VII

THE MASTERPIECE

[_To HAROLD CHILD_]


He sat in front of his writing-table with a blank sheet of paper in
front of him--a creamy, virginal sheet, inviting and elusive. "A few
black smudges and the whole of life might be there," he thought,
"concentrated but limited with four corners and no boundaries." He
thought of the untouched whiteness of the paper violated by a
masterpiece--or a love letter. He didn't want to think of love letters.
He had written such hundreds, and for four years now they had all been
to the same person. His fidelity had been due, he supposed, to the fact
that to him she was almost more an idea than an individual, a legend
that he had created. She was his faith, his religion, his shrine. She
was on a pedestal from which she shed a pale gold light--silvery
gold--of serenity won through suffering. He saw her very seldom, but
when he was with her she reminded him of a catch in the voice. It was as
if her life had reached breaking point and for one moment she would give
him as divine gift a little poignant stumble before she regained the
sure foothold of her calm courage. It was these precious moments that
gave a burning spirit to his image of her. The legend had a soul.

But to-day he didn't want to think of her. He wanted to work. The word
made him smile a little. There had been a time when ideas had seized
hold of him and driven him recklessly wherever they wanted him to go.
Then he had made form his fetish and it had become his prison. Now he
had lost both his abandon and his rigidity and with each, a certain