a man insusceptible of passion, but aware of the fascinations that caused him to be pursued by the solicitations of the fair.  He was flattered by the pursuit, but the pursuer inspired him with the liveliest contempt.  It had not yet occurred to him that Rickman could have any delicacy in approaching him.  Still less could he believe that Rickman could be indifferent to the fate of his book.  His carelessness therefore did not strike him as entirely genuine.  There could be no doubt however as to the genuineness of Rickman’s surprise when he came upon Jewdwine in the office reading Saturnalia.

He smiled upon him, innocent and unconscious.  “Ah!” he said, “so you’re reading it?  You won’t like it.”

Jewdwine crossed one leg over the other, and it was wonderful the amount of annoyance he managed to convey by the gesture.  His face, too, wore a worried and uncertain look; so worried and so uncertain that Rickman was sorry for him.  He felt he must make it easy for him.

“At any rate, you won’t admire its personal appearance.”

“I don’t.  What possessed you to give it to Vaughan?”

“Some devil, I think.”

“You certainly might have done better.”

“Perhaps.  If I’d taken the trouble.  But I didn’t.”

Jewdwine raised his eyebrows (whenever he did that Rickman thought of someone who used to raise her eyebrows too, but with a difference).

“You see, it was last year.  I let things slide.”

Jewdwine looked as if he didn’t see.  “If you had come to me, I think I could have helped you.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.  I knew you wouldn’t care for the things.”

“Well, frankly, I don’t care very much for some of them.  But I should have stretched a point to keep you clear of Crawley.  I’m sorry he put temptation in your way.”

“He didn’t.  They say I put temptation in his way.  Horrid, isn’t it, to think there’s something in me that appeals to his diseased imagination?”

“It’s a pity.  And I don’t know what I can do for you.  You see you’ve identified yourself with a school I particularly abominate.  It isn’t a school.  A school implies a master and some attempt at discipline.  It should have a formula.  Crawley has none.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”  He stood beside Jewdwine, who was gazing at the frontispiece.  “Talk about absolute beauty, any fool can show you the beauty of a beautiful thing, or the ugliness of an ugly one; but it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman’s face.  Look at it!  He’s got hold of something.  He’s caught the lurking fascination, the—­the leer of life.”

Jewdwine made a gesture of disgust.

“Of course, it’s no good as an illustration.  I don’t see life with a leer on its face.  But he can draw.  Look at the fellow’s line.  Did you ever see anything like the purity of it?  It’s a high and holy abstraction.  By Jove!  He’s got his formula.  Pure line remains pure, however bestial the object it describes.  I wish he’d drawn it at illustrating me.  But I suppose if he saw it that way he had to draw it that way.”