There had been trouble—trouble about a woman that had made him exchange to a line regiment—and then the war being over, and the chance of active service remote, disgust had come upon him, and he had done with soldiering.
Vera had seen the shoulders shrugged, and had heard the deprecating criticism of this kinsman of hers, and had been all the kinder to him because Fate had been cruel.
She had tried to fire him with new hope; she had been ambitious for him; had steeped herself in art books, and spent her mornings in picture galleries, in order that she might be able to talk to him. She had implored him to go back to his work, to paint better pictures than he had painted when critics prophesied a future from his work.
"I am too old," he said.
"Nonsense. You have wasted a few years, but you will have to work harder and buy back your lost time. Quentin Matsys did not begin to paint till he was older than you."
"There were giants in those days. Compared with such men I am an invertebrate pigmy."
"Oh, if you loved art you would not be content to live without the joy of it."
"Yes, that's what people who look at pictures think—the joy of painting a thing like that. The man who paints knows when the disgust comes in and the joy goes out. He knows the sense of failure, the disappointment, the longing to fling his half-finished picture on the floor and perform the devil's dance upon it, as Müller used to do."
And then, one day, as they were going round a picture gallery together, he said: