Tom, as he had mentioned on the previous evening, had come to a difficult place in his statue, and he could not get on. He was puzzled to know what the fault was, or where the difficulty was. He saw in his own mind what he wanted to do, but he could not visualize the vision. And when May arrived on the following day she found him inclined to rail at clay, models, drapery and himself. He had seen Manvers off in the morning at Victoria, and that evening he dined alone with May.

“I’m so sorry he’s gone,” he said to her. “He is so extraordinarily inspiring in a sort of back-handed way. He puts his own point of view so brilliantly, that I realize how diabolical it is, and that spurs me to work for mine. He has the same effect on me as the sight of a drunken man was supposed to have on Spartan boys. Their fathers used to make a slave drunk and then bring him in, and say, ‘Look at that. Isn’t it horrible! Take warning!’”

Tom moved over to where May was sitting, and possessed himself of her hand.

“You’ve grown thin, darling,” he said; “look how your rings slip about. May, I’m so glad you’ve come. I have been very bad company to myself lately. When{257} I stick in my work, and you are not here, I don’t know what to do. But when I’ve got you, sticking doesn’t seem to depress me.”

“I’m afraid I can’t prevent your sticking though, Tom.”

“I believe there is nothing you can’t do for me.”

“No, dear,” said May, “I’m very sorry, but we must face it. I don’t understand about your work at all. I’m not the least artistic. If you are pleased, I am pleased; but when you are not pleased, I can’t help you. Mr. Manvers could; for that I am sorry he has gone.”

“Don’t you like him?” asked Tom.

May was silent a moment.

“Tom, you won’t be angry with me, will you,” she said at length, “because I am going to say something which I have had on my mind for a long time, and which I think I had better say. It is this. Do you think it is right for you to see much of him, to know him, to be at all intimate with him? Oh, Tom, he is not a good man! I don’t know about his life, and you probably do; but I am sure of that. He has no better aim in life than the success of his own wits. He has a bad effect on you. He makes you think lightly of things which are more important than anything else. Oh, I’ve got such a lot to say to you!”

Tom smiled.

“Say it, darling.”

May sat up and played rather nervously with her rings.

“And when you stick in your work, Tom,” she went on, “do you think it is well to stimulate yourself in{258} the sort of way you mention? You know you aim at the best, and all that is good comes from one quarter. Do you ever go there for help?”

“You mean, do I pray?”

“Yes, Tom.”

Tom got up and walked up and down the room.

“It is like this,” he said: “I believe in God, and I believe in good, but I also believe in things like laws of nature, and if God created all things, He created them. He has given me a brain which works in obedience to certain laws, and nothing in the world can alter them. We know a little about the brain, at least by experience we find that certain things stimulate it; it works best when it is keen and eager, and I use those things to make it keen and eager which I have found by experience do so. No, when I stick in my work, I don’t pray.”

“But that is the essence of good work,” said May; “it is that which makes it good—the fact that it is done in a spirit of dedication.”

“But, do you then think that a good man, in so far as he is good and dedicates his work to God, necessarily produces good work?” asked Tom.

“I mean that a man who has a gift in any line, uses his gift best and produces more beautiful things if he dedicates it. Why, Tom, look at the difference between your things and Mr. Manvers’. I think he is not a good man, and I think his things are not good for that reason.”

Tom sat down again.

“It all depends on what you mean by good and bad work,” he said. “I think the object of a beautiful{259} thing is only to be beautiful, and I think his things are bad because they are ugly—at least, they seem to me ugly.”

“But the object of all beauty is to bring us nearer God,” said May.

“Yet a work of art which arouses religious emotions is not a better work of art than one which does not. Otherwise, a chromo-lithograph of the Sistine Madonna would be a better work of art than that terrible splendid Salome in the Louvre.”

“I think Mr. Manvers’ things are immoral,” said May.

“You don’t understand, dear,” he said. “His things, so I think, are bad because he has a debased taste. It is his artistic sense that is warped, and it is that which shows in his work, and not his character. Besides, I think you are not fair to him, May.”

“Oh, but, Tom,” she said, with indignation in her voice, “think of his life, that life among those Paris artists, that horrible vice, and carelessness of living.”

Tom smiled.

“Where did you learn about the life of Paris artists?” he asked. “Manvers says they are most inoffensive little people as a rule.”

“I read all about it in ‘David Grieve,’” said May seriously. “It is horrible.”

This time he laughed right out.

“Oh, May, you are a darling!” he said. “Oh dear, how funny! I’m so sorry for laughing; but really it is funny. Have you ever heard Manvers talk about that? He becomes quite virtuous and indignant over it. I don’t know much about Paris life myself, I was{260} only there a month or two, but Manvers—he does not strike you as being very like David Grieve in Paris, does he?”

May joined in Tom’s laugh, but grew serious again.

“You know I feel about it very deeply,” she said; “there is nothing in the world I feel about so much. I think it is our first duty not to condone by word or deed what one knows is bad. To let people see that one will not tolerate it, to fight against it, to—to show that one loathes it.”

“Do you mean you want me never to see Manvers again?” asked Tom.

“No, not that,” said May, “because you know him well, and he is very fond of you, and I think you do him good. But couldn’t you do him more good? Couldn’t you talk to him about it, and bear your testimony?”

“No, dear,” said Tom, quietly, “I couldn’t possibly. It is not my business. I know Manvers as a friend, as an excellent companion, as a most amusing fellow. Why, May, he would think I was mad. Men do not talk to each other about such things.”

“But surely it is our business,” said May. “Tom, you don’t think me tiresome, do you?”

Tom smiled, and took up her hand again.

“My darling, I happen to love you,” he said, “and it does not occur to one to think a person one loves tiresome.”

May went on with gathering earnestness.

“Surely it is our business,” she said. “You believe in God, you believe in Christ, in His infinite love, His infinite care for all. Surely it is your first business to{261} help in His work. I remember what you told me about that early celebration you went to. It completed my happiness: it was that I was waiting for, and I thank God for it day and night. I longed to see you more and talk about it, but you went up to London so soon after, and I have scarcely seen you since.”

Tom’s eyebrows contracted. It was impossible for him to let May be deceived, but what he had to do was a bitter thing. May’s eyes were fixed on his, full of love and trust, but with a question in them, a desire to be confirmed in what she had said.

“May, I am going to hurt you,” he said, looking away, “but I cannot help it; I cannot let you think something about me which is not true. I think I over-rated that—I mean that I thought more of it than it really meant to me. The day before I was in agonies of anxiety and fear for you, and that afternoon Ted and I met the funeral of a mother who had just died in child-bed, and on my way home, as I told you, I went into the church and prayed to an unknown God that you might be safe. I could not bear it alone. And then next morning I could not bear my joy alone. I had—I was obliged to thank some one for it, the some one who had heard my prayer the evening before. And now the whole thing has faded a little. I am less sure. I do not deny that God heard my prayer, and stretched out His hand to save you, but it is less real to me. Supposing you had died, should I have denied absolutely the existence of God? I hope not. Then why should I affirm it because you lived?”

Tom’s voice had sunk lower and lower, and he{262} ended in a whisper. But May’s hand still lay in his, and she pressed it tenderly.

“Tom, why were you afraid to tell me?” she said. “Ah, my dear, I should be a very weak, poor creature if this separated me at all from you, or made me doubt you. What did you think of me? Of course I am sorry, and yet I am hardly sorry. Am I to dictate to God by what way He shall lead you? He has not led you that way, it was not good. Tom, Tom!”

She bent forward and kissed him, her arm was pressed round his neck, and her head lay on his breast. As once before, on the evening when they reached Applethorpe before the baby’s birth, human love and longing had full possession of her; and as she lay there, she felt only that she loved him. And Tom too was content.

But good moments pass as well as bad ones, and the sense that May lived in a different world to him could not but come back again and again to Tom. He could not but feel that there was a passion in her life in which he had no share, and that passion was the strongest she knew. He had tried to grasp it; once he thought he had grasped it, but he was wrong. He was as honest to himself as he was to others, and he admitted that he did not believe in God in the way he believed in May or in Art. The life of Christ was beautiful beyond all other lives, but was it different in kind from the lives of noble unselfish men? Was Christ anything more than the most wonderful, the most unselfish man that the world has ever seen? And from the fact that he could ask himself these{263} questions, Tom knew that he was not convinced. It was just this that was the most essential part of May’s life; her love and tenderness for him and others sprang from that, whereas Tom felt that all that was good in him did not descend from above, but grew up from below.

May was certainly less conscious of this than he. She, so to speak, was waiting for him to come, believing fully he would, while he was struggling towards her, afraid that his efforts were futile. The least he could do, he felt, and the most, was to avoid letting her know that he was so conscious of the gulf between th............