The next morning all trace of mist on the distant sea had vanished, but though the sun shone splendidly, the air still bit shrewdly. West rose with the spirit of discontent in him, breakfasted early and alone, then set out to walk to Rottingdean. Maddison, palette in hand, answered the knock at the door.

“Hullo! The early bird does the work,” said West. “May I come in and talk while you paint?”

“Come along. You’re a fairly early bird too. There are cigars and cigarettes over there, and an unopened bottle of whisky and a siphon in the locker by the window.”

West took a cigar, and then wandered aimlessly about the room, while Maddison worked at “The Rebel.”

“Ah! My picture!” exclaimed West, looking over his shoulder. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever done, Maddison. Won’t the critics fight over it. You hit on a thundering good model for it.”

“Your picture! I didn’t promise to let you have it. I’m doubtful if I shall sell it at all.”

“Oh!” said West, with a queer intonation, “I didn’t know you ever felt that way about your work. I thought you laughed at art for art’s sake, and all that damned nonsense, and preached that the laborer is worthy of his hire—eh?”

“As a rule. But—somehow this has got hold of me.”

“Or—the pretty model—eh? Well, I envy you; you’re a lucky devil. What’s the poor curate say? Or is he guilty of the ignorance which is bliss?”

Maddison bit his lips; this raillery which before would have amused him, now made him angry. He felt that the best way to put an end to it would be to speak outright and to show that he did not like West’s tone.

“Her husband does know. The facts are just these, West. Mrs. Squire has left her husband; it was a far from happy marriage. He’s High Church or something and won’t give her a divorce. So—we have to make the best of it. I think it right you should know exactly how matters stand, as she may, in fact, will, be coming down here, and your wife may chance to meet her with me.”

“Oh, Agatha isn’t a prig. Nor is Alice.”

“Alice?”

“Miss Lane.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot that was her Christian name. So now you understand why I may not wish to part with this picture. If anyone has it it shall be you, if you don’t change your mind.”

“Change my mind! It’s not a thing I used often to do, but I seem always to be at it now. I meant to go up to town this morning, but didn’t. If I’d intended to come here, ten to one I should have run up to town. I’m too young to be growing old, but I feel deuced old all the same, at times.”

He was again strolling vaguely about the room, now pausing to look at a sketch, now glancing out of the window at the undulating stretch of green down.

“You look just as young as the first day I met you,” he continued; “haven’t changed a hair. I suppose it’s care that kills men as well as cats. There’s more real care in a successful career than in a failure. A small shopkeeper can’t lose much, and doesn’t run many risks. Now I—why, good Lord! I may go bust—sky high—any day. Big business is all a big gamble, the margin between a huge profit and a huge loss is so small—a puff of wind, and over you go on the money side. Now you—you’re above fate now; you’re known; competition can never touch you; the speculation is entirely on the part of those who buy your pictures. In a hundred years they may be worth thousands or nothing. Yes, you’re a lucky devil.”

“Luck. Do you believe in luck?”

“Luck? It’s the only real thing in the world. It rules the world! Believe in it? Of course I do. I shouldn’t ever have been anything more than a small shopkeeper if I hadn’t been lucky. I inherited a tiny corner shop in a back street; fate—or the Metropolitan Board of Works—decided to drive a new thoroughfare past my place. Wasn’t that luck? Isn’t marriage all a matter of luck? What man can know anything at all about his wife, until she is his wife and free to show him her real self? Luck! I never trust the man who sneers at luck and talks about the reward of honest labor; he’s a liar or a fool, both equally bad to deal with in business.”

“I don’t believe in luck. Which am I, knave or fool?”

“Oh, you’re an artist, and the artistic temperament covers a multitude of eccentricities.”

The hooting of a motor-horn drew him to the window again, from which a glimpse of the road could be seen.

“Hullo! Here’s Alice and Agatha, early birds too. But she’s come to bully you into starting the portrait. Are you going to do it?”

“Yes. Why not?”

He put down his palette, took the picture off the easel and set it in a corner with its face to the wall, and then went out to welcome his guests, followed by West.

“Oh, Mr. Maddison, I do hope you don’t mind my having come,” said Mrs. West, leaning from the car, and holding out her small, daintily gloved hand. “May I come in? I want to talk business.”

“Delighted, Mrs. West. Good morning, Miss Lane.”

“I guessed you’d come here, Phil,” Mrs. West went on, as Maddison helped her to alight, “but you’re not to stay. You take Alice for a spin and then come back for us. Perhaps Mr. Maddison will come back to lunch with us?”

Maddison accepted the invitation, and West climbed into the car.

Mrs. West and Maddison watched them till a turn in the road put them out of sight.

“Now, Mr. Maddison, do take me into your studio. I want you to tell me, seriously, will you paint my portrait? Phil tells me I should look on it as a great compliment if you do. I like compliments, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, everyone does; even when I know they are undeserved; it’s pleasant to be able to please people, and only people who are pleased pay compliments worth having.”

“What a jolly room!” Mrs. West exclaimed, as she sat down and looked round critically. “There doesn’t seem to be anything really unusual about it, except the swords and daggery things on the wall, but it looks quite different to other studios. Now, will you paint my portrait, Mr. Maddison?”

“I will, with pleasure, if you’ll let me paint it my own way. I always make that condition.”

“I want to be painted just as I am. I don’t want to be flattered: I really mean that.”

“I’m glad you do, for—that’s my way. Please sit straight up in that chair, and look at me, so—yes, that’s it. I shan’t keep you in that pose long at a time, and I shan’t do much this morning, just rough in the head and figure if I can—if I’m in the mood. I never know whether I am or not till I begin to work.”

“May I talk?”

“Not for a few minutes—just look straight at me—so.”

For some ten minutes he worked rapidly and surely, pausing every now and again to examine her face intently. Only in the eyes lay anything of character, and from them looked out, so he thought, not only the struggling soul he expected to see, but a rebellious discontent.

“Now you can do what you like for a time, Mrs. West, and talk to me if you’ll be so good—but you mustn’t expect me to answer much—I’ll go on working.”

She did not, however, leave the chair, but relaxing her upright attitude, sank back, and watched him steadily.

“Have you known Phil long, Mr. Maddison?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes, off and on, for years.”

“Has he changed much since you first knew him?”

“No, I don’t think so. He was always much the same.”

“He seems to me to have changed a lot since—we were married. Or perhaps I knew nothing of him then—and am only getting to know him now. I suppose everybody knows all about me the minute they meet me. I know you won’t want to answer—but isn’t that so?”

“It’s a common mistake to think that one can know much about anyone until one has known them intimately a long time—and then the much—isn’t much. I’ve sometimes thought—at least I used to do so—that I had put all a sitter’s character upon my canvas, but now I know better. The face tells everything, if only one can read all its lines.”

“I wonder what you read in my face?”

“What I think I see there, I shall try to paint—and then, why, then, no one may be able to see in my painting what I have tried to put there.”

“Not even I?”

“Probably you least of all.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I do fancy I don’t know much about myself. I used to think everybody liked me—” she hesitated and then turned toward the window, keeping silent for a time.

“I suppose you look at people’s faces in quite a different way to what other people do, Mr. Maddison?” she said after a while.

“At any rate I think I do. If a face seems to have a story to tell, I like to read it. But most faces are masks to empty heads.”

She again kept silent, then stood up.

“May I come and see how you’re getting on?”

“Not yet, please—I’d rather you waited until I’ve finished; I can’t work if I’m watched.”

She wandered aimlessly about the room, her thoughts evidently intent upon something of which she desired but hesitated to speak.

“Is Alice Lane’s face a mask to an empty head?” she asked suddenly, looking at him keenly.

The question startled him, and he hesitated how he should answer it, making absorption in his work his excuse for not immediately replying.

“Miss Lane’s—eh? Oh—no, I should say she has a very decided character.”

“A strong character, you mean?”

“Ye-es—you might put it that way.”

“She loves my husband.”

“Mrs. West!”

“Oh, of course that’s an extraordinary thing for me to say to anybody, especially to you, who I don’t really know. But I must speak to someone, and I’ve no relations and no real friend—unless you’ll be one.”

Maddison left the easel, and went across the room to where she was standing by the window.

“Mrs. West, take my advice: don’t tell me any more, and don’t ask me anything. I—don’t see how—I know that I can’t help you——”

“You won’t help me?” she asked, disappointment in her tone. “You won’t? I—thought you would.”

“Not won’t—can’t.”

“How can you tell? I’ve not really told you anything yet.”

“You’ve told me enough for me to be able, more or less, to guess the rest—and I’m sure that there is only one person in the world that can really help you—you must help yourself.”

“That’s so easy to say. I don’t know how. I don’t know how.”

She sank down upon the window seat, burying her face in her hands, and sobbing in a quiet, childish fashion. Intense pity for this helpless, weak woman touched him, but he knew that her only real chance of salvation in this world was for her to find herself through suffering, and that if she continued to depend upon any other for support, she would never be strong enough to stand alone. He did not speak until she raised her face, and her sobbing had almost died away.

“Of course you will think me very hard-hearted and brutal, Mrs. West,” he said, “but I must risk that. If things are going wrong, you must help yourself. The only thing I can do is to tell you that from what I know of your husband, he would love his wife to be as strong and self-dependent as himself. Now, please go back to your chair, and sit as you were at first.”

His heart was full of sympathy for the weak, little woman, so pretty, so vain, so helpless. There was little chance, he felt sure, that she would ever develop into strength, or that she would retain her husband’s affection, if Alice Lane—quiet, determined, and very passionate as he believed her to be—were bent on winning it. West’s restless manner and talk had shown that something was amiss. The old story—the vessel of porcelain and the vessel of iron. She a joy to him so long as she continued to amuse and please, but thrown aside broken, when her charm had gone. Maddison had foreseen some such event as this, but had not thought that she would suffer greatly, or at any rate, for a length of time, taking her to be one who would be content with luxuries and pretty things. But he realized now that there was a depth of affection in her, childish perhaps, but none the less deep, which might lead to tragedy, if West turned her out of his life. But he knew that he was helpless to assist: West was masterful and ruthless; the pity of it was that he had been so blind as not to see that this simple child could not long content him.

He scarcely dared look at the pitiable face that he must truly reproduce upon his canvas. Could he allow anyone save herself to see this portrait of an unhappy woman?

Then it occurred to him that perhaps he was unduly apprehensive; that after all, his first surmise might be correct, and that when she had ceased to cry for her lost toy, she would dry her eyes and be happy with something more costly and less valuable than human love. At any rate, there was no aid that he could render; the tragedy, or the comedy, must play itself out, with himself among the spectators.

Before he had released her, the other two returned.

“Come along,” shouted West; “it’s getting late. We won’t come in.”

As they were leaving the studio, Mrs. West held out her hand to Maddison, saying:

“Thank you. You said you couldn’t help me—but you have.”