Chapter XV: Book THREE: The Passing of Youth (2)

With the spirit of this manifesto Mendel was in agreement, though he could make but little of its letter. He refused to agree to it because so much talk seemed to him unnecessary.

"If we can say what we mean to say in paint, then we need not talk. If we cannot say it in paint, then we have no right to talk."

"You'd soon bring the world to a standstill," said Logan, "if you limited talk to the people who have a right to it. It is just those people who never open their mouths. I think it is criminal of them, just out of shyness and disgust, to give the buffoons and knaves an open field."

"All the same," grunted Mendel, "I am not going to agree to the manifesto. People will read it and laugh at it, and never look at the pictures. You seem to think of everything but them. I wonder you don't set up as a dealer."

"You're overworking," said Logan, "that's what you are doing. And directly the exhibition is open I shall pack you off to Brighton."

* * * * *

Already a week before the opening they began to feel that the eyes of London were upon them. They crept about the streets half-shamefacedly like conspirators, relaxed and wary, waiting for the moment when their triumph should send their shoulders back and their heads up, and they would march together through a London which owed its salvation to them. Not since his portrait had appeared in the Yiddish paper had Mendel been so defiant and so morosely arrogant.

He was ill with excitement and could not do a stroke of work. Every minute of the day he spent with Logan and Oliver, to whom Tysoe was often added. He dined with them at the Pot-au-Feu, took them all out to lunch and tea at places like Richmond and Kew, had them to his house, and was squeezed by the approaching success to buy Logan's two largest pictures before the public could have access to them.

"They are masterpieces!" he cried, swinging his long hands, "absolute masterpieces! You don't know how much good it does me to be with you two. Absolutely sincere, you are! That's what I like about you. Sincere! One looks for sincerity in vain everywhere else. Sincerity has vanished from the theatre, the novel, music, poetry. I suppose it is democracy--letting the public in behind the scenes, so that they see through all the tricks."

"An artist isn't a conjurer!" said Mendel.

"That is just what artists have been," cried Logan, "and they can't bluff it out any more."

"Exactly!" gurgled Tysoe, who when he was roused from his habitual weak lethargy lost control of his voice, so that it wobbled between a shrill treble and a husky bass. "Exactly! That's what I like about you two. No bluff, no tricks. You do what you want to do and damn the consequences. Ha! ha!"

So ill was Mendel just before the exhibition that Logan refused to allow him anywhere near it, and insisted that they should both go to Brighton, leaving Oliver to go to the private view and spy out the land.

Oliver protested. She wanted to go to Brighton.

"You shall have a new dress and a new hat," said Logan. "You must go to the private view like a real lady. Cluny doesn't know you, and you must go up to him every now and then and ask him in a loud voice what the prices are. You might even pretend to be a little deaf and make him speak clearly and distinctly."

The idea tickled Mendel so that he began to laugh, could not stop himself, and was soon almost hysterical.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Oliver, shaking him.

He gasped:--

"I--I was laughing at the idea of your being a real lady. Ha! ha! ha!"

She gave him a clout over the head that sobered him. Logan pounced on her like a tiger.

"You devil!" he said. "You she-devil! Don't you see the poor boy's ill?"

"What's that to me?" she screamed, with her head wobbling backwards and forwards horribly as he shook her. "It's n-nothing t-to m-me!"

She caught Logan by the wrist and sent him spinning, for she was nearly as strong as he.

"Go to Brighton!" she shouted. "I don't care. I'll be glad to be rid of you both. You won't find me here when you come back, that's all, you and your little hurdy-gurdy boy! You only need a monkey and an organ to make you complete. Why don't you try it? You'd do better at that than out of pictures."

Logan could not contain himself. His rage burst out of him in a howl like that of a wind in a chimney, a dismal, empty moan. He stood up, and the veins on his neck swelled and his mouth opened and shut foolishly, for he could find nothing to say.

"You slut, you squeezed-out dishclout, you sponge!" he roared at last. "Clear out, you drab! Clear out into the streets, you trull! Draggle your skirts in the mud, you filth, you octopus! Sell the carcase that you don't know how to give, you marble!"

She flung up her hands and sank on to her knees, and let down her hair and moaned:--

"O God! O God! O God!"

Logan's fury snapped.

"For God's sake! For God's sake!" he said. "What has come over us? Oh, God help us! What are we doing? What are we coming to? Nell! Nell! I didn't know what I was saying!"

He went down on his knees beside her, and Mendel, who had been numbed but inwardly elated by the storm, could not endure the craven surrender, the cowardly reconciliation, and he left them.

Out in the street he stood tottering on the curb, and spat into the gutter, with extreme precision, between the bars of a grating.

* * * * *

At Brighton, whither they went next day, Logan explained himself.

"It is extraordinary how near love is to hate, and how rotten love becomes if hate is suppressed--stale and tasteless and vapid."

"Are you talking about yourself and Oliver?" asked Mendel.

"Yes."

"Then please don't. I don't mind what happens between you and her so long as it doesn't happen in front of me."

"I'm sorry," said Logan; "but it can't always be prevented. I don't see the use of pretence."

"Neither do I. But some things are your own affair, and it is indecent to let other people see them."

"Oh, a row's a row!" said Logan cheerfully. "And one is all the better for it."

"But if a woman treated me like that I should never speak to her again."

"Love's too deep for that. You can't stand on your dignity in love."

"I should make her understand once and for all that I would not have it."

"Then she would deceive you. If you played the tyrant over a girl like Oliver she would deceive you."

Mendel stared and his jaw dropped. Had Logan forgotten the night in Paris? Was he such a fool as to pretend he did not know, could not see that the whole liberation of frenzy in Oliver dated from that night? . . . Oh, well! It was no affair of his.

To change the subject he said:--

"We ought to get the press-cuttings to-morrow. I wonder if we shall sell the lot? It's a good beginning, having tickets on your two."

"I bet we sell the lot in a week. Oliver has two of the critics in her pocket. What do you say to giving a party in honour of the event? We can afford to forgive our enemies now, and there's a social side to the movement which we ought not to neglect."

Mendel made no reply. They were sitting on the front. The smooth, glassy sea, reflecting the stars and the lights of the pier, soothed and comforted him. Brighton was to him like a part of London, and he sank drowsily into the happy fantasy that he was being thrust out of the streets towards the stars and the vast power that lay beyond them. He was weary of the streets and the clamour, and he wanted peace and serenity, rest from his own turbulence, the peace which has no dwelling upon earth and lives only in eternity.

"How good it would be," he said suddenly, "if one could just paint without a thought of what became of one's pictures."

"That's no good," replied Logan. "One must live."

* * * * *

The first batch of cuttings arrived in the morning. They were brief, for the most part, quite respectful and appreciative. Mendel learned, to his astonishment, that he was influenced by Logan, and one critic lamented that a promising young painter, who could so simply render the life of his race, should have been infected with modern heresies. There was no uproar, neither of them was hailed as a master, and Logan in more than one instance was dismissed as an imitator of Calthrop.

"Calthrop!" said Logan, gulping down his disappointment and disgust. "Calthrop! Oh well, it is good enough for a beginning. It would have been very different if you had let me print the manifesto. The swine need to be told, you know. They want a lead. . . . We'll wait for the Sunday papers."

* * * * *

London was curiously unchanged when they returned. Mendel was half afraid he would be recognized as they came out of Charing Cross Station, but no one looked at him. The convulsion through which he had lived had left people going about their business, and he supposed that if an earthquake happened in Trafalgar Square people would still be going about their business in the Strand.

They were eager for Oliver's account of the private view, and took a taxi-cab to Camden Town. She was wearing her new dress and was quite the lady: shook hands with Mendel and asked him haughtily in a mincing tone how he was. From all these signs he judged that the exhibition had been a success.

"Quite a lot of people came," she said. "Real swells. There were two motor-cars outside."

"Yes," said Logan. "Tysoe agreed to leave his car outside for a couple of hours to encourage people to go in."

"Kühler's picture of the girl with short hair sold at once," she said.

His pleasure in this news was swallowed up in his dislike of hearing Morrison spoken of by her.

"All your drawings but one are gone, Logan. I listened to what people said. They wanted to know who you were, and Cluny said you had a great reputation in the North. People laughed out loud at Kühler's _Ruth_, and I heard one man say it was only to be expected. He said the Jews can never produce art. They can only produce infant prodigies."

IV

REACTION

LOGAN made nearly two hundred pounds out of the exhibition and Mendel over a hundred. His family rejoiced in his triumph. A hundred pounds was a good year's income to them. They rejoiced, but it was an oppression to him to go back to them and to talk in Yiddish, in which there were no words for all that he cared for most. Impossible to explain to them about art, for they had neither words nor mental conceptions. Art was to them only a wonderful way of making money, a kind of magic that went on in the West End, where, once a man was established, he had only to open his pockets for money to fall into them.

Up to a point he could share their elation, for in his bitter moments he too was predatory. If the Christian world would not admit him on equal terms he had no compunction about despoiling it.

The words "infant prodigy" stuck in his throat, and with his family it seemed indeed impossible that the Jews could produce art. How could they, when they had no care for it? And how had he managed to find his way to it? . . . Going back over his career step by step it seemed miraculous, and as though there were a special providence governing his life--Mr. Kuit, the Scotch traveller, Mitchell, Logan, all were as though they had been pushed forward at the critical moment. And for what? Merely to exploit an infant prodigy with a skilful trick? . . . He could not, he would not believe it. The pressure that had driven him along, the pressure within himself, had been too great for that, just to squeeze him out into the open and to fill his pockets with money. There was more meaning in it all than that, more shape, more design.

Yet when he considered his work he was lacerated with doubt. It ended so palpably in the portrait of his father and mother, and he knew that he could never go back to that again. An art that was limited to Jewry was no art. Among the Jews no light could live. They would not have it. They would snuff it out, for it was their will to dwell in dark places and to wait upon the illumination that never came, as of course it never would until they looked within themselves.

Within himself he knew there was a most vivid light glowing, a spark which only needed a breath of air upon it to burst into flame. He was increasingly conscious of it, and it made him feel transparent, as though nothing could be hidden from those who looked his way. What was there to hide? If there was evil, it lived but a little while and was soon spent, while that which was of worth endured and grew under recognition.

Thence came his devotion to Logan, who simply ignored everything that apparently gave offence to others and saluted the rare, rich activity. It was nothing to Logan that he was a Jew and poor and uneducated: he was educated in art, and what more did he want? Logan was a friend indeed, and had proved it over and over again. He would take his doubts to Logan and they would be healed, but first he must go to the exhibition, the thought of which made him unhappy and uneasy.

Cluny received him with open arms:--

"A most successful exhibition. A great success. I hope you will let me have some of your work by me. A most charming exhibition. There was only one mistake, if I may say so: the _Ruth._"

Mendel walked miserably through the rooms. All Logan's pictures were in the best light: his own were half in shadow.

"Mr. Logan has the making of a great reputation," said Cluny, "a very great reputation."

"Oh, very clever!" said Mendel, suddenly exasperated more by Logan's pictures than by the dealer.

Indeed, "very clever" was the right description for Logan's work. It attracted and charmed and tickled, but it did not satisfy. The pictures gave Mendel the same odd sense of familiarity as the picture in Camden Town had done, and turning suddenly, his eye fell on his own unhappy _Ruth_. The figure was shockingly bad. He acknowledged the simpering sentimentality of the face. And he had been trying to paint love! But in spite of the figure, the picture held him. It was to him the matrix of the whole exhibition. Wiping out of consideration his own early drawings, it explained and accounted for every other piece of work. The least dexterous of them all, it had freshness and vitality and a certain thrust of simplification which everything else lacked. It was "solid," and worth all Logan's pictures put together.

"Very good prices," said the dealer. "Very good indeed."

Mendel paid no attention to him. He wanted to study his _Ruth_, to find out its precise meaning for him, and, if possible, in what mysterious part of his talent it had originated.

It had made him feel happy again and had restored his confidence. He was serenely sure of himself, without arrogance. He was almost humble, yet tantalized because he could not think of a whole picture in the terms of that one piece of paint. He remembered the strange excitement in which he had conceived it, the almost nonchalance with which he had executed it. And to think that not a soul had seen it! The fools! The fools!

He was ashamed to be seen looking so intently at his own work. The next day he was back again and told Cluny that it was not for sale.

"I don't think it's a seller, Mr. Kühler," said Cluny.

"It's not for sale," repeated Mendel.

He went every day and had no other thought. He wandered about in a dream, not seeing people in the streets, not hearing when he was spoken to.

On the fifth day as he entered Cluny's he began to tremble, and he fell against a man who was coming out. The blood rushed to his heart and beat at his temples. He knew why it was. The air seemed full of an enchantment that settled upon him and drew him towards the gallery. He knew he was going to see her, and she was there with Clowes, standing in front of his _Ruth._ Clowes was laughing at it, but Morrison, with brows knit, obviously angry, was trying to explain it.

"I'm trying to explain the cornfield to Clowes," she said. "Do come and help me."

"I can't explain it myself," he said, marvelling at the ease of the meeting. At once he and she were together and Clowes was out of it, like a dweller in another world.

"I don't think you ought to do things you can't explain," said Clowes.

"Then you are wiping out Michael Angelo, and El Greco, and Blake, and Piero."

"Yes," said Mendel. "You are wiping out inspiration altogether."

"Oh! if you think you are inspired I have nothing more to say," replied Clowes rather tartly. She had felt instinctively that Mendel and Morrison would meet at the gallery, and was annoyed all the same that it had happened. She knew how they were regarded, and she herself did not approve. Morrison knew how impossible it was, and Clowes thought she ought not to allow it to go on.

Clowes also recognized how completely she was out of it, and she made excuses and left them.

"You are the only one who likes it," he said.

"I don't like it, but I know that it isn't bad. It isn't good either, but it is real and it is you."

"I want no more than that," he said, "from you."

In his mind he had prepared all sorts of reproaches for his meeting with her, but they fell away from his lips. He could only accept that it was good and sweet and natural to be with her.

He told her quite simply how he had come to paint the picture, and how he had tried to paint his love for her. She smiled and shook away her smile.

"I'm glad it isn't anything like that really," she said.

"I tried to tell you what it was like when I wrote to you."

"Yes."

That was all she could say. She had been very unhappy, often desperately wretched, because her instinct fought so furiously against the idea of love with him whom she loved.

"The picture has made me very happy," she added. "It means that what I have been wanting to happen to you has happened. You _are_ different, you know. I can talk to you so much more easily."

He suggested that they should walk in the Park and spend the day together, and she consented, glad that all the reproaches and storms she had dreaded should be so lightly brushed away.

* * * * *

Happy, happy lovers, for whom nothing can defile the heavenly beauty of this earth; happy, from whom Time streams away, bearing with it all the foolish, restless activity of men; happy, for whom the pomps and vanities of the world are as though they had never been! Thrice happy two, who in your united spirit bear so easily all the beauty, all the suffering, all the sorrow in the world, and bring it forth in joy, the flower of life that cometh up as a vision, fades, and sheds its seed upon the rich, warm soil of humanity. Emblem of immortality for ever shining in the union of spirits, in the enchantment of two who are together and in love.

* * * * *

So happy were they that they wandered for the most part in silence through the avenues and over the grassy spaces of the Park.

Of the two, she had the better brain, and, indeed, the stronger character. She had been toughened in the struggle to break out of the web of hypocrisy and meaningless tradition of gentility in which her family was enmeshed, and the freedom she had won was very precious to her. She kept it as a touchstone by which to measure her acquaintance and her experience, and, using it now, she realized that there were two distinct delights in being with Mendel on this tender autumn day; one tempted her with its promise of furious joys and wild, baffling emotions. It seduced her with its suggestion that this way lay kindness, the gift to him of his desire, peace, and satisfaction. But behind the suggestion of kindness lay a menace to her freedom, which, being so much more precious than herself, she longed for him to share, as in the keen happiness of that day he had done. That was the other delight, more serene and more rare, infinitely more powerful, and she would not have it sacrificed to the less. The gift of herself to which she was tempted must mean the blending of her freedom with his, for without that there would be no true gift, only a surrender.

She could not think it out or make it clear to herself, but she knew that it was surrender he was asking, and she knew that if she surrendered she would be no more to him in a little while than the other women of passage with whom his life was darkened.

Ought she not then to tell him, to keep him from living in false hopes? She persuaded herself that she ought, but she did not wish to spoil this delicious day. It was such torture to her when he blazed out at her and he became ugly with egoism.

"Of course," he said, "the _Ruth_ makes all the difference. I can't let you go now, because you are the only one who has really understood my work. I am almost frightened of it myself, and it makes me feel desperately lonely when I think of all I shall have to go through to get at what it really means."

"No. If you want me like that I don't want you to let me go," she said, "for it is so important."

"Yes," he said. "It may mean an entirely new kind of picture, for I don't know anybody's work that has quite what is hammering away in my head to get out. It must be because you love me that you can feel it when no one else can. Even to Logan it is only like a superior poster."

How adorable he was in this mood of simplicity and humility! She could relax her vigilance, and sway unreservedly to his mood and give him all that he required of her, her clearness, her sensitive purity.

"You are like no other woman in the world to me," he went on. "You fill me with the most wonderful joy, like a Cranach or a Dürer drawing. I can forget almost that you are a woman, so that it is a most wonderful surprise that you are one after all. You are the only person in the world whom I can place side by side with my mother."

"You don't know what it is to me," she said, "to have a friend so strong and frank as you are."

He put out his hand and laid it on her arm wonderingly, as if to satisfy himself that she was really there, much as on his first visit to Hampstead he had touched the grass.

"I think I shall live to be very old," he said, "and you will be just the same to me then as you are now."

"Oh, Mendel!"

"Say that again!" he said, but she could not speak. Her eyes were brimming with tears and she hung her head. She longed to take him to her arms and to fondle him, to make him young, to charm away the pitiful old weary helplessness that he had. Reacting from this mood in her, which he did not understand and took for the first symptoms of surrender, he became wild and boastful, and clowned like a silly boy to attract her attention.

Her will set against him. She could not endure the sudden swoop from the highest sympathy to the gallantry of the streets, and when he was weary of his tricks she tried to bring him to his senses by asking him suddenly:--

"Is Logan a nice man?"

"He is my best friend. He has wonderful ideas and energy like a steam-engine, and he has suffered too. He is not like the art students who expect painting pictures to be as easy as knitting. He could have been almost anything, but he believes that art is the most important thing of all. He has made a great difference to me, by teaching me to be independent. . . . I will take you to see him one day."

"I should like to meet him, because he has made a great difference in you."

"He steals."

That gave Morrison a shock, for Mendel seemed to be stating the fact as a recommendation.

"Yes. When he has no money he steals. I went with him once and we stole some reproductions."

She was sorry she had mentioned Logan. Mendel was a different creature at once. Their glamourous happiness was gone. Logan seemed to have stalked in between them and the purity of their delight withered away.

He felt it as strongly as she, but thought she was deliberately escaping from him, that she was fickle and could not stay out the day's happiness. Women, he knew, were like that. They gave out just as the best was still to come.

It was dusk and they were in a lonely glade. He pounced on her and drew her to him:--

"I want you to kiss me."

"No--no!"

"Yes--yes--yes! I say you shall. I will not have you let it all slip away."

"Don't! Don't!" she said, in a passion of resentment. He was spoiling it all. How could he be so crude and insensible after this matchless day?

At last he was convinced of her anger.

"I don't understand you," he said. "Don't you want anything like that?"

"It has spoiled the day for me," she answered, "or almost, for nothing could really spoil it."

She walked on and he stood still for a moment. Then he ran after her.

"Did you . . . did you hate me then?"

"No, I didn't hate you. I hated myself more because I can't say what I feel."

"If you don't love me like that," he said, "I love you all the same. I must see you often--always. I can't live, I can't work, if you don't let me see you. . . . No. That isn't true. I shall work whatever happens."

How she loved his honesty! He was making no attempt to creep behind her defences. They had baffled him, and he counted his wounds cheerfully.

"If you don't love me like that," he went on excitedly, "it doesn't make any difference. You are my love all the same. You are in all my thoughts, in every drop of my blood, and you can do with me as you will. If you don't love me like that I will never touch you. I can understand your not wanting to touch me, because I am dirty. I am dirty in my soul. I will never touch you. I promise that I will never touch you, and what you do not like in me you shall never see. . . ."

She broke down, and burst into an unrestrained fit of weeping. Why could she not make clear to him, to herself, what she felt so clearly? . . . Oh! She knew she ought to tell him to go, to spare him all the suffering that he must endure, but also she knew by the measure of her need for him how sorely he must need her. Their need of each other was too profound, too strong, too passionate, easily to find its way to surface life, nor could it be satisfied with sweets too easily attained. . . . She must wait. To leave him or to surrender to him would be a betrayal of that high mystery wherein they had their spiritual meeting.

"I shall win," she said to herself, "I shall win. I know I shall win."

And she amazed him with her sudden lightness of heart. She laughed and told him how solemnly Clowes was taking it all, and how the loose-tongued busybodies were talking. . . . As if it mattered what they said! He mattered more than all of them, because they took easily what was next to hand and grew fat on it, while he fought his way upward step by step and was never satisfied, and would fight his way always step by step with bloody pains and suffering.

"Oh, Mendel!" she cried; "I'm so proud--so proud of you."

She was too swift for him. He came lumbering after her, puzzled, amazed, confounded at finding in this girl something that was so much more than woman, something that could actually live on the high level of his creative thought, something as necessary to his thought as dew to the grass and the ripening corn.

V

LOGAN GIVES A PARTY

THE impulse to take his doubts to Logan endured, and was aggravated by the wretchedness into which Mendel was plunged by Morrison's return and her powerful effect upon his life. He raged against himself as an idiot and a fool for taking her seriously and for believing that she could realize his work when as yet he understood it so little himself. If it was love, then have the love-making and get it over. If she refused, then let her go! What did she mean by slipping away just when the day's happiness began to demand utterance, closeness, intimacy, the promise of the dearest and most comfortable joys?

He knew that he was deceiving himself, that she could do just as she liked and it would make no difference, but he also knew that he mistrusted her. In his heart he suspected her of being one of those who like to pretend that life can be all roses and honey, that there can be summer without winter, day without night. . . . Just a pretty English girl, he called her, and, in his most bitter moods, he regarded himself as caught; and in that there was a certain sardonic satisfaction. It seemed appropriate that, having known many women without a particle of love for them, he should be in love with a woman who did not wish to have anything to do with him.

When he told Logan about it, that experienced individual smoked three cigarettes and was silent for ten minutes by the clock.

"It won't do," he said; "give it up. You're in love with her. Oh yes! You were bound to have your taste of it, being so young. But, for God's sake, keep it clear of your work. I know it is very delightful and all that, and like the first blush of spring, and that she seems to understand everything. First love is always the same. She seems to understand, but so do the violets in the woods, and the apple-blossom in an orchard, and the singing birds on a spring morning. They all seem to understand everything. Life is solved: there are no more problems, and the rarest flower of all is the human heart. Yet the violets and the apple-blossoms fade and the birds sing no more: the spring passes and the summer is infernally hot and stale, and winter comes at last. So it is with love and women. Nothing endures but art, and that they are physically incapable of understanding. My God! Don't I know it? A picture of mine means no more to Oliver than my boot does--rather less, because my boot is warmed with the warmth of my body. That's all _she_ understands."

He looked down at the boots and fidgeted with his hands.

"Yes. That's all _she_ understands," he repeated.

He was very haggard, and he looked up at Mendel as though he were trying to say something more than he could get into words; but Mendel was preoccupied with his own perplexities, and Logan's appealing glance was lost upon him.

"I'm older than you," Logan continued, "and of course it is difficult for me to say anything that will be of any use to you, but a man like you ought not to let life get in his way. It isn't worth it. Life is only valuable to you as a condition of working. Nothing in it ought to be valuable for its own sake. Do you hear? You ought never to have anything in your life that you couldn't sacrifice--couldn't do without."

He seemed to be rather thinking aloud than talking, and something indescribably solemn in his voice made Mendel shiver. He had hardly heard what Logan was saying and, thinking he must be in a draught, he looked towards the window.

Logan went on:--

"She'll be back in a moment. We don't often get the opportunity to talk like this. She has begun to read books, and thinks she knows about pictures now. She won't leave us alone. That damned critic has been stuffing her up and she reads all his articles."

He made a grimace of weary disgust.

"I care about you, Kühler, almost more than I do about myself, which is saying a good deal. Don't let this love business get mixed up with your work, especially if, as you say, it is Platonic--that is the worst poison of all--almost, almost. . . . Still, I'd like to see the girl. Bring her to the party. We might join up and make a quartette--if she can stand Oliver. Women can't, as a rule. They don't like full-blooded people of their own sex."

"She wants to know you," replied Mendel half-heartedly. "I'm always talking to her about you."

"All right," said Logan. "Bring her to the party."

Downstairs the front door slammed and Logan gave a nervous start. His whole aspect changed. He lost the drooping solemnity that had come come over him and was stiff, quick, and alert, and prepared to be droll, as he was when it was a question of humbugging Tysoe and Cluny.

Oliver came in with a bottle of wine under each arm. She was in very good spirits and looking remarkably handsome.

"Hello, Kühler!" she cried. "How do you like being a success? We're full of beans. We're going to take a house. Did Logan tell you?"

"No," said Mendel. "I hadn't heard of it."

"Well, it's true. We've done with the slums and being poor and all that. We're going to have a house and I'm going to have a servant, and I shall have nothing to do all day but eat chocolates and read novels and have people to tea."

"So you're going to be a real lady."

"Yes. I'm going to wear a wedding-ring, and we're going to give out that we're married, so that Mrs. Tysoe can call on me."

"You're not going to do anything of the kind," snapped Logan.

"I am. I don't see why I should have a beastly time just because you won't marry me, setting yourself up against the world and saying you don't believe in marriage."

"I don't want to be more tied to you than I am," said Logan, endeavouring to adopt a reasonable tone.

He was curiously subdued, and never took his eyes off her. Mendel had the impression that they must recently have had a quarrel. Logan was endeavouring to placate her, but she was constantly aggressive. She seemed to have gained in personality and to be possessed of a definite will. She was no longer shrouded in the mists of sensuality, but stood out clearly, a figure of such vitality that Mendel could no longer keep his lazy contempt for her. Almost admirable she was, yet he found her detestable. He thought she should be thanking her lucky stars for having found such a man as Logan; she should be taking gratefully what he chose to give her, instead of setting herself up and putting forward her own vulgar needs. If a woman threw in her lot with an artist, she ought to revel in her freedom from the petty interests and insignificant courtesies that made the lives of ordinary women so humiliating.

What was she up to? He knew that there was a deeper purpose in her, something very definite, for which she had been able to summon up her raw vitality. He could understand Logan being fascinated. If he had been in love with the woman he would have been the same, and his mind would have been swamped by sensual curiosity.

Before, he had always been rather mystified to know what Logan saw in the woman, but now the infatuation was comprehensible to him. His mind played about it with a strange delight, and he was even envious of Logan to be consumed in the heart of that mystery upon whose fringes he himself was held. And he thought that if he brought Morrison to see them he would be able to understand her better, and might even be able to place his finger on the weak place in her armour.

"You two do give me the pip," said Oliver. "You sit there as glum and silent as though you were in church. Taking yourselves too seriously, I call it."

Still in his forbearing tone Logan said:--

"We talk of things which are very hard to understand."

"Oh, give it up!" she said. "Leave all that to folk with brains and education. Why can't you just paint without talking about it? You'd get twice as much work done."

"Because, don't you see, unless you're a blasted amateur, you can't paint without rousing all sorts of questions in your mind--questions that don't seem to have anything to do with painting; but unless you attempt to answer them there's no satisfaction in working."

"Oh, cheese it!" she said; "I know what the critics look for, and it has nothing to do with brains. It is like being in love."

"Who told you that?" asked Logan with sudden heat; but before she could answer him Mendel had exploded:--

"It is nothing at all like being in love. That is what all the beastly Christians think of--being in love. And they want art always, always to remind them of that--how they have been, are, or will be in love, as they call it. And what they call being in love is nothing but a filthy lecherous longing, which is a thousand miles beneath love, and twenty thousand miles beneath art, which is so rare, so noble, so beautiful a mystery that only those whom God has chosen can understand it at all; for while you are in this state of longing you can understand, you can feel nothing at all except a hungry delight in yourself and your own sticky sensations. What can women know of art? It needs strength and will, and women have neither; they have only obstinate fancies."

When he had done he was so astonished at himself that he gasped for breath. Logan and Oliver, gaping at him, seemed ridiculous and little. Talking to them was a waste of breath, because when she was there Logan was not himself, but only a kind of excrescence upon her monstrous vitality. The room seemed to stink. It was airless and reeking with sex. He must get out and away, under the sky, among the trees, upon his beloved Hampstead. . . . Without another word he stalked away.

"Well! I never!" exclaimed Oliver. "Is Kühler in love?"

"Oh! shut up!" said Logan wearily.

* * * * *

For the party the room was cleared and a pianola was hired. The guests were invited to bring their own glasses and drink, and also any friends they liked. The result was that half the habitués of the Paris Café turned up, including Jessie Petrie, Mitchell, and Thompson, who was over for a short time from Paris, very important and mysterious because he had something to do with a forthcoming exhibition of Modern French Art which was to knock London silly. And there was a rumour that Calthrop himself was coming.

Oliver wore a new evening dress, which she had insisted on buying because she was very proud of her bust and arms. The dress was of emerald green silk and she looked very lovely in it--"Like a water nymph," said Logan, and he went out and bought her a string of red corals to give the finishing touch.

"You won't have much of this kind of thing when we move," he said. "It is to be farewell to Bohemia. I'm going to settle down to work. I've taught Kühler a thing or two, but he has taught me how to work."

"Damn Kühler! I hate him," said Oliver.

"You can hate him as much as you choose. It won't hurt him or me. I'm not a Hercules, and my work and you are about as much as I can manage."

"You're a nice one to be giving a party. You talk as though you would be in your grave next week."

"It is a farewell party."

"'Farewell to the Piano,'" laughed Oliver. "That was the last piece I learned when I had music lessons."

Mitchell was among the first to arrive. He had been ill, and looked washed-out and unwholesome. There was very little of the Public School boy left in him.

"Is Kühler coming?" he asked nervously.

"I expect so," answered Logan. "Do you know how to manage a pianola?"

"Yes. We've got one at home."

"You might play it then, to keep things going until they liven up."

Mitchell was placed at the pianola, and was still there when Mendel arrived with Morrison.

"I'm very glad to meet you," said Logan. "Kühler has talked about you so often."

"Yes," said Morrison.

"I hope you don't mind a Bohemian party. They are a mixed lot."

"No," said Morrison.

"Good God!" thought Logan. "Not a word to say for herself!"

Mendel introduced her to Oliver, who looked her up and down superciliously--this little schoolgirl in her brown tweed coat and skirt.

"I'm sorry I didn't dress," said Morrison. "I didn't know."

She shrank from the big, fleshy woman, who made her feel very unhappy. Yet she wanted to be fair. She had heard Mendel storm and rage against Oliver and she hated to be prejudiced. It distressed her not to like anybody, for she found most people likeable. She tried to be amiable:--

"I'm so glad the exhibition was such a success. Everybody is talking about it."

"Oh! yes, yes," said Oliver vacantly. Obviously she was not listening. She had eyes only for the men, and she bridled with pleasure when she attracted their attention.

Morrison was glad to escape to a corner, where she could watch the strange people and be amused by them, their attitudes and gestures and queer, conceited efforts deliberately to charm each other.

She blushed when she saw Mitchell at the pianola, and thought she had been rather foolish and weak to allow Mendel to bully her into dismissing him from her acquaintance, and she was relieved when she saw Mendel take in the situation and go up to Mitchell and tap him on the shoulder and enter into eager discussion of the pianola. She was less happy when she saw Mendel take Mitchell's place, and Mitchell make a bee-line for herself.

An astonishing change came over the music, which got into Mendel's blood. It was maddening, it was glorious to feel that he had all that wealth of sound in his hands. He knew nothing of music, and it was almost pure rhythm to him, and he wished to beat it out, to accentuate it as much as possible. The machine confounded him every now and then by running too fast or too slow, but he soon learned to pedal less violently, and then he was gloriously happy and drunk with excitement.

Astonishing, too, was the change in the company. Everybody began to talk and to laugh, and space was cleared in the middle of the room, and Clowes and a young man from the Detmold began to dance. Jessie Petrie and Weldon joined them, and soon the room was full of whirling, gliding couples.

Said Mitchell to Morrison:--

"I didn't expect to find you here. Are you going to dance?"

"No. I like watching."

He sat on the floor by her side, and, hanging his head, he said woefully:--

"So Kühler's won! Gawd! He always gets what he wants. There's no resisting him."

"Don't be absurd," said Morrison. "I hear you've been ill."

"Yes. I've been going to the dogs, absolutely to the dogs. I had to pull up. . . . I didn't know you knew Logan; but, of course, as he's so thick with Kühler----!"

"I met him for the first time to-night. What do you think of his work?"

"Flashy!" said Mitchell. "Very flashy. . . . Will you let me come and see you again?"

"I'd rather not, if you don't mind."

"Why do you dislike me so much?"

"I don't dislike you. I can't trust you not to be silly."

"Gawd! I bet I'm not half so silly as Kühler!"

"He is never silly!"

"Ah! Now you're offended!"

She turned away from him and refused to speak again. His half-flirtatious, half-patronizing manner offended her deeply, and was far more of an affront to her than Logan's almost open scorn of her as a little bread-and-butter miss. She wished Mendel would leave the pianola, but he was enthralled and could not tear himself away. He played the same tune over and over again, or went straight from one to another, swaying to and fro, beating time with his hands, swinging his head up and down.

Mitchell went very red in the face and slipped away. Presently she saw him dancing with Oliver.

After a few moments she found Logan by her side, and he said kindly:--

"I'm afraid you are not enjoying yourself much."

"Oh yes!" she gasped, in a frightened voice.

"I was thinking you were not used to this kind of thing."

"Oh yes! I often go to parties in people's studios."

"I remember, I saw you at the Merlin's Cave one night."

"Yes, I remember. I didn't enjoy that a bit. It all seemed such a sham."

"So it was," said Logan. "So is most of this. These people aren't really wicked, though they like to pretend they are. I don't dance myself. I'm too clumsy. Clog-dancing I can do, but not dancing with anybody else. . . . But perhaps I am keeping you----?"

"Oh no! I'm very happy looking on."

"Kühler's worth watching, isn't he?"

This was said with such insolent meaning that Morrison wilted like a sensitive plant. She managed to gasp out "Yes," and went on asking wild, pointless questions, with her thoughts whirling far removed from her words.

Why were all these people so impertinent, with their trick of plunging into intimate life without waiting for intimacy? She felt that in a moment Logan would be telling her all about himself and Oliver by way of luring her on to discuss Mendel. That she had no intention of doing, with him or with any one else.

"She's just a shy little fool," thought Logan, "and hopelessly, hopelessly young."

"I'm unhappy!" thought Morrison, and it seemed to her foolish and mean to be so. Her loyalty resented her weakness. She owed it to Mendel to enjoy herself and to share as far as she could his friends. But there was in the atmosphere of that gathering something that repelled her and roused the fighting quality in her, something indecent, something that hurt her as the picture of the flayed man in the anatomy book hurt her.

Mendel was playing a wild rag-time tune.

"I think I'd like to dance to this tune. You must dance with me. I don't think you ought to be out of your own party," she said to Logan, who caught her up in a great bear's hug, trod on her toes, knocked her knees, pressed his fingers so tight into her back that she could hardly bear it, and at last, as the music ceased, deposited her by Mendel's side.

"It is a marvellous thing, this machine," he said. "I should like to go on at it all night. Have you been dancing? You look hot. You said you weren't going to dance."

"I made Logan dance. He nearly killed me!"

"How did you get on?"

"Not--not very well."

"You don't like him?"

Jessie Petrie came running up: "Kühler, Kühler!" she cried. "Do, do dance with me!"

He was very angry with Morrison for daring not to like Logan, for making up her mind in two minutes that she did not like him. He gave her a furious glance as Weldon took his place and started a waltz, put his arms round Jessie's waist, and swung into the dance.

"Oh, Kühler!" said Jessie in her pretty birdlike voice, "I heard the most awful story about you the other day."

"Do be quiet!" he grunted. "Dance!"

But he was out of temper, out of tune, and the music he had been crashing out on the pianola was thudding in his head, so that he could not respond either to the music of the waltz or to Jessie's eagerness.

"Isn't it funny Thompson being back in London? I don't like him a bit now. You have spoiled me for everybody else. Do you want me to come on Friday as usual?"

"Do be quiet."

"What's the matter? You aren't dancing at all nicely and you haven't looked at me once this evening."

"No; don't come on Friday."

"Not----?"

Her voice was shrill with pain.

"No. That's all over."

She hung limp in his arms and her face was a ghastly yellow. She muttered:--

"Take me out. . . . I think I'm going to faint."

He half-carried her into the passage, where she sat on the stairs and began to cry. Neither of them noticed Clowes and the young man from the Detmold sitting above them.

"Don't cry!" he said roughly; "what have you got to cry about?"

"I never thought you only wanted me for that."

"You came to me. I didn't ask you to come."

"But I do love you so. I only want you to love me a little."

"I don't know how to love a little. When I love it is with the whole of me, and it is for always."

"But can't we be pals, just pals? We've been such pals."

"I'm sick to death of it all," he said violently, "sick to death. You're the best girl in London, Jessie, but it's no good--it's no good."

Clowes and the young man ostentatiously and with a great clatter went higher up the stairs, but neither Jessie nor Mendel heard them. The pain and the shame they were suffering absorbed them.

"I never thought," said Jessie, "it was near the end. I've always known when it was near the end before. It is like being struck by lightning."

Mendel was silent. He could do nothing. There was nothing to be said. Jessie had consoled him, comforted him, but she had only made his suffering worse. By the side of Morrison she simply did not exist, and it had been a lie to pretend that she did. That lie must be cut out.

"I never thought you only wanted me for that," she repeated, and began to move slowly down the stairs. At the bend she stopped and looked up at him, gave a little muffled cry, and moved slowly down into the dim lobby of the house.

Mendel gripped the banisters with both hands and shook them until they cracked.

"How horrible!" he muttered to himself; "how horrible!"

Upstairs, Clowes was boiling with rage. She lost all interest in her young man, and as soon as Mendel had returned to the room she raced downstairs, almost sobbing, and saying to herself:--

"That settles you, Master Kühler! That settles you!"

She darted across to Morrison, who had taken refuge in a corner, seized her by the hand and whispered:--