“Nothing else can console you, nothing else can comfort you. There must be restraint, austerity, discipline--words must come to you easily but only because life has come to you with so great a pain ... the Artist's life is the harshest that God can give to a man. Make no mistake about that. Fortitude is the artist's only weapon of defence....” Henry Galleon came over to Peter's chair and put his hand upon the boy's arm. “I am at the end of my work. I have done what I can. You are at the beginning of yours. You will do what you can. I wish you good fortune.” A vision came to Peter. Through the open window, against the sheet of stars, gigantic, was the Rider on the Lion. He could not see the Rider's face. A great exultation inflamed him. At that instant he was stripped bare. His history, the people whom he knew, the things that he had done, they were all as though they had never been. His soul was, for that great moment, naked and alone before God. “The whole duty of Art is listening for the voice of God....” A sound, as though it came to him from another world, broke into the room. There were voices and steps on the stairs. “Ah, they are back from their party,” Henry Galleon said, trotting happily to the door. “Come up and have a chat with my wife, Westcott, before going to bed.” CHAPTER III THE ENCOUNTER I Peter was now the young man of the moment. He took this elevation with frank delight, was encouraged by it, gave it all rather more, perhaps, than its actual value, began a new novel, “The Stone House,” started weekly reviewing on _The Interpreter_ and yielded himself up entirely to Clare Rossiter. He had been in love with her ever since that first day at Norah Monogue's, but the way that she gradually now absorbed him was like nothing so much as the slow covering of the rocks and the sand by the incoming tide. At first, in those days at Brockett's, she had seemed to him something mysterious, intangible, holy. But after that meeting in Cheyne Walk he knew her for a prize that some fortunate man might, one day, win. He did not, for an instant, suppose that he could ever be that one, but the mere imagined picture of what some other would one day have, sent the blood rushing through him. Her holiness for him was still intact but for another there would be human, earthly wonders. Then, curiously, as he met her more often and knew her better there came a certain easy, almost casual, intercourse. One Clare Rossiter still reigned amongst the clouds, but there was now too another easy, fascinating, humorous creature who treated him almost like Alice Galleon herself--laughed at him, teased him, provoked him ... suddenly, like a shadow across a screen, would slip away; and he be on his knees again before something that was only to be worshipped.