And he could not withhold the demonstration that such a confession provoked. "Oh, my dear," he said at last, without releasing her. "You made too little of me once; and now you're making too much. I'm not worth it all." She put a hand on his lips. "Be quiet! I won't hear you when you talk so. Look properly at my picture now. You haven't told me it's good." "Of course it's good. Amazingly good. But . . ." he laughed, a short contented laugh--"it's beyond me how you could be misguided enough to waste your remarkable talent in perpetuating anything so ugly!" Her smile hinted at superior knowledge; yet she paid his obvious sincerity the compliment of not contradicting his final statement. "In the first place, because I love it. And in the second place, because, for all true artists, who see in form and colour just a soul's attempts at self-expression, there is more essential beauty in certain kinds . . . of ugliness, than in the most faultless symmetry of lines and curves. One is almost tempted to say that there is no such thing as actual ugliness; that it is all a matter of understanding, of seeing deep enough. For instance, I find that essential beauty I spoke of in Mrs Olliver's face." "Ah . . . so do I; of a rare quality." "Well then, dear stupid, allow me to find it in yours also!" "One to you," he admitted, smiling. "But now . . . I am in your hands till tiffin. What are you going to do with me? Read? Sing? The drawing-room's empty; and I haven't heard you since Kajiar." "Do you want the Swinburne again?" "No; by no means." "Why not? Don't you like the song?" "I like it far too well; and I'm not strong enough yet to stand a brutal assault upon my feelings! Come along, and give me something wholesome and simple. A convalescent needs milk diet mentally as well as physically, you know!" This was on one of his best days. But there were others,--following upon nights of sleeplessness, and pain, and heart-searching unspeakable, only to be alleviated by the one unfailing remedy,--when the strain of repression demanded by her constant presence so wrought upon his nerves that he would get up and leave her abruptly without excuse; or shut himself into his room on the empty pretext of revising manuscript. As a matter of fact, he spent most of the time girding at the deliberate waste of good hours; till the consciousness of slipping deeper into the mire and the dread of ultimate defeat became almost an obsession, aggravated by ill-health and want of rest.