“There is no apteryx among human souls,” said Jimmie, released from the melancholy fingers. They argued the point in a lighter vein, discussed individual pictures. Charmed by her sympathy, he spoke freely of his work, his motives, his past dreams. Had Norma not begun to know him, she might have wondered at the lack of bitterness in his talk. To this man of many struggles and many crushing disappointments the world was still young and sweet, and his faith in the ultimate righteousness of things undimmed. The simple courage of his attitude towards life moved her admiration. She felt somewhat humbled in the presence of a spirit stronger, clearer than any into which chance had hitherto afforded her a glimpse. And as he talked in his bright, half-earnest, half-humourous way, it crossed her mind that there was a fair world of thought and emotion in which she and her like had not set their feet; not the world entirely of poetic and artistic imaginings, but one where inner things mattered more than outer circumstance, where it would not be ridiculous or affected to think of the existence of a soul and its needs and their true fulfilment. Hitherto meeting him as an alien in her world, she had regarded him with a touch of patronising pity. From this she was now free. She saw him for the first time in harmony with his environment, as the artist sensitive and responsive, integral with the beautiful creations that hung around the walls, and still homely and simple, bearing the rubs of time as bravely and frankly as the old drawing-room suite that furnished the unpretentious studio. Now it was she who felt herself somewhat disconcertingly out of her element. The sensation, however, had a curious charm. There was one picture that had attracted her from the first. She stood in front of it moved by its pity and tenderness. “Tell me about this one,” she said without looking at him. She divined that it was very near his heart. In the foreground amid laughing woodland crouched a faun with little furry ears and stumps of horns, and he was staring in piteous terror at a vision; and the vision was that of a shivering, outcast woman on a wet pavement in a sordid street. “It is the joyous, elemental creature's first conception of pain,” said Jimmie, after a few moments' silence. “You see, life has been to him only the sunshine, and the earth drenched with colour and music--as the earth ought to be--and now he sees a world that is coming grey with rain and misty with tears, and he has the horror of it in his eyes. I am not given to such moralising in paint,” he added with a smile. “This is a very early picture.” He looked at it for some time with eyes growing wistful. “Yes,” he sighed, “I did it many years ago.” “It has a history then?” “Yes,” he admitted; and he remembered how the outcast figure in the rain had symbolised that little funeral procession in Paris and how terribly grey the world had been.