Moreover, he no longer chastised her when she came.
His ideals had left him, one by one; he now lived alone, immune from
dignity and shame, soothing himself with whisky. A man of rancour, meet
for pity, and, in his cups, contented. He had lunched freely before
coming to Blanca's Christmas function, but by four o'clock, the gases
which had made him feel the world a pleasant place had nearly all
evaporated, and he was suffering from a wish to drink again. Or it may
have been that this girl, with her soft look, gave him the feeling that
she ought to have belonged to him; and as she did not, he felt, perhaps,
a natural irritation that she belonged, or might belong, to somebody
else. Or, again, it was possibly his natural male distaste for the works
of women painters which induced an awkward frame of mind.
Two days later in a daily paper over no signature, appeared this little
paragraph: "We learn that 'The Shadow,' painted by Bianca Stone, who is
not generally known to be the wife of the writer, Mr. Hilary Dallison,
will soon be exhibited at the Bencox Gallery. This very 'fin-de-siecle'
creation, with its unpleasant subject, representing a woman (presumably
of the streets) standing beneath a gas-lamp, is a somewhat anaemic piece
of painting. If Mr. Dallison, who finds the type an interesting one,
embodies her in one of his very charming poems, we trust the result will
be less bloodless.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59