At first he thought the exhibition was going to give her more pain than pleasure. He sat beside her, and she took the sketches from him gingerly, one by one, and looked at them without a word. A visible nervousness possessed her; her pulses clamored, she seemed to struggle with her own unsteady breathing. Once, when in the transfer of a drawing her hand brushed against his, she drew it back again as if it had dashed against a flame. Durant had noticed once or twice before that she avoided his touch. Suddenly she awoke out of the agony of her consciousness. One picture had held her longer than the rest. "It's beautiful--beautiful," she murmured. "I'm glad you like it," said Durant, pleased at her first sign of admiration. "Oh, I don't mean your picture--I mean the place." "It's not a very good picture perhaps----" "I don't know whether it's good or bad; it seems to me rather bad, though I can't say what's wrong with it. It looks unfinished." "It _is_ unfinished, but that's not what's wrong with it. These are better--better painting." His hand brushed hers in vain this time. She remained absorbed. "I don't care two straws about the painting; they may be masterpieces for all I know; it's _that_--that stretch of sand licked by the sea, and the grass trodden down by the wind--the agony and beauty and desolation of it----" She laid it down unwillingly, and took the others from his hand. "Oh, what's this?" "A wall in Suza." "I've never seen anything like that. The light seems to be moving--soaking into it and streaming out again. It looks as if it would burn if you touched it." The artist in him laughed for pure pleasure. "It's all very well, you know, but they must be infernally good if they make you feel like that." "They may be. Have you seen all these things, or have you done any of them out of your head?" "Seen them, of course. I never paint 'out of my head'; I haven't enough imagination." "Show me more places where you've been. Tell me about them. You might have done that before." He obeyed, giving her his experience, his richest and his best; he drew for her scenes and things, not in their crude and temporary form, but as they lived for him and for his art, idealized, eternalized by the imagination that sees them as parts of the immortal whole; and yet vivid, individual, drenched with the peculiar color that made them equally and forever one with the soul of Maurice Durant. She hardly seemed to heed, hardly seemed to listen or to follow. She looked as if hearing were already absorbed in sight. Durant put a small oil painting into her hand. He had kept his finest to the last. "If you're fond of the sea that may please you."