It was the same picture with a terrible difference. Vivid, almost glaring, in the black gloom and silence, the woman's form represented a combination of all the debasement and degradation of the world. Evil spirits seemed to mock and writhe and gibber in the sludge of the foreground; the iridescent atmosphere hung with noisome miasmic dews, even the face of the bargee glowed like a fiend in the glare of his lamp, held viciously aloft to reveal in its completeness the whole squalid history of spiritual failure.
"Who was she?" I whispered at last—it was a sight to shackle the tongue—and his answer hissed back like the sound of searing iron on sweating flesh:—
"It was my wife."
Heaven forgive me, I shrank from him. The man who could thus portray accurately, unmercifully, this tale of hideous defilement—the victim his wife, however sinning—must be himself either morally debased or partially insane.
He saw the gesture, and moved away to the foot of the model throne and waited.
I could think of nothing but the ghastly achievement, could stand only with bulged eyes staring at it, a dry, dusty flavour parching my tongue. At last I broke from the horrible fascination—a fascination that almost prompted me to snatch his knife and rip the canvas from end to end.
I flung down the cloth.
"Sit there," he almost commanded, and pointed to an arm-chair at some distance from him.
"You may shun me. It is what I wanted—deserved. To that end I confessed it, 'The Soul of Me.'"
Then on a sudden his meaning dawned.