THE PALACE OF NIN-KI-GAL

I

Shortly after this I met my mother at our solicitor’s office according to appointment.  As she was on the eve of departing for the Continent, it was necessary that various family matters should be arranged.  On the day following, as I was about to leave my hotel to call at Cyril’s studio, rather doubtful, after the frivolity I had lately witnessed, as to whether or not I should unburden my heart to such a man, he entered my room in company with Wilderspin, the latter carrying a parcel of books.

‘I have brought your father’s works,’ Wilderspin said.

‘Thank you very much,’ I replied, taking the books.  ’And when am I to call and see your picture?  Have you yet got it back from the owner?’

‘"Faith and Love” is now in my studio,’ he replied; ’but I will ask you not to call upon me yet for a few days.  I hope to be too busily engaged upon another picture to afford a moment to any one save the model—­that is,’ he added with a sigh, ’should she make her appearance.’

‘A picture of his called “Ruth and Boaz,"’ interposed Cyril.  ’Wilderspin is repainting the face from that favourite model of his of whom you heard so much in Wales.  But the fact is the model is rather out of sorts at this moment, and Wilderspin is fearful that she may not turn up to-day.  Hence the melancholy you see on his face.  I try to console him, however, by assuring him that the daughter of a mamma with such a sharp appreciation of half-crowns as the lady you saw at my studio the other day is sure to turn up in due time as sound as a roach.’

Wilderspin shook his head gravely.

‘Good heavens!’ I muttered, ‘when am I to hear the last of painters’ models?’ Then turning to Wilderspin, I said,

‘This is the model to whom you feel so deeply indebted?’

‘Deeply indebted, indeed!’ exclaimed he in a fervid tone, taking a chair and playing with his hat between his knees, in his previous fashion when beginning one of his monologues.  ’When I began “Faith and Love” I worked for weeks and months and years, having but one thought, how to give artistic rendering to the great idea of the Renascence of Wonder in Art symbolised in the vignette in your father’s third edition.  I was very poor then; but to live upon bread and water and paint a great picture, and know that you are being watched by loving eyes above,—­there is no joy like that.  I found a model—­a fine and beautiful woman, the same magnificent blonde who sat for so many of the Master’s greatest pictures.  For a long time my work delighted me; but after awhile a suspicion, and then a sickening dread, came upon me that all was not well with the picture.  And then the withering truth broke in upon me, the scales fell from my eyes—­the model’s face was beautiful, but it was not right; the expression I wanted was as far off as ever; there was but one right expression in the world, and that I could not find.  Ah! is there any pain like that of discovering that all the toil of years has been in vain, that the best you can do—­the best that the spiritual world permits you to do—­is as far off the goal as when you began?’