languishing alone at New Quay."
"To New Quay? I didn't know you were going there. Frank and I know New Quay very well."
Frank was in the drawing-room when they went in, giving orders that the studio should be thoroughly swept out and dusted that evening.
"I'm going to begin painting to-morrow," he announced, abruptly, to the others as they came in.
Margery turned to Jack.
"No more tennis for me unless you stop," she said. "Have you ever been with us when Frank is painting? I see nothing of him all day, and he gobbles his meals and scowls at the butler."
The footman came in again with the tea-things.
"And take that big looking-glass out of the spare bedroom," said Frank to him, "and put it in the studio."
"What do you want a looking-glass for?" asked his wife, as the man left the room.
Frank got up, and walked restlessly up and down. "I begin to-morrow," he said; "I've got the idea ready. I can see it. Until then it is no use trying to paint; but when that comes, it is no use not trying."
"But what's the looking-glass for?" repeated Margery.
"Ah, yes, I haven't told you. I'm going to paint a portrait of myself."
"That's my advice," observed Margery. "I've often suggested that to you, haven't I, Frank?"
"You have. I wonder if you did wisely? This afternoon, however, other things suggested it to me."
"Have you been meditating?" asked Jack, sympathetically. "I've been meditating all afternoon. Why didn't you come out, as you said you would, and meditate with me?"
"I had a little private meditation of my own," said Frank. "It demanded solitude."
"Is it bills?" asked Margery. "You know, dear, I told you that you'd be sorry for paying a hundred guineas for that horse."
Frank laughed.
"No, it's not bills – at least, not bills that make demands of cash. Give me some tea, Margy."
The evening was warm and fine, but cloudless, and after dinner the three sat out on the terrace listening to the footfalls of night stealing on tiptoe in the woods round them. The full moon, shining through white skeins of drifting cloud, cast a strange, diffused light, and the air, alert with the coming rain, seemed full of those delicate scents which are imperceptible during the day. Once a hare ran out from the cover across the lawn, where it sat up for a few moments, with ears cocked forward, until it heard the rustle of Margery's dress, as she moved to look in the direction of Frank's finger pointing at it, and then scuttled noiselessly off.
They had been silent for some little time, but at last Frank spoke. He wanted to tell Margery of his fantastic fear, that fear which she might hear about; or, rather, to let her find it out, and pour cool common-sense on it.
"I feel just as I did on my last night at home, before I went to school for the first time," he said. "I feel as if I had never painted a portrait before. I have had a long holiday, I know; but still it is not as if I had never been to school before. I wonder why I feel like that?"
"Most of one's fears are for very harmless things," observed Jack. "One sees a bogie and runs away, but it is probably only a turnip and a candle. Naturally one is nervous about a new thing. One doesn't quite know what it may turn out to be. But, as a rule, if it isn't a turnip and a candle, it is a sheet and a mask. Equally inoffensive really, but unexpected."
"Ah, but I don't usually feel like that," said Frank. "In fact, I never have before. One is like a plant. When one has flowered once, it is fairly certain that the next flowers will be like the last, if one puts anything of one's self into it. Of course if one faces one's self one may put out a monstrosity, but I am not facing myself. Yet, somehow, I am as afraid as if I were going to produce something horrible and unnatural. But I can't face myself; I can't blossom under glass."
"That's such a nice theory for you, dear," said Margery, "especially if you are inclined to be lazy."
Frank made a little hopeless gesture of impatience.
"Lazy, industrious – industrious, lazy; what have those to do with it? You don't understand me a bit. When the time has come that I should paint, I do so inevitably; if the time has not come, it is impossible for me to paint. I know that you think artists are idle, desultory, Bohemian, irregular. That is part of their nature as artists. A man who grinds out so much a day is not and cannot be an artist. The sap flows, and we bud; the sap recedes, and for us it is winter-time. You do not call a tree lazy in winter because it does not put out leaves?"
"But a tree, at any rate, is regular," said Margery; "besides, evergreens."
"Yes, and everlasting flowers," said Frank, impatiently. "The tree is only a simile. But we are not dead when we don't produce any more than the tree is dead in December."
Margery frowned. This theory of Frank's was her pet aversion, but she could not get him to give it up.
"Then do you mean to say that all effort is valueless?"
"No, no!" cried Frank; "the whole process of production is frantic, passionate effort to realize what one sees. But no amount of effort will make one see anything. I could do you a picture, which you would probably think very pretty, every day, if you liked, of 'Love in a Cottage,' or some such inanity."
Jack crossed his legs, thoughtfully.
"The great objection of love in a cottage," he said, "is that it is so hard to find a really suitable cottage."
Frank laughed. "A courageous attempt to change the subject," he said. "But I'm not going to talk nonsense to-night."
"I think you're talking awful nonsense, dear," said Margery, candidly.
"You will see I am serious in a minute," said Frank. "I was saying I could paint that sort of thing at any time, but it would not be part of me. And the only pictures worth doing are those which are part of one's self. Every real picture tells you, of course, something about what it represents; but it tells you a great deal about the man who painted it, and that is the most important of the two. And I cannot – and, what is more, I don't choose to – paint anything into which I do not put part of myself."
"Mind you look about the woods after I've gone," said Jack, "and if you see a leg or an arm of mine lying about, send it to me, Beach Hotel, New Quay."
Frank threw himself back in his chair with a laugh.
"My dear Jack," he said, "for a clever man you are a confounded idiot. No one ever accused you of putting a nail-paring of your own into any of your pictures. Of course you are a landscape-painter – that makes a certain difference. A landscape-painter paints what he sees, and only some of that; a portrait-painter – a real portrait-painter – paints what he knows and feels, and when he paints the virtue goes out of him."
"And the more he knows, the more virtue goes out of him, I suppose," said Jack. "You know yourself pretty well – what will happen when you paint yourself?"
Frank grew suddenly grave.
"That's exactly what I want to know myself. That was what I meant when I said I felt like a little boy going to school for the first time – it will be something new. I have only painted four portraits in my life, and each of them definitely took something
