of sentimentality in the art itself; what she felt, and with some justice, was that this particular Magdalen was unrepentant, and that Ditmar knew it.  And the picture remained an offence to her as long as she lived.  Formerly he had enjoyed the contemplation of this figure, reminding him, as it did, of mellowed moments in conquests of the past; suggesting also possibilities of the future.  For he had been quick to discount the attitude of bowed despair, the sop flung by a sensuous artist to Christian orthodoxy.  He had been sceptical about despair—­feminine despair, which could always be cured by gifts and baubles.  But to-night, as he raised his eyes, he felt a queer sensation marring the ecstatic perfection of his mood.  That quality in the picture which so long had satisfied and entranced him had now become repellent, an ugly significant reflection of something —­something in himself he was suddenly eager to repudiate and deny.  It was with a certain amazement that he found himself on his feet with the picture in his hand, gazing at the empty space where it had hung.  For he had had no apparent intention of obeying that impulse.  What should he do with it?  Light the fire and burn it—­frame and all?  The frame was an integral part of it.  What would his housekeeper say?  But now that he had actually removed it from the wall he could not replace it, so he opened the closet door and thrust it into a corner among relics which had found refuge there.  He had put his past in the closet; yet the relief he felt was mingled with the peculiar qualm that follows the discovery of symptoms never before remarked.  Why should this woman have this extraordinary effect of making him dissatisfied with himself?  He sat down again and tried to review the affair from that first day when he had surprised in her eyes the flame dwelling in her.  She had completely upset his life, increasingly distracted his mind until now he could imagine no peace unless he possessed her.  Hitherto he had recognized in his feeling for her nothing but that same desire he had had for other women, intensified to a degree never before experienced.  But this sudden access of morality—­he did not actually define it as such—­was disquieting.  And in the feverish, semi-objective survey he was now making of his emotional tract he was discovering the presence of other disturbing symptoms such as an unwonted tenderness, a consideration almost amounting to pity which at times he had vaguely sensed yet never sought imaginatively to grasp.  It bewildered him by hampering a ruthlessness hitherto absolute.  The fierceness of her inflamed his passion, yet he recognized dimly behind this fierceness an instinct of self-protection—­and he thought of her in this moment as a struggling bird that fluttered out of his hands when they were ready to close over her.  So it had been to-night.  He might have kept her, prevented her from taking the car.  Yet he had let her go!  There came again, utterly to blot this out, the memory of her lips.