‘Well, Mr. Aylwin,’ said Wilderspin, ’when I first saw your father’s book, The Veiled Queen, it was the vignette on the title-page that attracted me.  In the eyes of that beautiful child-face, even as rendered by a small reproduction, there was the very expression that my soul had been yearning after—­the expression which no painter of woman’s beauty had ever yet caught and rendered.  I felt that he who could design or suggest to a designer such a vignette must be inspired, and I bought the book:  it was as an artist, not as a thinker, that I bought the book for the vignette.  When, on reading it, I came to understand the full meaning of the design, such sweet comfort and hope did the writer’s words give me, that I knew at once who had impressed me to read it—­I knew that my mission in life was to give artistic development to the sublime ideas of Philip Aylwin.  I began the subject of “Faith and Love.”  But the more I tried to render the expression that had fascinated me the more impossible did the task seem to me.  Howsoever imaginative may be any design, the painter who would produce a living picture must paint from life, and then he has to fight against his model’s expression.  Do you remember my telling you the other day how the spirit of Mary Wilderspin in heaven came upon me in my sore perplexity and blessed me—­sent me a spiritual body—­led me out into the street, and—­’

‘Yes, yes, I remember; but what happened?’

‘We will sit,’ said Wilderspin.

He placed chairs for us, and I perceived that my mother did not intend to go.

‘Well,’ he continued, ’on that sunny morning I was impressed to leave my studio and go out into the streets.  It was then that I found what I had been seeking,—­the expression in the beautiful child-face off the vignette.’

‘In the street!’ I heard my mother say to herself.  ’How did it come about?’ she asked aloud.

’It had long been my habit to roam about the streets of London whenever I could afford the time to do so, in the hope of finding what I sought, the fascinating and indescribable expression on that one lovely child-face.  Sometimes I believed that I had found this expression.  I have followed women for miles, traced them home, introduced myself to them, told them of my longings; and have then, after all, come away in bitter disappointment.  The insults and revilings I have, on these occasions, sometimes submitted to I will narrate to no man, for they would bring me no respect in a cynical age like this—­an age which Carlyle spits at and the great and good John Ruskin chides.  Sometimes my dear friend Mr. Cyril has accompanied me on these occasions, and he has seen how I have been humiliated.’

An involuntary ‘haw, haw!’ came from Sleaford, but looking towards my mother and perceiving that she was listening with intense eagerness, he said:  ’Ten thousand pardons, but Cyril Aylwin’s droll stories,—­don’t you know? they will—­hang it all—­keep comin’ up and makin’ a fellow laugh.’