His egotism seemed not conceit, but justified consciousness of power. Kay was beginning to explain; he cut in upon her. “It’s all right. For you I’d wait till—oh, till there wasn’t any castle—till it was all swept into the sea by rain. But only for you—for other people life’s too short.” He stopped sketching and looked up at her. “Little English girl, life is very short. Phew!” He blew out his cheeks. “Like that, and you are old. All the lovers are gone. No one cares whether you live or die. With us men it’s the same, only we—we search for the great secret. You have it in your face. There’s so much to do; it’s not kind to keep us waiting.”
“The great secret! What is it?”
He appeared to take no notice of her question. Picking up his pencil, he went back to his sketching. Then, while he worked, glancing occasionally to her face where the radiance of the sunshine fell against her profile, “The great secret! It’s hard to say. It’s why we’re here, and from where we come, and where we go. It’s the knowledge of life and the meaning of death; it’s everything that we call beauty. I see it in your face. I paint it. How it came there, neither you nor I can say.”
Next day he set to work on canvas. The picture grew. It wasn’t for the picture that Kay went to him; it was for the things he said in the loneliness, lifted high between the waste of tossing sea and restless sky. He set her thinking; he made life more glad, more eager and, because of its mystery, more poignant. The great secret! He didn’t hope to find it; but he told her of the men who had sought.
In telling her, he brought the soul into her eyes and set it down on canvas. A young girl with blowy hair, perched among things ancient, her white hands folded, patient for the future, with the pain of joy in her wide child’s eyes! That was what he painted.
And she—she was stirred by him. He gave her the freedom of his mind. He treated her as a woman, teaching her knowledge and the sorrow of knowledge—from all suspicion of which she had been guarded. She was as much repelled as attracted by him; through him she learnt to love Harry. She began to understand the suffering of love that is kept hungry. She began to understand its urgency. At last she understood that such love as Harry brought her must always stand first, sacrificing every other affection. It was this that gave pain to her joy.
One day in early June, the man laid aside his brushes. “The last touch. It’s finished.”
He lifted her down very gently and watched her as she stood before it. Clasping and unclasping her hands, she gazed at her own reflection with an odd mixture of wonder and ecstacy. “But—but it’s beautiful.”
He put his arm about her shoulder, speaking softly, “And so are you.”
“But not so beautiful.”