And she lifted her eyes to the moon, and held her hands fantastically forward, as if she expected the orb to fall from its setting. When she was wearied, she took my arm within hers and, leaning, walked to the entrance of the hall. There the moonlight fell on the armed figures. The damascene breast-plates worn four centuries ago in French battles gleamed like Phyllida’s gown. The bloody mort-cloth with the stained opals, that hung dusty and tattered by the door, twisted as if a strong current of air stirred behind. The lamp in the morning-room had burned so low that the air was tainted. Phyllida left me, whilst I gazed at Anne Killigrew’s portrait of James the Second and his queen. Was ever picture more ludicrous? Each crease of the royal draperies concealed a demon of dulness; in each feature of the royal countenances was an excessive, wooden minuteness that deprived the dark, ugly faces of the faintest suggestion of life. The lacquer-framed tapestry to the left of the window offered as ever only a conflicting relief, for the enigma of the aureoled woman, who bore in her hand a bag of gold with the inscription _Holy Barbara bringeth Help_, could never be unriddled. Suddenly a cry of wonder burst from my lips. A bust modelled in red clay had taken the place of the devotional book on the reading-table. It was the head of a man in the early prime of life, suave, handsome, and priestly: the brow was high and narrow, the mouth painfully compressed, the tonsure of such curls as would have graced a bacchanal. The crudeness of detail, and the luxuriance of fancy, showed me that Phyllida was the modeller. A fierce murmur, like a wounded animal’s, checked me as I laid my hand on the forehead to gauge its lack of breadth. ‘Touch anything but that! Do not let your hands corrupt it! Profane! profane!’ I turned aghast, to see Phyllida at my side. Her face was wan, her eyes red and swollen with tears. She seemed a pious witness of some random sacrilege. ‘What is wrong?’ I said. ‘What have I done? Am I so unworthy?’ Without heeding me she unfastened the bundle of papers she had brought, and having extracted several, she laid them on the table. Then, touching my arm, she motioned me to a chair, and in lamplight that dimmed and dimmed as the moon prevailed she began to read:-- ‘_Sensuous hopes trampled upon; visionary joys despised. There is no future gladness. Destiny works. What are we more than a handful of faded leaves, tossed by the early winter wind? Some speed--others are checked and lie until corruption. I have reached a splendid goal; you, poor flower--poor slug-a-bed!... Alas! why should I chide, I of all men?_’ ‘I do not understand,’ I interrupted. ‘Explain, Phyllida!’ She gave no sign of hearing, but continued:--