They laughed, but Miss Bonnicastle seemed very much in earnest.

“He’s tormenting his silly self,” she went on, “because he has been unfaithful to her.  There was a girl in Paris.  Oh, he tells me everything!  We’re good friends.  The girl over there did him enormous good, that’s all I know.  It was she that set him to work, and supplied him with his model at the same time!  What better could have happened.  And now the absurd creature has qualms of conscience!”

“Well,” said Piers, smiling uneasily, “it’s intelligible.”

“Bosh!  Don’t be silly!  A man has his work to do, and he must get what help he can.  I shall pack him off back to Paris.”

“I’ll go and see him, I think.  About the Italian, Florio.  Has he also an interest?”

“In Olga?  Yes, I fancy he has, but I don’t know much about him.  He comes and goes, on business.  There’s a chance, I think, of his dropping in for money before long.  He isn’t a bad sort—­what do you think?”

That same afternoon Piers went in search of Kite’s garret.  It was a garret literally, furnished with a table and a bed, and little else, but a large fire burned cheerfully, and on the table, beside a drawing-board, stood a bottle of wine.  When he had welcomed his visitor, Kite pointed to the bottle.

“I got used to it in Paris,” he said, “and it helps me to work.  I shan’t offer you any, or you might be made ill; the cheapest claret on the market, but it reminds me of—­of things.”

There rose in Otway’s mind a suspicion that, to-day at all events, Kite had found his cheap claret rather too seductive.  His face had an unwonted warmth of colour, and his speech an unusual fluency.  Presently he opened a portfolio and showed some of the work he had done in Paris:  drawings in pen-and-ink, and the published reproductions of others; these latter, he declared, were much spoilt in the process work.  The motive was always a nude female figure, of great beauty; the same face, with much variety of expression; for background all manner of fantastic scenes, or rather glimpses and suggestions of a poet’s dreamland.

“You see what I mean?” said Kite.  “It’s simply Woman, as a beautiful thing, as a—­a—­oh, I can’t get it into words.  An ideal, you know—­something to live for.  Put her in a room—­it becomes a different thing.  Do you feel my meaning?  English people wouldn’t have these, you know.  They don’t understand.  They call it sensuality.”

“Sensuality!” cried Piers, after dreaming for a moment.  “Great heavens! then why are human bodies made beautiful?”

The artist gave a strange laugh of gratification.

“There you hit it!  Why—­why?  The work of the Devil, they say.”

“The worst of it is,” said Piers, “that they’re right as regards most men.  Beauty, as an inspiration, exists only for the few.  Beauty of any and every kind—­it’s all the same.  There’s no safety for the world as we know it, except in utilitarian morals.”