and apart, though connected by a passage, a studio stood, and about that studio—­of white rough-cast, with a black oak door, and peacock-blue paint—­was something a little hard and fugitive, well suited to Bianca, who used it, indeed, to paint in.  It seemed to stand, with its eyes on the house, shrinking defiantly from too close company, as though it could not entirely give itself to anything.  Cecilia, who often worried over the relations between her sister and her brother-in-law, suddenly felt how fitting and symbolical this was.

But, mistrusting inspirations, which, experience told her, committed one too much, she walked quickly up the stone-flagged pathway to the door.  Lying in the porch was a little moonlight-coloured lady bulldog, of toy breed, who gazed up with eyes like agates, delicately waving her bell-rope tail, as it was her habit to do towards everyone, for she had been handed down clearer and paler with each generation, till she had at last lost all the peculiar virtues of dogs that bait the bull.

Speaking the word “Miranda!” Mrs. Stephen Dallison tried to pat this daughter of the house.  The little bulldog withdrew from her caress, being also unaccustomed to commit herself....

Mondays were Blanca’s “days,” and Cecilia made her way towards the studio.  It was a large high room, full of people.

Motionless, by himself, close to the door, stood an old man, very thin and rather bent, with silvery hair, and a thin silvery beard grasped in his transparent fingers.  He was dressed in a suit of smoke-grey cottage tweed, which smelt of peat, and an Oxford shirt, whose collar, ceasing prematurely, exposed a lean brown neck; his trousers, too, ended very soon, and showed light socks.  In his attitude there was something suggestive of the patience and determination of a mule.  At Cecilia’s approach he raised his eyes.  It was at once apparent why, in so full a room, he was standing alone.  Those blue eyes looked as if he were about to utter a prophetic statement.

“They have been speaking to me of an execution,” he said.

Cecilia made a nervous movement.

“Yes, Father?”

“To take life,” went on the old man in a voice which, though charged with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, “was the chief mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days.  It sprang from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the permanence of the individual ego after death.  From the worship of that fetish had come all the sorrows of the human race.”

Cecilia, with an involuntary quiver of her little bag, said: 

“Father, how can you?”

“They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure they had all eternity to do it in.  The doctrine was an invention to enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences.  Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed.”

Cecilia looked hastily round; no one had heard.  She moved a little sideways, and became merged in another group.  Her father’s lips continued moving.  He had resumed the patient attitude which so slightly suggested mules.  A voice behind her said:  “I do think your father is such an interesting man, Mrs. Dallison.”