LOVE IS MY SIN

Many years ago now I was staying at a certain castle in Scotland. I didn’t like the country; it rained without ceasing, and the rain was bleak and cold, like the harsh, Doric accent of the people, utterly unlike the soft Irish rain and the caressing slur of the brogue.

The host and guests went out shooting or fishing every day, usually taking the ladies with them, and I was left to my own devices, for I had already come to loathe the taking of life for mere sport.

The library hadn’t a modern book to boast of, so in the intervals of sunshine I usually walked about the Italian gardens, where the lilac bushes stood glittering like queens bediamonded.

One day, at a loose end and lonely, I resolved to explore the great house, and went up and down stairs and along endless corridors till, in the north wing near the roof, I heard something, and glancing into a bare loft-like room saw a man seated on the floor with a picture on his knees, while others stood about on easels and propped against the dais.

“May I come in?” I asked out of sheer curiosity.

He nodded his head, intent upon his work, and in I went and stood beside him, looking down on an Infanta of Velasquez.

“My name is Symonds,” I began, smiling. “I’m interested in painting and art as a journalist. I hope you don’t mind my looking on at your work?”

“Not a bit,” he replied, smiling pleasantly out of hazel eyes. “You won’t know my name,” he went on; “it’s Ronden; wholly undistinguished,” he added.

Was it fancy or did I catch a shade of bitterness accentuating the last two words? In any case my curiosity was sharpened.

“What are you doing?” I went on, noticing at the same time his curious pallid complexion and the long sensitive fingers manipulating a sort of palette knife.

“It’s rather a long story,” he began, “but it may interest you.

“In painting, as in all the arts, I imagine, there have been curious changes in taste. In the eighteenth century Murillos in England fetched a large price, while Velasquez was little thought of. Of course there were amateurs who knew better even then, but, as a rule, Velasquez, with his seeing eyes and poignant realism, was not much esteemed, and his pictures were often banished to the garret, or even to the outhouse, whereas Murillo’s fashion-plates were throned in the chief places of the mansion.

“Now all that’s altered. Murillo has sunk in our esteem and Velasquez has risen, so that Velasquez paintings have been dragged out of their hiding-places and the Murillos have been relegated to bedrooms or sold to sentimental millionaires.

“But many of the Velasquez have been damaged by exposure. Canvases rot quickly in damp. Consequently a new trade has sprung into being.

“Was it possible to transfer a Velasquez painting to a fresh canvas? Could that be done without injuring the original? I thought it could, and went to work at it. I soon found that this sort of craftsmanship, the art of transferring paint bit by bit to a fresh canvas and fixing it there with a thin paste or gum, was more lucrative than any work I could get, so I have been doing it for a good many years now.

“I sometimes think it is like a writer condemned to journalism to earn a living.”

“How interesting!” I exclaimed. “Are you really able to transfer the whole of that picture to a fresh canvas without injuring it? You might drop a little piece of paint on the floor, might you not, and it would all crumble into dust, wouldn’t it?”

“Surely,” he replied, and as he spoke he flicked off half a square inch of paint on to the floor, where it immediately fell to dust.

“I have studied the painting,” he went on, smiling shrewdly, “and I can reproduce every tone exactly.”

“Good God!” I exclaimed, “what an astonishing mastery. You almost persuade me that if that girl’s head had come to grief you could paint it in correctly.”

“If I had ever seen it,” he said, “and studied it, I think I could reproduce it so that Velasquez himself would hardly know where his brush ceased to work and mine began. Mark you, I am taking the whole of the inspiration from Velasquez. I profess to be merely a copyist—a craftsman, but a competent one, I hope.”

“But if you can resuscitate Velasquez,” I said, “you must earn enormous sums.”

“A good living, at least,” he replied casually. “I’m told that journalists often earn more than men of letters, and so we craftsmen often earn more than great creative artists.”

“Intensely interesting,” I cried. “You must be able to solve one of my difficulties. Of course I know hardly anything about painting, but I have often wondered whether Rembrandt painted all those brown portraits of his. Ever since the so-called Night Watch, which is really the Day Watch, was cleaned, one sees how he loved brilliant colours for their own sake. Could he have used those umber tones so exclusively?”

“Nearly all painters,” replied Ronden, “even the great masters, bought their colours and used them without thinking much about the composition of them; many of the paints were mixed with bitumen, and in time bitumen conquers all the other colours and degrades them to a dull brown. The so-called Cornish school in England have begun studying the matter and are trying to use pure paint, just as the best Frenchmen now are all using pure colours. But the painter’s art, which is the only universal art, is more transitory than other arts—I suppose by way of compensation”—he spoke as if to himself; “all colours fade or get brown in a couple of hundred years, and the magic of the artist’s conception is lost. You have to read the master’s message by faith and not by sight.”

Excited as well as curious now I probed further.

“How did you come to all this knowledge and this mastery?” I asked.

He looked up at me and I seemed to sense something pathetic—sad—in the long brown eyes.

“That’s another story,” he said, “too personal to be interesting, I’m afraid. This world forces nearly all of us to do things we do not want to do. But how comes it that you take such an interest in painting?”

“I take a sort of amateur interest in art,” I said; “in fact, I am on The Standard as art critic and Jack-of-all-trades. How is it I’ve never seen you downstairs?”

“I keep away from the society crowd,” he replied casually; “they’ve nothing I want and what I’ve got doesn’t interest them.”

“We’re in the same boat then,” I remarked. “The host and I are old friends, but the others leave me quite cold.”...

A little later the bell rang for tea and I went downstairs out of politeness; but not before I had engaged Ronden to go for a walk with me on the morrow before lunch. The man attracted and interested me peculiarly; he was very handsome, with the regular features, fine eyes and olive skin of the best Latin type; but he was something more than handsome; there was an air of thought about him and—why shouldn’t I say it?—a suggestion of sadness.

Next morning we met and strolled into the park. The walk didn’t amount to much, for in ten minutes Ronden had to confess that he suffered from fallen arches in his insteps and could not walk far, in spite of the supports in his boots.

“That’s why I am so pale,” he explained. “I’ve good health,” he hastened to add, “but, like a galley-slave, I’m not allowed to get about freely.”

Bit by bit I came to understand that this disability, to which I paid little attention at first, was the determining factor in his life, the infirmity making him curiously shy and introspective, while sharpening also his faculties of observation and deduction. But at the moment I was enthralled by his talk; attracted, too, by the morbid beauty of his face and by something thoughtful and aloof in his personality. He would go for minutes at a time without speaking; he did not always respond to my talk, as acquaintances do out of courtesy. He was unaffectedly simple and sincere always, always himself with a suggestion of underlying melancholy.

We sat, I remember, for half-an-hour that morning under a great bell-like chestnut, and I learned a good deal from him incidentally about painting and the trade in the old masters. He had wide and profound knowledge, and what I liked most about him was a large catholicity of taste. He could get as enthusiastic about a Botticelli as a Greco, and the old ladies of Franz Hals appealed to him as intensely as the mayas of Goya. He had no prejudices, no inhibitions, and his personal feelings were veiled, so to speak, by his impartiality....

Time and again I sought him out and gradually learned a good deal about him. He told me he had two boys of twelve and fourteen, who were at Dunstan’s famous school in Somerset, and one day he mentioned his wife; and when, out of courtesy, I asked about her, he took out his watch-chain and showed me a miniature of her that might have been painted by Cosway. It was a pretty face: a fine oval, with good features, set off by red-gold hair and long grey-blue eyes.

“No need to say ‘beautiful,’” I exclaimed, “with such features and such colouring. Is she tall or——?”

“I might say the height of my heart,” he reddened as he spoke, “but really she looks as tall as I do; she’s about five feet six and I am five feet nine nearly.”

The more I knew of Ronden the more he interested me. One day I found out that his boys were stepsons, his wife’s children by a previous marriage.

He was rather reticent and hardly ever spoke of himself or his surroundings. Still, in the course of a fortnight or so I came to know him and his surroundings. He was employed steadily by a Bond Street dealer, who paid him on the average from three thousand to four thousand pounds a year—“just enough to live on,” he added with a touch of bitterness.

“Lots of good writers,” I retorted, “would look on such an income with envy; in fact I scarcely know a single author in London who makes as much.”

“I dare say that’s true,” he replied; “you see the painter’s appeal is universal whereas the writer is limited to those of his own tongue.”

Everywhere I tested him I found he had thought for himself.

Recalling the fact afterwards I couldn’t understand how a man and his wife in a Knightsbridge villa could be pinched even with a couple of thousand a year: his wife, I inferred, was probably a bad manager.

Ronden knew most of the current plays. His wife, it seemed, liked the theatre, but never went to the opera. The majority of plays, he confessed, bored him, and he often let his wife go out alone with friends.

“She’s a great favourite in society,” he confided to me once, “while I’m half a recluse,” he added ruefully, “all but lame, you know.”

One day I asked him if I could see any of his original work, and he admitted that he had done very little. “I have all I can do to keep the wolf from the door; but some day, when the boys are off my hands, I shall paint half-a-dozen pictures I have had in my head for years. The masters all seem afraid of brilliant colours,” he went on; “I love colours. I want a picture to stab the eye with contrasts. Is there any colour more gay than scarlet or more joyous than gold, yet what painter has ever used them freely?”

I had set him off.

“Colour is to me pure magic,” he continued, his eyes glowing. “I often go to Covent Garden on a spring or summer morning to see the flowers. A bank of primroses forty feet long and ten feet high takes my breath, hyacinths by the yard make me shout aloud with joy—masses of colour singing to the eyes. None of the old masters knew colour. What do I care for form or story? I love colours—colours only, colours in contrast, colours in harmony; fair ears of corn and blue flowers; green grass and golden buttercups—the splendour of earth’s raiment—God’s, if you will.”

This rhapsody taught me that Ronden might prove as interesting an artist as he was a companion. Our intimacy, however, was cut short by my recall to town, and, once in London, the old life so enmeshed me that Ronden and his curious personality faded from my mind. It was fated, however, that I should come across him again years later and get to the heart of his mystery.

Everyone knows the Empire lounge in London, where the prettiest of the half world move about and watch the audience or the stage, and some provincial ladies, too, come there, enticed by the colour and movement and weird variety of the show.

I seldom went: the slave market, as someone has christened it, did not interest me. Life had a more picturesque variety show to offer than could be found on any stage.

Almost immediately after we went in we saw all eyes directed at one of the women, who was walking with a man. When she turned I was struck by the rare beauty of her face. I looked at her rather scrutinisingly; I don’t know why. She was tall, five feet six or seven, with a fairly good figure, but a face that once seen was difficult to forget. It was really more than pretty, set off as it was by red-gold hair, the nose small, well formed, the eyes grey-blue and large. The man with her I knew slightly, a lieutenant in the Guards,—Wyndham.

My companion seemed even more struck than I was.

“A good-looking woman,” he cried as they passed quite close to us. “I wonder where Wyndham found her. Splendid colouring, isn’t it? I wonder who she is. Should we go over to Wyndham and make him introduce us?”

“As you will,” I said, “but I would like to talk that matter out with you first. There is surely no haste; they are going to be here for some time.”

So Chesterfield and I had our talk out. But all the time I was wondering where I had seen that face, for I had seen it somewhere, I felt sure; it reminded me of something, I could not quite make out what. Again and again the two passed before us, talking very earnestly—at least Wyndham was very much in earnest, but the lady was perfectly self-possessed and her eyes were taking in everything that was going on. She had evidently noticed my companion’s admiration, for she certainly flashed a look at him as she passed that was quite significant.

At length Chesterfield stood up and went over to them, and I followed in his wake.

“Oh Wyndham,” he exclaimed, “I haven’t seen you for an age. Won’t you introduce us, and can’t we have supper together or something?”

Wyndham flushed, a little embarrassed. “Delighted, I am sure,” he said. “This is Mrs. Ronden, Lord Chesterfield.” I was introduced too, and Wyndham went on, half shyly:

“I persuaded Mrs. Ronden to come here, though she said she thought the Empire was barred, because Sims Reeves is going to sing to-night for the first time in ten years.”

“Do you care for music?” Chesterfield asked the lady.

“No,” she replied, “I don’t; but Reeves had such a reputation as a singer and lady-killer that I wanted to see him.”

Mrs. Ronden! In a flash the country house in Scotland—everything—came before me again. So this was the goddess of Ronden’s idolatry! I recognised even the features, curiously alike and curiously different, as a photograph always appears when compared with the reality.

But what was Mrs. Ronden doing in the Empire lounge with young Wyndham? Mrs. Ronden had two boys, so Ronden had told me, by a previous marriage, boys twelve and fourteen years of age—and that was three years ago. She could be no chicken—thirty-eight or forty at least—and going about with a young Guardsman of twenty-three or four!

A fisher of men?

Clearly Chesterfield was very much interested. He asked her quite boldly for a meeting, and then and there made up a party for an early dinner at the Savoy three nights later and afterwards the theatre.

“May I bring my husband?” she asked.

“Of course, of course,” said Chesterfield. “I shall be delighted to meet him. Won’t you come, Wyndham? And you?” he added, turning to me.

I excused myself. The enigma was interesting to me; but I had liked Ronden and so I seemed to be approaching it from a wrong angle, so to speak.

When the party separated I went my way considerably intrigued.

Mrs. Ronden had the manners of a lady—yet—every now and then her speech betrayed her. As soon as she was at her ease a little Cockney twang came into her pronunciation—a common twang—and she was evidently much flattered by Chesterfield’s admiration, responding very graciously with nods and becks and ingratiating smiles.

What did it all mean?

I was fated soon to know more. Three or four weeks later I passed through the great waiting-room in the Savoy Hotel on my way to the restaurant, when I saw Ronden and Mrs. Ronden. Ronden called to me and I went over immediately. “My wife,” he said, and I bowed as if I had not seen her before. But she took up the ball boldly:

“I met this gentleman the other night,” she said, “with Lord Chesterfield.” And Ronden asked no further questions.

Mrs. Ronden went on to tell me that they were waiting for a Mr. Stone, who was to be their host at dinner and afterwards take them to the theatre.

“Allan Stone!” I exclaimed, “the Jew financier?” He was widely known in London and I knew him particularly well.

“The same,” Ronden replied.

“Curious,” I went on, “that we should meet two or three times running like this, not having met before in the three years.”

At that moment Stone came up and insisted that I should dine with them and go to the theatre afterwards, but I had other fish to fry. I could not but notice, however, that he seemed on the very best terms with Ronden, and especially with Mrs. Ronden. Once, indeed, he put his hand on her bare arm and I saw Ronden’s face change. I wondered how much he understood, for, knowing Stone well and something about the lady, I had grown slightly suspicious. But I had to secure a table for my party and therefore rose to go. While excusing myself Ronden was sincerely kind, as always:

“I had hoped to have seen you at our little house in Knightsbridge. I have not forgotten our meetings in Scotland.”

I promised to call on him shortly, and before I left I had arranged to lunch with Stone the next day; he had something very important to say to me, he said, about a great enterprise in which he thought I could help him.

The next day I met Stone at the Savoy and we had our business talk; then the conversation drifted to other things.

“A curious pair, the Rondens,” he began. “I never could understand Ronden, but she is all clear enough; rather a nuisance, too. I suppose he is one of those poor painters who can never sell his daubs?”

“On the contrary,” I said, “he makes a great deal of money; he is one of the best craftsmen in the trade; knows more about the old masters and about modern paintings, too, than anyone I know. You are underrating Ronden.”

“No one has a right to be mean with a pretty wife,” Stone went on; “and he must be very mean with her.”

“I don’t believe there is a mean bone in Ronden’s body,” I said warmly. “I think he makes a large income and lets her spend it royally.”

“Good God!” Stone exclaimed, “she must be like royalty then, for a good many of us contribute to her income.”

The Jew’s tone was ineffably common and suggestive, and I could not help taking it up.

“You ought not to speak like that from guesswork,” I said. “I know Ronden pretty well and feel sure that he’s straight.”

“I have paid for my knowledge,” retorted Stone curtly. “I think I am justified in talking. I can assure you that even if you have paid that lady, and paid her pretty liberally too, she has no hesitation in asking you for more if she wants it.”

“I’m surprised,” I exclaimed. “Ronden makes three or four thousand a year and I feel pretty sure she gets most of it.”

“Oh, well,” said Stone indifferently, “that doesn’t go far when the lady wears fifty-guinea hats. Fifty seems to be her price,” and he laughed loudly.

“Can one really spend fifty guineas on a hat?” I asked.

“If you had seen the hat she was wearing yesterday you would know she had spent more than fifty on it, and she gets them by the dozen, I believe.

“I have studied her,” he went on. “She’s a type. She cannot resist a pretty thing that suits her, whether a piece of lace or a hat or a pearl; she simply has to have it. It is the colossal vanity of the woman. She would not only do anything to get it, but if she had to do without it she would be ill. I remember praising her once for fun as the loveliest woman in the world and she drank it all in and asked for more. I have noticed that many pretty women when they are about forty are like that. Their looks are leaving them; they notice quicker than anyone that they are not getting more attractive with the years and they become crazy for adornment. If what you say is true about Ronden’s income, Mrs. Ronden is crazed with vanity.

“The last time I took her out,” he added, “I told her plainly that I did not feel inclined to give her any more fifties just for the asking.” Stone evidently did not think highly of the lady, though he did not seem to have noticed her Cockney accent.

A little later I met Mrs. Ronden in Sloane Street. Thanks to Stone’s teaching, I noticed that she was beautifully gowned and beautifully hatted in a great picture hat of filmy black lace with one black-and-white ostrich feather.

“A wonderful hat,” I said.

“I am glad you like it,” she laughed delightedly. “I like these big hats too.”

“I think you would set off any sort of hat,” I replied. “I should like to see you in a small toque.”

“Would you?” she said, and stopped dead in the street.

“Certainly I would.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

“Wait here a minute,” she said, “and I will be back. I have got a dressmaker here.”

She went into a quiet little shop in Sloane Street and in a few minutes came out with a ravishing green toque which set off her henna’d mane of hair magnificently.

After praising the hat I noticed her dress and at once she became very cordial to me.

“So few men notice a woman’s dress,” she said, “and it is so important, don’t you think? I dislike men who are so wrapped up in their own affairs that they cannot think of anybody else—like that silly husband of mine.”

“I thought Ronden suited you,” I said. “You look so well together. He is very good-looking, too, you know, in his dark way, as you are in your fair beauty.”

“I know,” she said; “his face is good-looking, but I don’t think we women care for good looks in men much—not nearly as much as men care for looks in women. Then he’s a cripple. I did not know that or I would never have married him.”

“A cripple!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “Surely not.”

“He has flat feet,” she went on, “so flat that he cannot walk; he has to stay in the house all the time; he is a home bird, if you like; can scarcely walk at all without pain.”

“I did not know,” I said rather dryly, “that walking was a necessary marital accomplishment.”

“That’s unkind of you,” she answered. “No woman wants a man stuck round the house all day long. I think those home birds are more jealous and suspicious than other men. I hate jealousy, don’t you?”

“I don’t really know,” I said. “I don’t think I have ever felt very jealous.”

“It’s a ’orrid vice,” she said, and the “h” scarcely sounded; quite at her ease now, the Cockney twang came into her voice.

“I love a bit of fun,” she said, “change and excitement. To stick at home all day and talk art ain’t living: I’d most as soon be dead! You men have the best of it: you go out and make up to girls, and if one don’t please you, another may, while we women have to stick at home and mend stockings and put on buttons for our husbands. I can’t darn and won’t; not for my husband; he’s jealous if you like, always nagging at me. You don’t know how mad he can be.”

Perhaps I looked disbelief, for suddenly she cried: “Look!” and stripping off her glove she showed me her thumb. “He bent it back that night we went out with Stone till he almost broke it, the beast”; and indeed the whole base of the thumb was black and blue. “He is a jealous brute, and goes mad as those quiet brutes do. I hate such men. I don’t believe any woman can care for them really.”

I said nothing. The self-revelation was pretty complete.

I wondered vaguely whether matters would drag on in this way or whether there would be a catastrophe.

“I do not expect you often get hurt,” I remarked; “you are far too pretty to be hurt much by any man.”

Her appetite for flattery was absolutely limitless; she smiled at once, perfectly happy, and I think we separated at her own door without an idea entering her head that I was more sorry for her husband than for her.

One day I got a note from Ronden from Hampstead asking me to come to see him. I could not make out why he had suddenly transferred his household belongings from Knightsbridge to Hampstead. I had not seen either him or his wife for some time, so I went out to see him gladly. He had got a little house in Hampstead right up on the Heath, but I could not help noticing that his hair was all silver above the ears and he looked ten years older.

“I wanted to see you,” he said, “because I have cut loose.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have got rid of Helena. Her real name was Ellen, but she called herself Helena,” he added bitterly.

“I am sorry,” I said, not knowing what to say and waiting for him. I saw he was primed to the muzzle.

“Good God!” he said, “what fools men are. I was trying to make myself a painter when I met her. She told me that she must have more money for her boys, and so I did journeyman’s work, as you know, leaving the artist in me for a more convenient season. I thought she was satisfied with the three or four thousand pounds a year I gave her; she had all the dresses—everything she wanted. Yet she took money on all sides, I am sure, and from all sorts of men. The shame of it! She must have asked Chesterfield for money.”

“I know nothing about it,” I answered, “though I have been his friend for years.”

“Englishmen are not good at intrigue,” said Ronden, flaming, “as Jews are and the other men she gets. Chesterfield sent her two pearl earrings. She told me they were false, so I thought nothing of her having bought them. Then I got a letter of his one day; just a note; I had opened it and looked at it before I realised what it was. He excused himself, saying that the pearls had cost him eight hundred pounds, and he could not send her any money at the moment.

“She must have asked him for money shamelessly. And I had given her my whole life, minted my heart, my blood, my artist faculty—everything, to give her all she wanted.

“She cares for nothing but herself—not even for her children; she was quite willing to hand them over to me, give me full care and control of them. She has no natural affection at all.... She used to cry with rage, but would stop herself quickly because her eyelids swelled and got red and remained inflamed a long time in spite of her bathing. I never saw her cry with sorrow except once when her hair began to come out in handfuls; then she cried so that I thought she would be ill till I told her she would only lose more hair by doing that, and then she stopped quick enough.... She’s all vanity!

“I came away from Knightsbridge; I could not stand the place though I loved it. I took this house away from everyone. Fancy, suppose I had met Stone! I know that she has had money from him. He would never have dared to touch her in public as he did if she hadn’t prostituted herself. The shame of it! I am afraid to go out for fear of meeting anyone I know. Everyone I know, I seem to have known through her—and from all of them I feel sure she has had money. Oh, damn her, the——!”

I was silent for a moment. Then I said: “Look here: why not turn round now and give yourself to your art, do your real work as you ought to have done long ago? You are still a young man.”

“You’re right,” he said, his despairing eyes searching mine. “I must do my work. That is why I wrote to you. I felt you would help me. We all have to bear some burden, I suppose.”

“Sure!” I broke in; “and the heavier the burden for the artist the more he is able to reveal afterwards. You remember Shelley’s

Turn your anguish into soul-beauty. That will be your consolation and ultimately your reward.”

“That’s it,” he cried; “that’s it. I knew you would help me. I’ll get to work, though I’m nearly out of my mind with grief and rage and shame. I loved her,” he said, lifting despairing eyes to me. “God! how I loved her. Why? Why?” And he fell to graming.

I got away by promising to come again soon, and in a week or so I went back, hoping he would have at least begun a picture; but no—he was as wild as ever, or worse.

“I’ve done nothing,” he replied bitterly to my questioning. “She has ruined me. What do you think of that for a bill?” and he took a bill and threw it across to me. It was for hats for six months—eight hundred pounds.

“I have paid a dozen at least of those,” he added. “They must come to an end soon for I’m bankrupt. Why are such women allowed to live? We kill snakes that are harmless and let such creatures live——”

There was madness in his eyes. I grew anxious for him.

“Get to work,” I cried, “and stop thinking of the past. You are doing yourself harm; you must stop resolutely and get to work.” I insisted and persisted till he got out a canvas and stretched it and promised me to get to work on it at once—Ruth, a Biblical subject that had been in his mind for years.

Before I called again to see how Ronden was getting on the Greek-Turkish war had broken out and I was sent to Turkey by The Manchester Guardian. It was one of the great experiences of my life, but I must not stop now to draw the moral of it.

When I returned to London some six months later I found two letters from Ronden: the first written shortly after my departure, thanking me for my encouragement, telling me how well he was getting on and asking me to come to see him when my occupation permitted. The second was months later; in it Ronden just asked me to call. Its reticence puzzled me; what had happened?

As soon as I had a free afternoon I went up. Ronden received me in the old friendly way, but now nothing could disguise the change in his appearance. He was an old man; the hair grey, the smooth skin all lined and, worst of all, the brown hazel eyes were only half alive; the whole face had changed, lost colour, brightness, hope.

He received me pleasantly, and I explained my absence and silence; he had guessed that I had been called away.

“But what have you done meanwhile?” I asked.

“I’ll show you,” he replied quietly; “not very much, I’m afraid”; and he led the way to the studio. As we passed through the drawing-room I was startled by a still-life of astonishing beauty: an arum lily in an apple-green vase with primroses—a glory of colour. “First-rate,” I cried. “I was sure you’d make good; I’m so glad.”

Ronden nodded his head half sadly and went on; on an easel in the studio was a portrait of his wife, very frank and straightforward; but it left one with a doubt of the woman; it was like a head by Titian for richness of colour and veracity; near it a great picture of Ruth in the Alien Corn, Boaz in the middle distance and far-off hills framing the scene. What was the matter with it? The Ruth was plainly a Jewess—black hair and brows, large dark eyes and lips a thread of scarlet, and yet——

I felt puzzled: the landscape was really good, the corn wonderfully rendered, the shadows pools of purple on the ground.

What was the matter?

I turned with a question in my face: Ronden without a word drew up another easel and showed me the head of a well-known star actress: Miss Jay’s face was unmistakable: yet?——

Suddenly the truth flashed on me. Both portraits had a look of Mrs. Ronden.

I turned to Ronden just as he gripped me by the arm. “You see it too,” he exclaimed with savage intensity; “it’s her face, always her damned soul that looks through brown eyes or black, always hers——

“Has she cast a spell on me or am I crazy?” he raved on. “I’ve tried everything. The first figure pictures I did I destroyed; they were all plainly Helena; damn her! So I got models and copied the models religiously; all to no use, still she looks out of every canvas at me—the beast——

“She’s got into my blood,” he whispered, “and I shall never get her out”—and his face went grey with despair.

“Oh yes, you will,” I cried. “Your landscapes are lovely; that still-life alone is worth any labour and this Miss Jay has less of her look than the Ruth. Stick at it, man, and you’ll work yourself free——”

He shook his head. “It’s worse than you think,” he began. “I got a model a month ago for the figure; the girl was beautifully made, but as I drew her—thighs, breasts, all her lovely outlines—beside her I saw more distinctly than the real figure, the lines of Helena; I couldn’t draw the model, man; all the while I was seduced by the other; her memory is stronger than reality; I am her slave; yet I loathe her and her prostitute’s soul. Was there ever such degradation?”

“Stick at it, man,” I cried. “Ten years of passion cannot be wiped out in six months; but you’ll get free—why, one of these days you’ll be falling in love with some model and that’ll be a final cure; you’re young yet, not forty?——”

“Thirty-five,” he replied. “Perhaps you are right; your courage does me good; I’ll go on. I was nearly giving up——”

“Do some more flower work and vases,” I said. “Set yourself tasks; put a rumpled damask cloth on the table; throw white roses on it and red cherries and gold oranges—make it all flame with colour: call on your real talent all the while; and work, man, work; don’t think; work is the cure.”

“I knew you’d help me,” he remarked quietly. “I believe you’re right; I’ll get at it again; I’ll do a flower piece that’ll astonish you. I promise. I’ll work.”

“I want to live and get free,” he added, “work myself free. Thank you, thank you!”

I left him on this in good heart, as I thought, and resolved to visit him again in a week or so; but my own work pulled me, and one day a month later when I came into my rooms I was surprised to find on my mantel-shelf a flower piece superbly painted. It was my thought realised. There was the crumpled tablecloth and a vase and cherries thrown about and oranges of red-gold and among them a broken nutshell showing a little dried-up kernel—all marvellously rendered.

“Who sent it?” I had asked my servant before I saw it and remembered. “When did it come?” I added.

“This morning, sir,” he replied, “a messenger boy brought it, just like that, so I put it up there.”

I nodded. ’Twas too late to go Hampstead that evening; on the morrow I’d go.

The morning after when I opened the paper the first thing that struck me was:

Death of an Artist: Frank Ronden. Suicide Suspected.

And the journalist went on to tell how Ronden’s wife had left him and how he had grieved for her and tried to get her to return—the usual rigmarole of romantic lies.

To say I was shocked doesn’t convey an idea of what I felt then and for weeks afterwards. He had taken, it appeared from the inquest, a whole handful of trional—taken it purposely; he had paid his servant the night before and cut up and burnt all his pictures.

If I had gone to see him as I intended, could I have saved him? Who can tell? We men are so ignorant, so short-sighted, so selfish.

A month later I ran into Stone. “The very man I wanted to see,” he shouted. “You know Ronden killed himself for that b——[I nodded], but you don’t know that she’s got hold of Lord Haliburt and he’s adopted her two sons: she’s Lady Haliburt now—what do you think of that?”

“Never!” I cried.

“It’s true,” he grinned; “she came to me and begged the money for the wedding dress, and though I only half believed her story, I risked the fifty—fifty was her figure, you know—and by God she brought it off. She’s a marvel—that woman!

“I’m glad I don’t like your cold women,” he added: “they must love the game if I’m to be interested. Lord Haliburt has made a bad bargain.”

I took no interest in the outcome. Poor Ronden’s flower piece will always be with me, teaching that a too great love is a mortal malady.

AS OTHERS SEE US