"And so you can do things like that," he said, turning towards Blanche a face contracted with pain, and pointing a lean finger at the goldfish, and the chrysanthemum shadow, propped side by side on the mantel piece. "Yes." "Where were you taught?" She mentioned the school where she had studied. "Why did you leave it?" "Because Mother died, and I had not any money to go on with my education." "And so you married for a home I suppose," he snarled, showing his black teeth, "for silken gowns and delicate fare and costly furs such as you are wearing now." She did not answer. "You had better have gone on the streets and stuck to your painting." Blanche's dark eyes met the painter's horrible leer without flinching. "I wish I had," she said. They had both forgotten me. They were intent upon each other. And she who never spoke about herself said to this stranger: "I married because I did not want to go into a sisterhood, and because Arthur said he understood what I felt about painting, and that he felt the same, and that when we were married we would both study under S., and I was grateful to him, and I thought I loved him. But S. would not take him and wanted to take me. And Arthur was dreadfully angry, and would not let me go without him. And the years passed, hundreds and hundreds of years, and Arthur changed to me. And he has to be humoured. And now--I copy his pictures. I enlarge them. Sometimes I decrease them, but not often. He likes to watch me doing them. He does not care for me to be doing anything else." There was a long silence. They stood looking at each other, and it seemed as if the sword that had pierced her soul pierced his also. "Leave all and follow me," said the painter at last. "That is the voice of art, as well as of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the law. There is no middle course. You have not left all, you have not followed. You have dallied and faltered and betrayed your gift. You have denied your Lord. And your sin has found you out. You are miserable; you deserve to be miserable." She made no answer. "But you are at the end of your tether. I know what I know. You can't go on. You are nineteen and your life is unendurable to you. You are touching the fringe of despair. Break away from your life before it breaks you. Shake its dust from off your feet. Forsake all and find peace in following your art." "You might as well say to the goldfish, jump out," said Blanche, white to the lips, pointing to the picture. "I do say to him, 'Jump out.' Leap in the dark, and risk dying on a vulgar Axminster carpet, and being trodden into it, rather than pine in prison on sponge cake." "Yes," said Blanche fiercely, "but there is the wire netting. It's not in the picture, but _you know it's there_. He jumps and jumps. Haven't I said so in the picture! And it throws him back. You know that. I was like him once. I used to jump, but I always fell back. I don't jump any more now."