“But I don’t laugh,” said Mrs. Viveash. On the contrary, she was very sorry for him; and, what was more, he rather bored her. For a few days, once, she had thought she might be in love with him. His impetuosity had seemed a torrent strong enough to carry her away. She had found out her mistake very soon. After that he had rather amused her: and now he rather bored her. No, decidedly, she never laughed. She wondered why she still went on seeing him. Simply because one must see some one? or why? “Are you going to go on with my portrait?” she asked. Lypiatt sighed. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I’d better be getting on with my work. Work—it’s the only thing. ‘Portrait of a Tigress.’” The cynical Titan spoke again. “Or shall I call it, ‘Portrait of a Woman who has never been in Love?’” “That would be a very stupid title,” said Mrs. Viveash. “Or, ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Heart Disease’? That would be good, that would be damned good!” Lypiatt laughed very loudly and slapped his thighs. He looked, Mrs. Viveash thought, peculiarly ugly when he laughed. His face seemed to go all to pieces; not a corner of it but was wrinkled and distorted by the violent grimace of mirth. Even the forehead was ruined when he laughed. Foreheads are generally the human part of people’s faces. Let the nose twitch and the mouth grin and the eyes twinkle as monkeyishly as you like; the forehead can still be calm and serene, the forehead still knows how to be human. But when Casimir laughed, his forehead joined in the general disintegrating grimace. And sometimes even when he wasn’t laughing, when he was just vivaciously talking, his forehead seemed to lose its calm and would twitch and wrinkle itself in a dreadful kind of agitation. ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Heart Disease’—she didn’t find it so very funny. “The critics would think it was a problem picture,” Lypiatt went on. “And so it would be, by God, so it would be. You _are_ a problem. You’re the Sphinx. I wish I were Œdipus and could kill you.” All this mythology! Mrs. Viveash shook her head. He made his way through the intervening litter and picked up a canvas that was leaning with averted face against the wall near the window. He held it out at arm’s length and examined it, his head critically cocked on one side. “Oh, it’s good,” he said softly. “It’s good. Look at it.” And, stepping out once more into the open, he propped it up against the table so that Mrs. Viveash could see it without moving from her chair.