didn't know I would take it that way;
else she wouldn't have brought him to see me. It was in her view a part
of the conspiracy; that to show him a kindness I asked him at last to
sit to me. I daresay moreover she was disgusted to hear that I had ended
by attempting almost as many sketches of his beauty as I had attempted
of hers. What was the value of tributes to beauty by a hand that
luxuriated in ugliness? My relation to poor Dawling's want of modelling
was simple enough. I was really digging in that sandy desert for the
buried treasure of his soul.

VI

It befell at this period, just before Christmas, that on my having gone
under pressure of the season into a great shop to buy a toy or two,
my eye, fleeing from superfluity, lighted at a distance on the bright
concretion of Flora Saunt, an exhibitability that held its own even
against the most plausible pinkness of the most developed dolls. A huge
quarter of the place, the biggest bazaar "on earth," was peopled with
these and other effigies and fantasies, as well as with purchasers and
vendors, haggard alike in the blaze of the gas with hesitations. I was
just about to appeal to Flora to avert that stage of my errand when I
saw that she was accompanied by a gentleman whose identity,'though more
than a year had elapsed, came back to me from the Folkest